MorseLife Exhibition

proudly presents

HOLOCAUST S U R V I V O R S a n d L I B E R AT O R S portraits by

WILMA BULKIN SIEGEL, MD February 26 - March 31, 2015

HOLOCAUST S U R V I V O R S a n d L I B E R AT O R S portraits by

WILMA BULKIN SIEGEL, MD

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FOREWORD MorseLife Health System The 2015 year marks the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust in Europe.

It is fitting on this anniversary to recognize those who perished in the Holocaust, along with the survivors, their families and those who liberated them.

MorseLife Health System was established by the Jewish community of Palm Beach County in 1983.

Since then, Holocaust survivors, liberators and families have walked through our doors, bringing with them stories that bear witness to the horror perpetrated by Nazis and their collaborators.

Today, as we join in a community Yom Hashoah ceremony we are left with the important message – No One Should Stand By In Silence.

Now, MorseLife Health System is honored to sponsor and bring to our community extraordinary portraits of Holocaust survivors and their liberators by the equally extraordinary Wilma Bulkin Siegel, MD. Survivors and Liberators presents us all with not merely portraits, but the sobering and haunting stories behind the faces. The stories are hard to forget, nor should they ever be.

As an organization providing the health care, housing and supportive needs of seniors of our community, we are touched daily by the strength and perseverance that we see in them today.

Some are survivors themselves and some have been deeply impacted by the horrors of the Holocaust. We dedicate this exhibit to them.

Heartfelt thanks to Wilma Bulkin Siegel for her friendship and for presenting this monumental and memorable series of portraits that none of us will ever forget.

PORTRAIT SUBJECTS Survivors and Liberators SAM AXELROD 8 MAGDA BADER 9 ROSE & JACK BElGELMAN 10 TEREZ BENDER 11 MARCELLE BOCK 12 DR. PIERRE CHANOVER 13 HOWARD CWICK 14 VICTOR CYNAMON 15 JULIUS EISENSTEIN 16 RENA FINDER 17 NORMAN FRAJMAN 18 MORRIS FREIBAUM 19 MIRIAM FRIDMAN 20 LUSIA & EDDIE FROHLICH 21 HERSHEL FUKSMAN 22 JUDITH EVAN GOLDSTEIN 23 PROFESSOR HANS HEILBRONNER 24 LEON HELLER 25 ROSALIE LAMET 26 HALINA LASTER 27 SAM LEVITT 28 JACK RUBIN 29 BRENDA SENDERS 30 BETTY VENTURA 31 ILONA & MANEK DAVID WERDIGER 32

HOLOCAUST S U R V I V O R S a n d L I B E R AT O R S

by Wilma Bulkin Siegel, MD I believe in the Sun even when it is not shining I believe in Love even when I cannot feel it I believe in God even when He is silent —Anonymous Jewish Holocaust Prisoner

I first met with Gary Siepser, the former executive director of Broward County Jewish Federation, several years ago; he wanted to speak to me about the indigent Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Broward County. I was appalled to learn that the people who had lived through the worst devastation of my lifetime, who had survived a concerted effort to exterminate them, once again were suffering, this time in a country of privilege and affluence. I wanted to bring their suffering into public view. The means of bringing the plight of these Holocaust survivors to the public was clear.

In my life, I have had two professional careers: physician and artist. As a physician, I practiced the art of healing, specifically the body. My work as a painter is essentially the same. Through painting a subject’s portrait, I hope to give some type of therapy to the soul; I try to create a work that shows not only the suffering of an individual, but also the depth of spirit that each one possesses. Through this process, I hope to give each subject some type of immortality, to provide a means for the breadth of his or her story to live long after the individual dies. I believe that in so doing I can provide healing to those whose wounds never fully heal. I previously had a chance to use my talent as an artist to tell the stories of some who suffered from AIDS, which I consider another Holocaust. I now wished to offer my art to the survivors of the Holocaust.

While each person was sitting for his or her portrait, I asked, “Why do you believe you, of all people, survived?” Understandably, many of them were at a loss for an explanation, but, finally, most attributed their survival to simple luck. I disagree. I believe that these survivors, hidden children,and liberators came through that time of horror to remind the rest of us. They remind us of the long heritage of Judaism. They remind us of the necessity of the ethics of the Ten Commandments. They remind us that we cannot turn from those in need.

I also asked each person, “What is the lesson you wish the world to know about the Holocaust, since you experienced it firsthand and, therefore, are the best teachers in the world?” Their words, preserved in each of the biographical sketches that accompanies their portraits, are elegant expressions of warning and hope-lessons, hard learned and selflessly shared.

The men and women shown in this exhibit are now in the final stages of their lives. We must not forget them or their stories. Each of them offers to teach us how we must behave. Each life tells the story of the worst inhumanities; they tell us that prejudices and “anti-whatever” create only pathology, not health; chaos rather than order, and apathy instead of empathy. Their timeless message is especially important now, as we are again faced with the potential of vast destruction. We learn from them, the greatest teachers, that we must be a voice for those who suffer, and we must speak out against injustice.

An artist can paint her best when she paints what best she knows. I have learned to read the faces and thoughts behind the eyes of those I paint; my paintings develop into what I

call “psychological portraits.” A person’s eyes reveal the soul; it allows one to look past the person and into the brain. The fiery colors that I have used represent the “fire of life.” I have accompanied the stories that my paintings tell with the written biographies of those portrayed.

I hope to express the profound lessons that each one of these individuals can teach us.

While practicing medicine, I found that I learned more from my patients than they learned from me. In my art, the same is true: my subjects are now my best teachers. It has been a joy to become acquainted with each of the people. I have intended this exhibition as a living monument in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Holocaust, the liberation of these amazing people. This work is about life, not death. Robert Henri in The Art Spirit, a book to which I often refer, says, “Each man must seek for himself the people who hold the essential beauty, and each man must eventually say to himself as I do, these are my people and all that I have I owe to them.” I owe my skill and knowledge to these faces of the Holocaust.

To further explain my motivation, I turn to Albert Einstein, who was himself affected by the Holocaust: Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow man—in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those people unknown to us personally with whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

I have taken Einstein’s words to heart and have tried to act on what he has said: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.

Finally, one of the great artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso, has said, “People don’t realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a vial with my blood.

That is what has gone into it.” Picasso’s statement is true of any artist who is true to himself, and this passion, this life force should be evident in his artwork.

HOLOCAUST S U R V I V O R S a n d L I B E R AT O R S

SAM AXELROD Born in Kovno, Lithuania “It was a trip that affected all of my life from that point.”

My family, originally from Russia, escaped to Lithuania after World War I and the Russian Communist Revolution. The family migrated to Palestine in 1925, and, at the onset of World War II, I volunteered to join the Jewish Brigade of the British army. I was seventeen years old. In 1945, at the end of the fighting in Europe, our Battalion was stationed on the border between Austria and Italy. I was asked to join a group on a fact-finding trip to the Mauthausen concentration camp across the Danube from the city of Linz, Austria.

It was a trip that affected all of my life from that point. As we arrived, I saw a group of men wearing prison stripes and looking like ghosts. One man, approximately six feet tall and weighing maybe fifty or fifty-five pounds, approached me slowly. He moved toward the brigade’s insignia, a Jewish star, which was imprinted on the wing of the half-track truck we were driving. “You are Jewish,” he said. “I am Jewish, too.

From Hungary.”

that Stalin was as bad as Hitler and that they were doomed to stay in concentration camps. Our group, so far from our base, lacked transportation. We hired a German truck and trailer, filled it with Jewish survivors, and crossed the blocked bridge with the help of some Jewish Gls. We returned to Italy and organized transportation for displaced Jewish people from all over Europe toward the ports in the south. Any kind of available boat was used to smuggle the refugees to Palestine through the British navy’s blockade. To get through the many roadblocks, we had documents headed by the acronym TTG, which expressed the resentment we felt when the whole ugly story of the Holocaust unveiled before our eyes. The letters stood for the Arabic-Yiddish combination of the phrase, “Lick My Behind Business.”

After the war, I studied for one year at Syracuse University, but was called back to serve in the Israeli army during the war of independence. I married my fiance, whom I had met in Syracuse but who had come to live in Israel. The austerity in the country at that time was too much for her and I resigned my rank of major, and we came to live in the United States.

The Jewish survivors were in turmoil. It was a time when the Russians let the allies into Berlin and Vienna in exchange for advancing up to the Danube River, which would put Mauthausen in their jurisdiction.

American MPs were stationed all along the bridge, not allowing any freed survivors to cross it. Their policy was, “The Russians are taking the area, let them have the headache that comes with it.” The Jews feared

Sam’s second wife is a Holocaust survivor who hid during the war as a Catholic orphan to survive. Sam wrote a book entitled The Wolf and the Lamb: The Case for Jewish Secularism. In the book he states: Continued on page 34

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MAGDA BADER Born in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia “It is important to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves and to respect different backgrounds and beliefs. Otherwise, what happens is what Hitler has done. Children should be sensitive to other people and not make ethnic jokes because it hurts. We hope that it will make a difference to show care and consideration.�

I was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia, which later became Hungary. I was the youngest of ten children. My father was a businessman. Life was good until I was fourteen when my parents, my niece, and four of my sisters and I were taken to Auschwitz. My parents, one of my sisters and her baby, and my niece were immediately gassed there. Another sister, married and living in Prague, died in Terezienstadt. One of my brothers escaped to Cambridge. The other three brothers were sent to a labor camp, but they survived.

of fine arts and got a job in Long Beach, California, where I taught fourth grade. From there I went to Columbia University to get my masters degree in fine arts and fine arts education and then settled in New York where I taught art to high school students. We moved to Dade County thirty-six years ago, and for twenty years I taught art. I was awarded the best teacher three times. I was also a museum art educator.

Eleven years ago I retired.

Magda now teaches art as an adjunct at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Florida International University.

She also speaks to children about Holocaust education.

My three remaining sisters and I were sent to a labor camp in Germany run by the SS. We escaped the camp thanks to a Dutch cook who told us of an opportunity to get away. We later wrote a letter for him, hoping that at the end of the war he could be saved. A few days after escaping we met American and British soldiers who became the liberators. These men provided us with food and shelter.

Because we were not in the camp when the liberation came, we were not placed in a displaced person’s camp but worked to sustain ourselves. One sister worked as a medic for the United Nations Refugee Agency, one as a nurse, one as a social worker and I worked as an interpreter for the British Red Cross.

One sister and I went to England where I attended art school in London. I won a foreign student scholarship to Denver University. There I received my bachelors 9

ROSE AND JACK BEIGELMAN Born in Poland “One should not stand in silence when seeing suffering, because one day it might be you in that place.”

Both Rose and Jack are Jewish Holocaust survivors.

They grew up in Poland and were preteens when the Nazis entered Poland in September 1939. They describe their youth, until that time, as not so different from life here in America. Then they were forced, first Jack into the ghetto of Lodz and Rose into the ghetto of Srodula in Sosnowiec, and then into concentration camps, Jack into Auschwitz and Rose into Oberalstadt.

Most of their close friends also were Holocaust survivors, and both Jack and Rose were activists in giving out the word that THERE SHOULD BE NO HATE IN THE WORLD. They have moved to Florida and once again wish to make the statement that “one should not stand in silence when seeing suffering, because some day it might be you in that place.”

Rose and Jack have been spokespersons for this purpose in schools and in Broward Community College. They attribute their survival to luck, to staying out of trouble, and to the attitude that tomorrow will be a better day.

Both told of the severe tragedy of losing loved ones. Rose was more fortunate than Jack. She was incarcerated with her sisters, and they remained alive.

All of Jack’s family was murdered at Auschwitz.

After the war they were sent as orphans by the United Nations Relief Agency to the Bronx, New York, and later Jack was placed in a foster home in Cleveland and Rose was placed with relatives, also in Cleveland. Each of them married, had children, and, after their spouses died and because they were longtime friends, Jack and Rose married.

When we speak to students about the Holocaust, our last statement is: When my voice will be silent, I want you to speak up for me. When someone denies the Holocaust, I want you to tell them that you met a Holocaust survivor and you heard her/him speak about what happened to her/him.

In this portrait of Rose and Jack, Dr. Siegel included their childhood photographs of memorabilia.

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TEREZ BENDER Born in Ilva-Mica, Romania “I am proud of my Jewish heritage. I survived as a Jew and believe that Jews should survive. We all originate from the Bible, and we should live together as good human beings. I do not know why I survived, but I have always believed in prayer and God.”

I was born in Romania to a family of five children. All five children survived the Holocaust. The rest of our family perished. My father was in the lumber business and was very religious. When the Nazis took him, he wanted to take his Tallis, but they would not allow it.

When my brother returned to our home, he found that the Germans had hung the Tallis as curtains. This still makes me weep to this day. My brother then took the Tallis with him to Israel.

My two sisters and I were taken first to Auschwitz, then on to two other work camps, and finally to BergenBelsen. My older sister saved me by encouraging me, telling me to keep going, that we would make it through to the end. At liberation our brothers, who were in other concentration camps, were finally reunited with us.

I found employment with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and came to America. I became a successful real estate agent and supported my children after my divorce.

When Dr. Siegel met Terez, it was Election Day, and she was very proud to be working at the polls as a Democrat.

She was proudly wearing a Kerry­-Edwards button.

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MARCELLE (MALKA) BOCK Born in Paris, France “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.” Marcelle states that her survival was “dumb luck.”

I found a surgeon whom I had known to help me. My father survived to almost the end of the war. On June 1, 1944, I learned that he had been arrested. When I tried to visit him on June 8,1944, to celebrate the Allied invasion, I learned that he had not survived. Neither did my mother and sisters.

My parents left Poland to settle in Paris, France, in 1930—the year before I was born. I was a breach delivery causing a right upper extremity palsy. My parents found it devastating to have a crippled child and sought much help. Finally, when I was seven years old, I was helped by a neurosurgeon, Dr. Bop. After the surgery, I was sent to recuperate in a sanitarium in Hendaye, a town bordering Spain.

After the war, I spent a year with my Aunt Jenny and cousin Bernard. Aunt Jenny’s husband also had been killed in Auschwitz. Then I came to live in America with the help of a great uncle who owned a hotel in the Catskills. When the summer season was over, we took a small apartment in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. In December 1946, I met my Leonard. We were married a year later, when I was just sixteen and he was twenty, and we have had a good life together.

We have two married daughters and three grandsons.

In 1939, my father, fearing he might be called into the army, came to visit me in Hendaye. I begged him to bring me home to my mother and twin sisters. Unable to refuse my request, we returned to Paris. And so it was that our family was together when the Germans invaded Paris in 1940.

The immediate family stayed intact until July 1942, when my mother, sisters, and I were arrested in a huge raid and were taken to a stadium called the Velodrome d’Hiver in Paris. There, we met a volunteer nurse we knew who arranged for me to be taken to Rothschild Hospital, where I was held prisoner for a time. I eventually escaped from there, although I have no memory of it.

Marcelle now has severe pulmonary disease, from a history of heavy smoking, and scoliosis, and she requires portable oxygen. Dr. Siegel painted the oxygen tubing.

She was recently hospitalized and is recovering.

She loves to paint using acrylics and signs her paintings with “Malka.“ Her painting of her twin sisters, who perished in Auschwitz, is in the background of the portrait, as is a poem she has written, which can also be found on the Internet.

While my father was in hiding in Paris, I was hidden in two separate locations outside Paris. I remember an episode when I defied my father’s advice to go back into hiding when I was sick with appendicitis. Instead,

Continued on page 34

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DR. PIERRE CHANOVER “I often speak to groups about my life; I show them my yellow star, and I bring a rutabaga, the food on which I sustained myself.”

During the war, I was in Gurs, one of the twenty-three concentration camps in France. I watched other children escape the camp by climbing under a truck and hanging onto the axle. When the Nazis entered Paris, my father, a tailor and designer, was taken away immediately. My mother and I escaped to Vichy, France, but this was taken over, and I was captured and taken to Gurs. But, like the other children I had seen, I managed to escape as well. The French underground then cared for me. Eventually I was taken care of by a family who raised me as their son and sent me to Catholic church. One of the priests cared for me and, until he was killed, protected me as well as a number of other children from the Germans.

I returned to Paris upon liberation to discover that, though her apartment had been entirely devastated, my mother’s neighbors had kept her safe. Since she was a seamstress, she worked for the Nazis as forced labor.

In the background of the portrait I have placed the yellow star we were required to wear. I often speak to groups about my life; I show them my yellow star, and I bring a rutabaga, the food on which I sustained myself. But the survival skills I learned through my trials later made me an excellent soldier in the Korean War. Dr. Pierre Chanover is a professor of French at Florida Atlantic University.

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HOWARD CWICK Born in Coney Island, New York “If I were lucky enough to survive and make it home, I would never allow that horror to be forgotten.”

I was a liberator who, unexpectedly, was one of the first American Gls to enter Buchenwald. I came from an Orthodox Jewish family and was raised in Coney Island. As a member of the Combat Engineer Battalion, I was trained in demolition, specializing in mines and booby traps.

While walking among the dead and still dying, I swore an oath: That if I were lucky enough to survive and make it home, I would never allow that horror to be forgotten. I have honored that oath.

Having carried a camera all through my army days, I took twenty-two photographs of the horrors I saw. Those photographs and the original film are now in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. D.C.

When in Germany, while waiting for a vehicle to take me to Company Headquarters, I mistakenly got into the wrong jeep, and the driver and I found ourselves outside the gates of Buchenwald. The source of the stench we had endured for the past five days was now apparent.

As a many-time volunteer for Israel, I have served with both Israel’s army and her navy. I still carry two of my most precious and prized possessions, my American Gl dog tag and my Israeli TSAHAL dog tag.

The gates were not locked, and several other Gls and I were confronted by a field littered with scores and scores of bodies. Walking among them were barely alive, walking skeletons with hollow faces and sunken eyes.

There were huge flatbed wagons, each piled high with eighty to one hundred bodies awaiting disposal.

Several inmates dragged a Kappa (a fellow Jew who collaborated with the Germans) up to me and the group of Gls standing nearby. A mob of inmates had gathered around us demanding that the Kappa be given to them. To this day I still feel the guilt of permitting that killing.

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VICTOR CYNAMON Born in Lublin, Poland “Children should know that prejudice is very wrong and could lead to disaster. Everyone should be vigilant to fight prejudice and oppression that exists in any shape or form.”

My family and I were living in Poland on September 1, 1939, when the Nazis marched into our homeland.

We were stripped of all of our possessions and first moved to a ghetto. From there, I was conveyed to a number of labor camps and then to the Majdanek death camp. More people died at Majdanek than at Auschwitz. Only a few hundred people survived.

I was one of them. From there, I went to labor at a munitions factory, then to Buchenwald, and on to another munitions factory. I was severely injured. A Belgian doctor, a righteous Gentile, saved my life, and I will always be grateful to him. I survived the allied bombing only to be sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia from which I was liberated by the Russians. After liberation, I tried to return to my hometown, but found I was not welcome. There, I met my wife and we moved together to a displaced persons camp in Germany.

My brother and sister survived the Holocaust as well.

I have dedicated my retirement years to the cause of remembrance. This series of portraits will serve as a witness after the survivors are gone and will teach the world that, if they are not vigilant, it can happen to anyone, anywhere. All through the camps, until I was separated from him in November 1942 for the last time, my father commanded me over and over to survive. He told me that when I survived, I should be willing to tell this story. According to the Jewish law, there are 613 commandments. I have a 614th—my father’s command “to survive.”

In the portrait Dr. Siegel has placed a recent photo.

It shows Victor’s current family of which he is proud.

We married, moved to the United States, and had a baby. After settling in the Bronx, I had a very successful building business. I am now retired and living in Florida. I am the vice president of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center and chairman of the Holocaust Memorial committee.

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JULIUS EISENSTEIN Born in Tomaszow-lvlaz, Poland “Hate and prejudice against each other is the worse thing. People should teach their children to accept everyone as he or she is. We are all born the same, with no label, and that is the way we should live our life. The Ten Commandments say, “Do not envy your neighbor.”’

I was one of five children born to my family in Tomaszow-Maz, Poland. My father owned a bakery.

I survived the Holocaust in Dachau with my brother.

I chose to place in this portrait a photograph of the liberation of the camp by American soldiers. This photograph has been seen in many documentaries including Life magazine. I tried to find the liberator soldier next to me several years later by using the photograph. My quest was rewarded when I was reunited 48 years later with soldier Joseph Frolio.

Frolio and I have often taught about the Holocaust together. Frolio is no longer living but I have fond memories of him.

I met my wife, a former Auschwitz survivor, in Munich two years after the liberation. We came to the U.S. and I opened a successful bakery. It is “beschert” that I am alive and survived.

I feel that parents teach hate. Education is a way of enlightenment–that one can understand that there is something other than hate. For the last fifteen years I have been lecturing in high schools and colleges. I tell them my story of the Holocaust and through my story, try to teach tolerance.

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RENA FINDER Born in Krakow, Poland “Oskar Schindler is a shining example that one person can make a difference. He has proven that everyone has the power to make a decision to choose to participate; not to stand by and do nothing when you see injustice done, but to take action; to say no to hate, bigotry, and racism.”

While in New England this past summer, Dr. Siegel researched the Internet and found a resource “Facing History and Ourselves.” Lillian Fox answered her call and referred her to Rena Finder, who graciously agreed to have her portrait painted.

After the war, my mother and I lived in a displaced persons camp, where I met and married Mark Finder, who is also a Holocaust survivor. In 1948 we came to America.

In the background is a collage of her entire family, which she put together. She has three daughters and six grandchildren. Rena is a resource speaker for Facing History and Ourselves, The Holocaust Center Boston, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Federation.

I was ten years old when the Nazis entered Krakow, Poland, the city in which I lived. My father died in Auschwitz, but my mother and I survived, working as Jewish employees in the enamel and ammunitions factory owned by Oskar Schindler. Once he saved my life when a German foreman noticed the machine I was working on was broken and was berating me for breaking it. I was the youngest of the factory workers, and Mr. Schindler intervened, saying: “You idiots, this little girl could not break that machine!” To all the workers, he was a god. He opened his eyes to see the sadistic murdering of the people while an indifferent world looked on. As the movie states, “He who saves one life, saves the world.” Oskar Schindler is on record as saving a great number of Jews, 1,200, during the Holocaust. He dared what no one else dared. He showed that one man can make a difference. After the war Oskar Schindler was not successful in business and the survivors tried to help him. He is buried in Israel.

After having her portrait painted, she left a notepad with Dr. Siegel that reads: “Learn from yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow.“

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NORMAN FRAJMAN Born in Warsaw, Poland “When I die there will be no one to take my place.

I am one of the younger survivors, and, if I do not educate now as to what the Holocaust was about, the history will lose. My survival was beshert.

The Almighty had plans for me to survive.”

I was born in the city of Warsaw, which was occupied by the Germans in 1939. I was ten years old. I saw and experienced the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 and was taken, together with my mother and sister and other members of my extended family, to the Majdanek death camp. My mother and sister perished there.

In the background of the portrait is the jacket he wore at the Buchenwald concentration camp. He considers the jacket to be a survivor as well.

Norman became a Bar Mitzvah at the synagogue in Auschwitz in 2003 during the March of the Living for educators. He declares, “It took me sixty years, but it is better late than never. Now I can consider myself a full-fledged Jew.”

I was shipped to the Skarzysko concentration camp where I worked as a slave laborer in an ammunitions factory. The next stop for me was at the infamous Buchenwald. As the Russians neared the camp, I was forced on a death march. I was fifteen when the Russian troops brought Iiberation, and I spent a bit of time then working as an interpreter. I spent some time in a displaced persons camp in Germany before coming to the United States, where I had an uncle.

My father survived the war as a political prisoner in the Soviet Union. We were reunited after the war, having been separated for twenty-two years.

Norman retired to Florida seven years ago and today speaks extensively at schools, colleges, and houses of worship. He is passionate about disseminating the greatest tragedy known to mankind during the Holocaust. He hopes his message will serve as a deterrent to prevent future Holocausts from happening.

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MORRIS FREIBAUM Born in Warsaw, Poland “If there were no religion we could accomplish a lot. Everybody has a right to exist and live the way they want to. Everybody has a different case. I only know what tragedy that was.”

I was born in Warsaw, Poland, where my father was in the furniture business. When the Germans came in, my entire education was stopped, and my family was put into the ghetto. I ran away from the ghetto in 1940 and six months later could not get back to see my family. I was on my own and survival became hand to mouth. I even had typhus and survived.

I came to the United States and moved to the Bronx, New York, where I became a man of all trades—a mechanic, a taxi driver, a garment worker, and a waiter. I married and had two daughters. I am now divorced and live in Florida permanently. I spend much of my time with the Jewish War Veterans of Delray. Dr. Siegel painted me in my hat.

When the Jews were being rounded up for Auschwitz, I chose to move around among the Poles. This simple decision meant that, instead of Auschwitz, I went to the work force in Radom, Germany, where I helped to build an underground ammunitions factory. From Radom, I spent three days in a train moving to Auschwitz. I was moved from camp to camp throughout Germany.

As the allied bombing got closer, I was wounded by shrapnel that hit my leg. Unable to continue working, I was sent to Dachau to Block 28, and then on to the hospital where a French doctor saved my life. The wounded were released from this hospital, given a package by the Red Cross that contained civilian clothing, and loaded onto a boxcar. We were traveling through the mountains when the Americans blocked our way. The Germans unloaded us, and we spent the night wandering, but in the morning, May 2, 1945, we were liberated by the Americans. I was chosen to work for the American Army by a sergeant who taught me to fix gasoline stoves.

Morris considers his survival to luck at being in the right place at the right time. He thought that there was no one left from his family, but by accident found a lost aunt on his father’s side. She had moved to Paris before the Holocaust. From this aunt he received the photographs of his family, which Dr. Siegel placed in the background of the portrait.

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MIRIAM FRIDMAN Born in Lodz, Poland “As we approach the liberation anniversary, I thank America for liberating us and giving us an opportunity of freedom for a better tomorrow.

We raised our families here and gave our children the best education possible. President Ronald Reagan said that we were “the best immigrants America ever had.” I am proud of the achievements of each of the survivors and now we have the ability to help others.”

I was born in Lodz, Poland. My father was in the dairy business, which meant that we were affluent, and I attended private Jewish schools. In those days, I was involved in Zionist causes. I spent my youth in the ghetto. I can remember my hair freezing to the wall because it was so cold and we did not have wood to burn for fire.

I spent time in various concentration camps­— even Auschwitz, where my job was to clean the bricks of the crematorium. On May 8, 1945, I was liberated and found my way to a displaced persons camp in Italy. A distant cousin gave me sponsorship to come to the United States.

Miriam married in 1948, and her husband died in 1994. She has been honored many times for her educational work dealing with the Holocaust. “By teaching about our past we can prevent history from repeating itself.” She has spoken to the Shoah Foundation. She states that it is important for Israel to survive. She became a founding member of the Holocaust Survivors of Southeast Florida and is serving her third term as president.

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LUSIA & EDDIE FROHLICH Born in Stanislavo, Poland “Never QUIT! A quitter is never a winner.”

-EDDIE “Believe in survival! I wanted to survive to tell the story that it should never happen again-the inhumanity of people to people. Nature happens but humiliation by other humans is too gruesome.”

-LUISA

Lusia and Eddie Frohlich both were born in Stanislavo, Poland. Lusia’s family was wealthy. They owned a leather factory. Eddie had been a wholesale agent for leather, and so she knew him in her youth. In 1939, the Russians took over and the factory was confiscated.

LUSIA “While these things were happening with Eddie, I was in the ghetto in Stanislavo. My father was among those killed in the massacre. I was chosen by a German officer to be his housekeeper and nursemaid for his child. He helped me to get food in the ghetto, which I shared. He also helped me to get papers, which allowed me to escape to Warsaw. My mother told me to try to find Eddie in the underground in Warsaw, but he was living under a new name.

Fortunately, I went first to an old family acquaintance, and Eddie was there visiting. There our romance and life involvement started. He got my mother and brought her into hiding in Warsaw.”

EDDIE “In 1941, on the Jewish holiday Shana Rabi, the Germans came to Stanislavo and massacred the Jews, killing twelve thousand and placing them in three mass graves. Those of us remaining were moved to the ghetto. In 1942 another roundup took place, and about three thousand of us were taken to be killed. Most were to be shot. I was among twenty chosen to be killed by hanging. I was the twentieth in line for hanging. The rope was around my neck when I kicked the SS officer closest to me, ran to another SS officer and asked to be shot instead. The Nazi beat me with a bayonet, but he let me go free. He said to me, ‘You are brave. I will let you go.’ My father was killed that day. I went the next day to Warsaw, took a Gentile name, and lived outside the ghetto. I worked in the underground and helped with an uprising in the ghetto. I learned of a French doctor who could erase the Jewish mark of circumcision. When I was later captured, because of the surgery, I was saved from the death chamber and kept as a prisoner of war.”

Eddie was taken as a POW and was liberated by the Americans. Lusia was taken as forced labor in Krakow and was liberated by the Russians. After the war, she was reunited with her mother and with Eddie. They had twin daughters whose photographs Dr. Siegel has included in the background of the portrait.

21

HERSHEL FUKSMAN Born in Piaseczno, Poland “People should accept each other and live by the biblical motto, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”’

I was born in a small beautiful town only fifteen kilometers from Warsaw. Piaseczno had a population of about five thousand, three thousand of them Jews.

I was the first and only child/grandchild that became the apple of my extended family’s eye. They showered me with affection and attention.

border and were met by my father who brought with him a big loaf of bread.

My brother was born in Russia where life had its own dangers. Disease, hunger, and Communist scrutiny of foreigners were common. Bialystock was overrun with refugees. People were arrested in the middle of the night and never heard from again. My father was one of these. We lost track of what became of him and do not know whether he survived or perished. In the meantime, because of the harsh life in Bialystock, my mother applied to return to Poland. The officials agreed to send us back home, but instead we were sent off into the deep Taiga Siberian forests. Out of the one hundred families that were sent to this place, called Komi SSR, only eight families and two children survived. We endured eighteen months of slave labor before being given permission to leave in 1942. We went to Bagish, Russia, where the Enders Polish Army was being formed. There, my mother remarried, and this new family of six survived the adversity and privation and uncertainties of life under the Communist order.

A few weeks before the war, fearing abuse that he had heard about from passing displaced Jews from Germany, my father escaped to Bialystock, on the border of Poland and Russia.

When the German Army invaded Piaseczno on September 1, 1939, my mother and I found ourselves trapped in our burning building. We ran into the street only to be forced by the Germans back into the smokefilled halls. Fortunately, a Polish soldier instructed us out of the building when he saw us crouching, afraid to go back out into the street. Being shot by a German soldier rewarded his action. I was six years old.

We found shelter with family but life took on unexpected demands and abuse. We were forced to clean the dead people and horses from the bombed streets.

Hardships of life became a daily ordeal. After five months under the Nazi occupation, my father sent a messenger to bring my mother and me across to Bialystock. With many difficulties and dangers from bombings, strafing, and being arrested, we crossed the

When the war ended, Polish citizens were permitted to return to Poland. We traveled in cattle cars for weeks heading home. We were met there with jeers and shouting for Jews to go to Palestine. Most of our extended family had been murdered, and so we

Continued on page 34

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JUDITH EVAN GOLDSTEIN Born in Vilna, Poland, now Lithuania “The Holocaust is a painful subject but I cannot let these memories die with me.”

I wish I was never part of World War II. It was given to me, and I was thrown into a sea of suffering. I was meant to die, but lived and survived the survival and came face to face with history.

nearly lost her life because children under thirteen were taken away and never seen again. In 1945 they were liberated by the Russian army in a small Polish town called Bydgoszcz. They continued to travel to Lodz, Poland where they were reunited with her brother, who had survived Camp Buchenwald. Her father did not survive.

Judith Shapiro (Goldstein) was born in ViIna, Poland, which is now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. To the Jews of the world, it was known as “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” the Jewish cultural center of Eastern Europe.

They followed the tide of the refugees to the American Zone in Germany and settled in the displaced persons camp Zeilsheim. Judith’s mother enrolled her in school and in the Offenbach Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt am Main. It was during those years of her childhood that she developed a strong love for the arts.

Her father, Chaim, a mechanical engineer, her mother, Yetta, a clothes designer, her brother Meir, and Judith lived a comfortable and happy life.

In June 1941, Nazi Germany occupied Vilna. Three months later, the Jews were placed in a newly formed ghetto and were faced with murder and tragedy.

At the young age of seven, Judith ceased to be a child; she lost her childhood forever. She grew old so quickly. After two years of suffering, hunger, disease, and extreme conditions, the ghetto was liquidated.

Families were torn apart, women, men, and children were separated. Most people were sent to the killing place, “Ponary,” a forest outside of Vilna. One hundred thousand people were murdered there; seventy thousand were Jews.

In 1949, the family immigrated to New York. Judith married Harry, an Auschwitz survivor, and established a nice family. She studied music and art and furthered her studies by specializing in music and art therapy.

She holds bachelors and masters degrees in music.

Judith is an accomplished artist, composer, and lyricist. Her art is in the permanent collection of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, the Florida Holocaust Museum of Ar, St Petersburg, Florida, and in private collections.

A number of her paintings have been exhibited in seventeen museums in the United States.

Judith and her mother were shipped to a series of concentration camps, first to Kaiserwald, Riga, Latvia, then to Stutthof, and Torun, Poland. In Stutthof, she

Her art can also be seen on the Internet at the University of Minnesota, Center of Holocaust Genocide Studies.

Continued on page 34

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PROFESSOR HANS HEILBRONNER Born in Bavaria, Germany “I watched the German Jews turn away when disaster struck, hoping that the waves would turn positive. That isn’t so— you can never be silent.”

Dr. Siegel met Dr. Heilbronner after visiting Temple Israel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He agreed to meet with Dr. Siegel immediately, even though he was going on vacation the next day.

My parents, in order to avoid living in the ghetto, moved the family to Detroit where my mother’s uncle lived. Still, our family remained poor. My father was a cookie salesman, and my mother, who had always had maids in Germany before the war began, cleaned houses. My brother and I served in the armed forces and then, because of the Gl Bill, both of us were able to get an education, and I received my PhD.

I grew up in Memmingen, Bavaria, Germany. On a single day, January 30, 1933, life immediately changed.

I went from an assimilated Jewish family life to being prevented from entering my own home by Brown Shirts.

My father, an affluent merchant who was president of our congregation, in November 1938 was sent to Dachau. My mother, hoping for the release of my father, went to the Gestapo chief and agreed to give him fifty marks and the keys to our Mercedes in exchange for my father. In March 1939, my brother and I were sent off to Zurich, Switzerland, and spent time in the care of a Swiss organization established to save German Jewish children. At first I was placed in a school for delinquent boys, but I ran away. A relative then found more appropriate living conditions for my brother and me, and we ended up living with a widow.

That was a happy time. We knew no anti-Semitism and got to spend some of our mealtimes at a local elite boarding school for girls. Upon my father’s release from Dachau, he and my mother came to find us, and, in August 1939, we escaped to London. We took the last ferry that sailed from France to England. War broke out the next day. Through it all, I didn’t feel as if I were suffering. Life just felt like an adventure.

Hans won a Fulbright scholarship as a Russian History scholar. He was accepted by the University of New Hampshire, but disappointingly found there an atmosphere of anti-Semitism. He describes lecturing to a local women’s organization in a country-club setting where no Jews were allowed. When he announced that he was Jewish they were forced to accept him on his merit, and from then on was well respected. He maintained his Jewish heritage and is a member of the board of the synagogue. He believes his survival was pure luck. He is a positive person who believes that if you come to grips with the fact that life is tragic and the essence of existence is tragedy, everything else comes into place. His story is part of Shoah.

Now retired, an endowed lecture series on the Holocaust has recently been founded at the University of New Hampshire in his name.

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LEON HELLER Born in Chicago, Illinois “Nobody should have to experience what I saw again. The Holocaust was the most terrible thing that could have possibly happened. I was so young seeing it. I learned that we must never let something like this happen again, we must be forever watchful.”

Leon Heller is a Jewish liberator who has told his story to the Holocaust Documentation Center of Southeast Florida. Dr. Siegel viewed his tape with him and witnessed how very emotional these memories still are for him.

crematorium. The captives were giving us whatever they had. I wish I had given them my clothes… I was completely unprepared for what I encountered there.

The vivid memory of the bodies in the crematorium and the stench will never leave me. I was so enraged that upon entering another German town on a raid the next day, even though it was empty of Germans, I destroyed anything of theirs that I could find. One week later I went to Dachau but no victims were left.

We visited the barracks and saw the horror of the spaces including the meat hooks, the showers, and the crematorium.

I was born in Chicago to a Conservative Jewish family in an assimilated neighborhood. Still, I experienced antiSemitism as a youth. At the synagogue we attended, I was told of the atrocities going on in Europe, and we were encouraged to take care of “our own” and to do whatever we could to help the European Jews.

I graduated from high school and then went to Wright Junior College. I was drafted into the army at age eighteen. My brother was already in the army in France.

I wanted desperately to go to Europe but was sent first to Texas to be part of the Tank Destroyer Battalion. I was nineteen when I was sent abroad to fight on the front lines in Germany. As a private assigned to the 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion, I was part of the unit to liberate Buchenwald on April 11, 1945.

I returned to the United States to Roosevelt College and went into the family shoe business. I married in 1953, and we had three children. Two of my children have married second-generation Holocaust survivors and so I have been able to share my experience with my family. Why did this happen? Education is so important but it is all difficult to express.

Leon related his story with tears in his eyes. He has returned to Europe, but has no desire to return to Germany. His wife died of cancer; and he is happily remarried. He is a survivor of cancer as well. He continues to work five days a week and to do as much good for Jewish causes as possible. He has been the president of his congregation, Temple Beth Israel, in the city of Sunrise several times. He is there every Shabbos.

When we entered camp, I vividly remember the skeletal men in stripes, joyous that the American soldiers were there bringing freedom. I spoke in Yiddish to one small man and asked about family members I knew had been taken from their homes. This man told me of how he was to carry the bodies to and from the

25

ROSALIE LAMET Born in Antwerp, Belgium “I am one lucky girl. I write in my book that it should never happen again and that it should be told about so that we will not repeat the horrors and terrors.”

Antwerp, Belgium, the city where I was born, was known as the City of Diamonds. My father was a citizen of Belgium and a diamond dealer who died when I was eleven.

able to afford such accommodations are welcome to organize and celebrate bar mitzvahs, weddings, and the important times in their lives. I continue to practice orthodoxy. I am a proud grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope to return to Antwerp, my birthplace, where my granddaughter is a physician.

During the war, my mother, sister, and brother were deported and died. I knew French very well, and, using what I had of ingenuity, determination, arrogance, and beauty, I was able to escape to Vichy, France. In France, I again escaped the Gestapo by denying that I was Jewish. I was smuggled into Switzerland, which became my “Alpine Oasis.” I lived out the rest of the war hidden in Switzerland. I will be forever indebted to the Swiss for my survival.

My brothers in New York arranged my passage to America in 1946. I married here and raised a daughter and son. Eventually, I registered for college, taking writing courses at Columbia University. I published two books, City of Diamonds and Alpine Oasis, about the courage it took to survive.

After suffering through the many years of the Nazi regime, I understood the need to provide assistance for those in need. I started Lamet Hall in Israel to do just that. At Lamet Hall, people who might not be otherwise

26

HALINA LASTER Born in Poland “I do not know if the world has learned from what happened to the Jews, as we see now with the terrorists. The world should never again stoop to the deprivation that our people survived. Animals do not kill for pleasure. We as Jews do not have values to kill. I believe that there is goodness in mankind and that we can learn to live together otherwise I cannot exist.”

I was raised in Poland where I received an excellent education. This education included, among other things, becoming fluent in German. I also spoke Polish and later became fluent in Swedish. I married while living in the ghetto. I was sent to the Auschwitz death camp but survived. My husband, along with his younger brother, died on a death march from Auschwitz in January 1945.

of the war. Upon my arrival at Auschwitz, when I saw the chimney spewing flames and ashes, I knew that I had to survive and tell my story. I was moved by cattle train from Auschwitz to Reichenbach to labor for the Germans. Having lost my entire family in Auschwitz and several other camps, I was eventually liberated by the Swedish Red Cross.

We were taken on trains from Hamburg, to Denmark, and on to Sweden on the 5th of May 1945. We were quarantined in school buildings to contain the diseases we brought with us. Many died from disease and from overeating. The Red Cross didn’t realize the degree of our malnutrition. I was temporarily paralyzed from the shock of my time in the concentration camp and so was only able to eat slowly. This saved me. The queen and king of Sweden came to the school where we were quarantined and shook hands with each one of us. Also, I remember when they opened the schoolyard for the first time and we were allowed to take a walk in the village, we expected to be met by machine guns. Instead, the women and children of the town met us with cases of flowers. I rehabilitated there and there I met my second husband. Eventually I came to the United States.

The experiences I had in the camp made me question existence, but still I knew that I must survive.

I first learned of the death camps from the “crazy man of Treblinka.” Treblinka was a death camp where everyone was killed. Only those needed for administrative or labor purposes (emptying incoming trains of prisoners, filling outgoing trains with their belongings, working in the kitchens, and so forth) were not sent to their deaths. This man arrived in our ghetto after escaping Treblinka and told us of the horrors that were happening there. He subsequently was recaptured and most likely sent to the gas chambers.

I knew of Auschwitz, of Dr. Mengele, and of how he sent his “prize boys” to their deaths. I remember the trains, the barking dogs, and the dehumanization of each individual by the SS. I just kept hoping for the end

27

SAM LEVITT Raised on Long Island, New York “I remember meeting with a number of survivors a short time after their liberation from Dachau and other camps and hearing stories of their horror.”

I am an American Jew, raised in Hicksville, Long Island.

I am the eldest of three sons, and my parents came to the United States from Russia. While I was in the U.S. army, stationed in Germany, the liberation occurred in Dachau, just outside of Munich. I remember meeting with a number of survivors a short time after their liberation from Dachau and other camps and hearing stories of their horror.

After being discharged from the army in the U.S. on April 30,1946, having spent seventeen months in Europe, I was able to bring the diary notes to Mr. Appel’s relatives. Eventually, they turned them over to the Morning Freiheit, a well-known Yiddish newspaper published in New York City. This resulted in a serial publication of the diary in its entirety. The diary now can be found in the archival files of The Center for Jewish History, 16 West Street, New York, New York 10011.

A few months later, the most important contact I made was with a survivor I met at a displaced persons camp in a town called Felderfing, which was also near the city of Munich. A friend of my parents found out that I was stationed near Felderfing and requested that I bring long-delayed mail to this survivor, a man by the name of Binyomin Appel. Mr. Appel was overjoyed, finally, to receive these mailings, which represented the first contact that his relatives in America had—a contact that was hindered by an earlier breakdown in mail communication.

Mr. Appel, through the sponsorship by his relatives was able to come to the United States and became an American citizen for the latter part of his life. Sam Levitt, a retired secondary school teacher of the Great Neck, New York, Public Schools presently is a resident of that community.

Later connections that I made with Mr. Appel took place during mid-1945 and early 1946. When it was time for me to leave Germany in April 1946, Mr. Appel prevailed upon me to bring diary notes of his horrible experiences in the camps to his relative in New York.

At first I was reluctant to do so for fear of losing these important notes, but later decided it was worth the risk.

28

JACK RUBIN Born in Vari, Czechoslovakia “I want the world to know that people who hate, hate themselves. People who love, love themselves. We are all God’s creation.”

I was born in Vari, Czechoslovakia, which became Hungary in 1938. My parents made a very comfortable living from the department stores that they owned until 1944 when we were taken to Auschwitz. I was fifteen years old. From Auschwitz, I was taken to Thiel, Alsace in Lorraine, France, to work in a copper mine for the Germans. In 1944, with the invasion of the Allies, I was brought back to Germany to work in a salt mine in Kochendorf. In March 1945, I was taken out of Kochendorf and taken on a death march to Dachau. At the end of April, I was told that I would be taken from Dachau to Switzerland by train. The train was to cross the Elbe River, but the bridge was destroyed. We were all taken off the train and walked down to the bank of the Elbe. During the night, the SS were machine gunning and people were falling into the river. After a few hours, the shooting stopped.

I heard a lot of shouting and the SS soldiers started to run away. The few people who were left walked down the road, where we met with American soldiers in the town of Mittenwald. It was May 1,1945.

where I was reunited with my two surviving sisters. We returned to our hometown, which was then under Russian (Ukrainian) control. Everything had been destroyed, including our home and our parents’ business. We had no desire to stay, and, when we heard of the displaced persons camps that were being established, we returned to Germany.

I heard that some of my friends tried to go to Palestine, but were taken to Cyprus. I did not want to go to Cyprus. Right at that time, President Truman opened the quota of age of under twenty-one without an affidavit to go to the United States. I registered, and, in August 1947, I was in this beautiful country as a free man. I was drafted into the army in 1950. After being discharged, I was in the fur business and dry cleaning business. I married in 1954 and have three children and four grandchildren.

Jack retired in 1995 and relocated to Florida in 1999.

Here, he became involved with the Child’s Survivor of the Holocaust group. He also was involved with the settlement of the Hungarian Gold Train, which he feels gave him closure.

I was very sick and was taken into a field hospital that was set up by the Americans. I was very grateful for all the medical treatment I received. After being in the field hospital for two weeks, transports were being put together to take the survivors back to their countries of origin. I was taken back to Prague

29

BRENDA SENDERS Born in Sarny, Poland “This is not a Jewish problem today; it is a human problem. If hate arises, then one must move above the crowd and chop off hate; there is no place in society for hate. We will live in peace or we will die as fools.”

I was born in a small town on the border of the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. I like to think of myself as “one gutsy lady.” As a member of the underground as a partisan fighter for the Russians, I fought with guns and grenades, keeping the Germans very busy. Much of the work was done in the surrounding forests where I hid. I know that I was lucky to have survived without a scratch. Since that time, even the United States Government National Security Agency has sought my experience. After the war, I went to a displaced persons camp in Austria in preparation for going to Israel, and married. But instead of going to Israel, I moved to the United States where I lived outside of Washington. For the past fourteen years, my home has been in Florida.

I fought for my life and for the decency of humanity.

This should never again happen.

30

BETTY VENTURA Born in Oshmiany, Poland

I was ten years old when German forces entered the small village of Oshmiany where we lived. They led the Jewish men into the forest and murdered them. My father was among the dead. Taken to Lithuania by way of cattle car, I was kept there among the Jews in a temple of worship and subsequently was sent to a work camp where I remained until its liberation by the Russians. An aunt, who was also in this camp, protected me and kept me safe, even through severe illness.

The Jewish Family Service and Jewish Federation have helped Betty maintain her current living, and she asks nothing from her children. She states she has had the worst and desires nothing. In the painting, Dr. Siegel has collaged her family photograph and her cherished Jewish star necklace.

My Jewish name was Basha Prusak. Following the war, I wanted to go to Israel where an uncle was in a kibbutz, but my aunt refused and wanted me to go to America instead. I eventually went to an orphanage in the Bronx. I married a shipping clerk and had three children, but I felt that my marriage was a failure, and we divorced after twenty years. Three years later, I met the love of my life, an Italian man, and we married. In 1986, as I was boarding a subway, I was mugged and remained in a coma for eight days with three blood clots on my brain. While in the hospital, my husband, in his despair, became a “born again Christian.� I could not live with him, so once again, I divorced.

31

ILONA & MANEK DAVID WERDIGER Born in Poland “Anti-Semitism, which has been with us for six thousand years, as well as prejudice against blacks and other minorities, represents the worst aspect of human nature. That prejudice could manifest itself into the reality of the Holocaust must give us pause, and make us look at ourselves. Prejudice still exists today, in many forms, against many people. It is essential to eradicate prejudice, and it must start with teaching the evils of discrimination and the necessity of growing to understand and accept all people, though different from ourselves. Educating against prejudice should be one of our priorities, as the horror of the Holocaust so vividly teaches us.

We must always cherish and be grateful for our democratic way of life; yet at the same time we must be vigilant and watchful to ensure the continued strength of justice and freedom that is provided by our system of government.”

“I have learned that knowledge and intelligence are virtues if applied in the right direction, but meaningless if not motivated by a love of humanity.

The Nazis were the most educated people of that generation but were without justice and compassion. They were ethically retarded. I hope that our second generation will use their knowledge for the betterment of humanity, to teach people how to live in peace, to care for and respect each other, and will carry the torch of progress toward understanding and love to make sure that the history of the Holocaust never repeats itself.”

-Ilona

-Manek David 32

The Werdigers are a very gracious couple that Dr. Siegel met through the outreach to the Holocaust Center of Glen Cove, New York. They have been on the march to Poland together with teenagers to teach about the Holocaust.

MANEK I was born in Krakow, Poland. My family was in the textile business. In 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland, and I was forced to wear the Star of David on my arm. In 1941 I moved to a ghetto, established by the Nazis for the Jews. In 1944 I was rounded up with six thousand other Jews, placed on a cattle car, and sent to Mauthausen, a work camp where I was beaten. I was sent to work in a factory making German Tiger tanks and then forced to march to Gunskirken, Austria.

May of 1945 brought liberation by the Americans. I was sent finally to a deportation camp in Linz. I found out in that place that all of my family had been annihilated. I met my wife in Hart, Austria, and we married in 1948. I worked as an accountant for the American Distribution committee and thus received visas. That is how we came to the United States.

ILONA I was born in Przemysl, Poland. My father was a highly educated man and also a Talmudic scholar. In 1939 the war started, and my town was divided between the Germans and the Russians. The river was the dividing line, and I lived in the section occupied by the Russians.

In 1941 the Nazis invaded the town and deportation started in shifts. My family stayed together in the ghetto until 1943 when someone gave us up, and, on one day, I lost everyone. The Germans began rounding people up, chaos broke loose, and I was separated from my entire family. I was fifteen years old, and I never saw them again.

We were moved in trucks to the railroad where we were loaded, one hundred at a time, into cattle cars.

Everyone was panicked and crying. I saw an opening at the top of the car and convinced the others to help me get out. I made it through the opening, but fell to the tracks unconscious. I don’t know how long I remained that way, but, when I awoke, I made my way back to my town, to friends of my parents, who still remained in their factory as supervisors, and they took me in. The Gestapo then began to liquidate all the illegal workers from this factory, but left fifteen of us to serve the ones that remained. Eventually the fifteen of us were sent to Plaszow in Krakow and from there to Auschwitz­-Birkenau. In Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele chose me to go “to the right.” Those sent “to the left” were immediately gassed. Those of us who went to the right had our heads shaved, were tattooed, and were made to labor. Some were then sent to the gas chambers, but I was not. In 1944 I was sent to work in a munitions factory in Villisca, Germany and from there to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia.

In May 1945, the Russian army liberated us. I went to Prague and there found that all of my family had perished. Having no one at all, I traveled to Austria, where I found employment, applied for a visa for either Canada, Palestine, or the United States, and met my husband. In 1948 we received visas to the United States. We arrived in February 1949. We owned nothing at all. We had only ten dollars in our pockets. In the background of our portrait we have chosen to place a photograph of the Statue of Liberty.

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SAM AXELFORD Continued

JUDITH EVAN GOLDSTEIN Continued

“The greatest test for the population of this planet is if a thousand years from now there will still be Christians, Moslems, Jews (Orthodox and secular), Buddhists, and all other religions. It is a test of the tolerance that is essential for the continued habitation.”

Judith’s music is performed at Shoah presentations, galleries, interfaith commemo­rative programs, and museum openings. Recently she published an art book, Images of My Childhood, From Sorrows to Joys.

Her art is rich with vibrant colors, expressing both sadness and optimism.

We must try to preserve history and express the inexpressible. I have learned never to be silent again.

Silence was our enemy, a sign of weakness, and now we must speak, write, compose, paint, and remember, because there is a sense of urgency among us.

LUISA & EDDIE FROHLICH Continued Life was difficult after the war, and Eddie and Lusia almost went to Palestine but came to the United States instead. They lived with Lusia’s grandmother, who had come to the United States before the war.

They moved to Southampton and studied beauty culture together. They had a successful beauty salon and were able to travel. Now, they are retired in Florida. Lusia is an avid bridge player.

Eddie is probably the oldest survivor painted by Dr. Siegel. He is ninety-five and still very vibrant. Until a year ago he swam every morning. Lusia has told their story to Shoah.

HERSHEL FUKSMAN Continued agreed to be transported to Stettin, the gathering place for survivors. Life was dangerous here, and the future looked grim at the hands of the Poles, so I, along with many survivors, was smuggled by the Israeli Haganah across into the British zone of Germany. At the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, I attended ORT School and Cheder.

In 1951 Hershel and his family came to Chicago where they established a life. He worked for Allstate Insurance Company as an agent and earned considerable recognition for his good work and dedication to both the company and his clients.

Hershel married Zelda (Marbell) in 1954. They have two daughters and two granddaughters. In addition to surviving the war, in 1990 he and his family confronted the struggle of breast cancer. For the past eight years, Hershel and his wife have lived in Florida and are active with the Child Survivors/Hidden Children’s group. These groups tell their stories to schools in order to teach the truth and keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.

34

SECOND GENERATION of the HOLOCAUST

INTRODUCTION

by Wilma Bulkin Siegel, MD In 2005 I showed a series called Holocaust Survivors and Liberators at the 6oth anniversary of the Liberation of the Holocaust from German Concentration Camps. I had had an epiphany while doing the project, when I learned that the United States Military pillaged a train that was left with all the wealth and goodies that had been gathered by the Nazis from the round up of the Hungarian Jews who were sent to the concentration camps towards the end of the WWII. The survivors fought for financial retribution from the United States Government and won in about 2005. It made me think of the Ten Commandments especially “Though shall Not Steal”. Here the United States stole and those survivors fought to remind us of that God Given Law. Thus I thought that the Jews were the first to give the World through Moses the Law of Ethics. Why did these people survive such a massive Holocaust? I believe that those that survived are of the Jewish Faith and they are here to remind us of Ethics. Our world since those times and in my lifetime has changed. We are losing our sense of ethics of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12) In the first series those Survivors and Liberators had witness to Life and Death profoundly and they honored life and that is what I wished to present in that series. The reason I am doing a second series, Second Generation from the Holocaust, stems from the following experience and reflecting that in 2015 it will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation.

I, recently in September 2013, went to Verona and visited the very beautiful Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and we were dumbfounded that there were not enough men to make a Minion.

My friend Marvin Mordes was asked to come and remain in the services so they could perform the service so we had to stay through the whole time which gave me a very religious feeling.

The beautiful place was from Renaissance times (early 1500) and has been kept up by the community but there are only 400 Jews left in the community. Because it sits in valuable property in town the stores that are surrounding it have been keeping the funds going by paying rent to the Synagogue. It certainly made me sad to think of the devastation of the Jewish society by the Holocaust and secular times. Next to me was a woman from Australia who was traveling with her partner throughout Europe to visit Synagogues to enlighten herself about her heritage which was lost since she was a second generation of a Holocaust survivor. Her mother had survived Auschwitz Death Camp and she talked of her upbringing of fear and not knowing which pervaded her mother’s existence throughout her life. It made me think that this Second Generation represents something that is happening in our world of trying to understand life and not knowing since we are losing our history. Only through history can we learn to cope with the future. They represent a lost family with very few grandparents who can teach about life. Our world is getting older but we are throwing away history by ”dumbing down of education.” This woman again I feel represents a searching of who we are so therefore, I wish to do a series of Second Generation Holocaust Survivors and their search and what have they learned. Perhaps they can lead us back to ethics.

Wilma Bulkin Siegel,M.D.

PORTRAIT SUBJECTS Second Generation NANCY DERSHAW 39 HELEN FRIEDMAN 40 TERRI GOLDEN 41 SYLVIA KAHANA 42 ROSITTA EHRLICH KENIGSBERG 43 JEANETTE MALCA 44 PAULA STEVENS 45 ELIZABETH STUX 46 RON STUX 47 HENRY WILNER 48 PHIL WILNER, MD 49

NANCY DERSHAW

Nancy is the Founder and President of NEXT GENERATIONS, a 501(e) (3) not for profit organization of children, grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and all those who are committed to educate future generations by preserving the memories of the past, carrying forward the message into the future by keeping our parents voices alive.

For many of us, as the “children,” we were instilled with such a tremendous triumph in being alive; therefore we felt intense gratitude towards our parents for anything that they gave us. First, we are fortunate TO BE HERE! Our parents gave us strength and resilience, always striving for a better life. We are the witnesses to the eyewitness and have a moral responsibility to take the lessons of the Holocaust to insure that future generations will learn from the lessons of the past and stand up to any form of social injustice in the future to say NEVER AGAIN!

When you lose a parent there is tremendous grief and anguish. However, when you lose a parent who was also a survivor of the Holocaust there are many different layers of feelings. As the President of NEXT GENERATIONS, I am in direct contact with many children of Holocaust survivors whose parents have passed away. We feel not only did we lose a parent, but the magnitude of loss and pain is that much greater due to the weight of our parents’ past.

For many, our responsibilities and our appreciation of our families were different than our peers. We often acted as a parent might. Our love for our parents included keeping them safe and happy and not causing them grief. Taking away any hardships, making sure that ultimately they were as happy as they could be AND there were many joyous moments of happiness.

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HELEN FRIEDMAN Born in Germany

Helen Friedman’s parents fled Poland to Russia during the thirties. Her father left at age 18 to flee the Polish Army but he regretted leaving behind his youngest brother who begged to go with him, and who ended up perishing in the Holocaust. Helen’s father cried when he told her of this tragedy. Her father survived in a work camp as a shoemaker. Her parents met in Russia and returned to Poland then Germany where I was born before going onto Israel. They came to America in 1951 and settled in Brooklyn. Her father worked seven days a week for 25 years and her mother worked in a bakery. They wanted their children to grow up without problems and sacrificed for their education. She and her brother grew up in a neighborhood where people were of the Holocaust so the backgrounds were similar and they did not see themselves as different. She became a sculptor but made a living in real estate and banking. She was married to a man who was from a family of displaced persons from Bergen-Belsen. She lived in North Dakota before coming to Florida where she aligned herself with the Next Generation group. She now has a relationship with a Canadian philanthropist who gives injured Israeli soldiers respite. She lives part time in Montreal and part time in Florida.

Her parents talked to her about their experiences but many of the specifics, such as times, exact location had been forgotten. They were wonderful parents and they gave all of themselves. As part of the Next Generation group, her parents would be proud that she has aligned herself with this group which is so passionate about telling the story of anti-discrimination.

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TERRI GOLDEN Born in Bergen-Belsen

I was born in Bergen-Belsen which became a displaced persons camp after the Nazi defeat.

I believe that children of Holocaust survivors carry the pain of their parents who greatly suffered under the Nazi regime. My parents lost most of their family in the death camps. We arrived in Canada with no family, no money, and we could not speak English.

My parents had to struggle to earn a living in a foreign country, where even the Canadian Jews were not all that receptive to the refugees. As a child of survivors, I always felt different. I was not a carefree child for I always worried about my parents. I just wanted them to be happy and therefore I needed to obey them and not cause them grief. My Mom who is nearing her 95th birthday still screams in her sleep and relives the horrors of the Holocaust. I still wish I could see her happy.

As many children of survivors, I have established a successful life for myself. I am proud to say that I am active in Next Generations of Holocaust Survivors as treasurer, an organization involved in helping elderly survivors in need, and in educating future generations about prejudice, bigotry and bullying.

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SYLVIA KAHANA

Sylvia is passionate about carrying on the message of her Holocaust survivor parents. She believes that we are in a state of ignorance about the future, that there will be a nuclear Holocaust, and we must be wary of Iran and its nuclear armament. Her father, a survivor of 14, knew of the coming disaster of the Holocaust. Today people are ill informed and act as sheep. Now we have low moral standards and ignorance of history with increasing hate crimes, bullying, and bigotry. She feels it is the same as before with the Holocaust in the Second World War. The Iranian Khomeni threat is not understood by us and she fears ego is in the way of spirituality. Her family survived in Uzbekistan and Tashkent. Her parents came to Philadelphia. Growing up she felt different as “greenees�. She has been promoting Gen Z for the next generation, those born after 1985, to tell stories of the Holocaust Genocide through technology, multi-media, and social media.

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ROSITTA EHRLICH KENIGSBERG Born in Austria

Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg is the daughter of Holocaust survivor Henry Ehrlich, who was born in Miedzyrzec, Poland. When the Nazis came, he was in the ghetto and was then interned in several concentration camps, including Majdanek. He was transferred to Starachowice, the largest ammunitions factory in Poland. From there he was sent to Auschwitz-Bixkenau and then to Buna. In January 1945, he was on a death march and ended up in Dora-Mittelbau where V-2 rockets were made. Finally, he was liberated in Mauthausen in May 1945; after liberation, he married.

His daughter Rositta was born in a displaced persons camp in Austria. The family immigrated to Montreal, Canada in 1951. Because of the political situation, the family left Montreal and moved to South Florida in 1979. Currently, Rositta serves as the Executive Vice President of the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center, Inc., the organization she has been a part of in various capacities for more than twenty-four years. She always has been inspired by her father’s words: “As long as there is someone to tell the story, there is life. And as long as there is someone to listen, there is hope.”

Our parents’ legacy is not about death and despair, but about life and life reborn. Despite their tragic and painful past, they once again dared to sing, to dance, to dream, to shed tears of happiness and joy. They even dared to start new families in new homes they created. Their wondrous story of survival is a testament to their inner strength, heroic defiance, and remarkable courage and conviction.

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JEANETTE MALCA

Jeanette’s mother, Ella Messing, was a survivor of Auschwitz. Jeanette read me her eulogy. Her mother had been a teacher in Poland. The Nazis offered to take the best and brightest children and teachers in her town and to send them to freedom in another country in exchange for German prisoners-of-war. Ella was one of the teachers chosen. She accompanied the children, thinking that the children were on the train for survival but instead, the train arrived at Auschwitz and the children were sent directly to the gas chambers. As Ella would say, “We saw the smoke and knew that it was our children burning.”

From France, Jeanette, her sister and parents moved to the U.S. Her parents worked hard in a neighborhood grocery store and in raising their family. Jeanette’s mother, Ella, also devoted herself to helping Israel. She became a leader in many local Jewish organizations. Among her many accomplishments, she set up a scholarship program to send American children to Israel and she was chairman of the Women’s Division of UJA in her town. Ella’s destiny was to help and save others.

She lived and often quoted the famous saying, “If you save one life, it is as though you have saved the entire world.” She lived the affirmation of LIFE.

Ella escaped from Auschwitz during the Death March. When the Russians came in after the camps were liberated, Ella called out to them in several languages. She was so relieved to see them after the Nazis had been defeated. The Russians thought she was a spy since she knew so many languages. A firing squad stood her up, ready to shoot her, until one of the soldiers understood and called off the guns.

In Jeanette’s early years, her mother did not speak about her experiences. Jeanette learned of her mother’s bravery and heroism while visiting in Israel with her mother’s friend who had survived Auschwitz with Ella. Jeanette later told her mother what she had learned and her mother then began to talk of her experience.

Jeanette’s parents moved to France after the war.

They became directors of an orphanage sponsored

by HIAS. They cared for and taught orphan children and subsequently escorted them to Israel to settle them in Kibbutzim and in Youth Aliyah villages.

Jeanette learned about compassion from her mother and devoted her career to working with at-risk youth, helping them get job-training and jobs and turning their lives around. We met in her home, which was a happy place, because her grandchildren were staying with her.

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PAULA STEVENS Born in Munich, Germany

I met Paula through the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. She is co-chair of the Membership Development committee, as well as a fund raiser for NEXT GENERATIONS. Passionate in her efforts, she supports both entities. Both of her parents were Holocaust survivors who lost their immediate and extended families. After liberation, they made their way across allied lines to Munich, Germany where Paula was born. The family had to wait two and half years for the U.S. to grant them visas.

Nothing was ever discussed or revealed to Paula as a child regarding her parents’ horrifying experiences and personal losses. She never understood why she didn’t have grandparents, aunts or uncles. The death of her mother at the age of 11 years forced her to mature early and become independent.

Being connected with other second generation survivors has given Paula the opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue as well as establishing an unspoken bond. Her having three children was the greatest gift to her parents who have six grandchildren.

“I am here for a reason and I will never forget. My departed family will live on through my children and their children.”

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ELIZABETH STUX

My story is a difficult one because I was born to two Holocaust survivors. I have always lived with my mother’s memories and have also had my bouts of survivor’s guilt. The human will can be broken and controlled through severe and humiliating mistreatment. My mother’s spirit never broke.

Daily life in our home in Melbourne, Australia was filled with ghosts and my mother conjured up a world of starvation and death. Every piece of food was to be eaten because my mother no longer saw a little girl in front of her but rows of emaciated hollow-eyed children that looked like me. Among all the horrific images, the killing of children had the hardest impact on me. The world as I knew it had been colored by my mother’s description of her experiences. My mother told me so many tales that after many years I realized that we are born into our mother’s emotions, and within these parameters we are raised.

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RON STUX

and became a research chemist. He met Elizabeth and they married. Elizabeth’s mother moved in with them and insisted on moving to the U.S. and they did.

He found work with a company in the Boston area that made chemical instruments. He worked with that company for 25 years followed by another five years with a software company, after which they retired to South Florida.

Ron is the husband of Elizabeth Stux. His mother and father lived in Vienna where his father worked in the clothing business. In 1938 after they married, his father remained in a cellar because of the danger to Jews at that time. They decided to leave for Shanghai because it was still possible to go there. After the war they learned that living in the Shanghai ghetto was very different from the other ghettos of Eastern Europe because they were free to roam the city and conduct business.

He believes in and is profoundly proud of his Jewish Heritage, it must go onto perpetuity.

Ron’s father worked for a Swiss import and export company until the end of the War after which he worked as a manager of a PX for the U.S. Army that occupied Shanghai. Like everyone else they wanted entry into the U.S. but could not, so they settled in Melbourne, Australia.

Ron and his family left for Melbourne, Australia when he was three so he remembers very little about that time. But he does remember his Ama. In Melbourne, he grew up in a middle class neighborhood with other survivors of the Holocaust. He was a good student

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HENRY WILNER Born in Debica, Poland

What a pleasure to meet Phil Wilner’s father, Henry Wilner. He is a 91 year old vibrant soul. His life work was multi-faceted and he led a life of optimism always.

He was in the business of exporting old clothes to the needy in French-speaking Africa. He grew up in Debica, Poland and went to public school but was not accepted into the gymnasium so his family sent him to Jewish tutoring for high school. The Germans invaded Poland in 1939 and life changed for the 500 Jews. All became laborers, he in a milk factory where by his wits he got milk products to poor Jews.

One day he and his female boss were arrested by the Gestapo. He suggested his boss pay them off.

She did and they were both freed. He became a ghetto worker drilling holes for the brushes used by the Nazi army. He was sent to concentration camps to build barracks, but jumped off the train and ran in the river back to the ghetto. By 1941 many more were sent to the camps for extermination. His mother threw him off the train and he survived by his wits, saving and protecting his brother. His mother and father perished. Henry looked like a Pole not a Jew and so he imitated the Pole and became a firefighter, receiving a uniform so well respected. His brother worked in post office. They went onto Warsaw in an

apartment where there were 40 people hiding. By 1943 there was the ghetto uprising. He was a member of the Polish Underground. The Germans captured him and gave him the choice of concentration camp or prisoner of war. He chose the latter and was sent into Germany. As a POW he was treated badly; the Geneva Convention caused the Red Cross to intervene. Prisoners were afraid to tell them of the poor conditions but Henry led them to the graveyard where they saw the inhumanity. Subsequently they were fed well. In 1945 they were liberated. His brother was hidden with the Russians on the Russian side. At liberation he walked three days to the Dutch border then found his way to Paris where he reunited with his brother. In Paris he lived well, working for the Polish embassy. Because the Polish ambassador was a Jew he was favored and sent to United States where he had relatives in New Orleans. He settled and managed a hotel in Eunice, Louisiana. Finally he ended up in NYC, met his wife and went into the export business. Because of his fluency in French the business took off in French Africa. They had three sons.

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PHIL WILNER, M.D.

Dr. Wilner is a psychiatrist at NY/Presbyterian Hospital.

He is the son of Holocaust survivors. Since his mother’s death he has become closer to his father, Henry, and more proud of his father’s optimistic and creative personality.

developed Parkinson’s. She died 5 years ago. At age 90, his father remains, as always, brave, loving and positive.

Phil grew up among the families of Holocaust survivors in the Bronx, but never experienced the negative overlay of other survivor families. He sought joy in his life and attributes this to his father’s optimistic viewpoint which led him into a career in psychiatry. Always listening to tragic stories, he calls himself an “eavesdropper.”

Though his parents were nonobservant, they wanted him to understand Judaism. Consequently Phil went to the Yeshiva and Ramaz and has become an observant modern Jew. His children have also gone to Ramaz.

His father, now age 90, was born in Debica, Poland.

At age 16 he was pushed from the train taking him to the camps by his mother who later perished in the Death Camp Beldec. Posing as a Pole, Henry was aided by a woman protecting Jews who gave him and his brother false papers. That woman was later honored in Israel as a “Righteous Jew.” After the war Phil’s father and uncle were liberated to Paris. His uncle settled there marrying a French woman. His father immigrated to the United States where he met Phil’s mother who was born in Jaslo, Poland, transported to Siberia during the war and later immigrated to the States.

He requested that I paint his father to honor him.

Phil is one of three children. Because his father’s business took him away much of the time, Phil was largely raised by his mother who in later years

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the many people who have been phenomenal in helping me attain my goals in conjunction with their goals: Margie Aloni, Daniel Azoulay, Leslie Bell, David Dailing, Diane Edwards, Julie Fox, Zelda Fox, Janice Freibaum, Holly Giuliano, Janet Gold, Sandra Gold, Lyn Hale, Joe Hollingsworth, Alma Kamino, Anthony Lauro, Irvin Lippman, Michael Mills, Jamie Morhaim, Annegreth Nill, Robert Perlmutter, Roz Perlmutter, Sue Robbins, Gary Siepser, Ruth Silverman, Jewel Smith, Sandra Sundel, Lita Talus, Shauntelle Thompson, Sharlene Weiss, and Jessica Wiederhorn.

Special thanks also to these individuals and organizations: Lillian Fox, Boston Child Holocaust Center, Framingham, Massachusetts; Bernice Lerner, Acting Director, Center for Advancement of Ethics and Character, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts; Ann Oster, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, New York; Jennifer Laratt Smith, Facing History and Ourselves, Brookline, Massachusetts; the Child Survivor Group of Palm Beach County, Florida; the Holocaust Memorial and Education Center of Nassau County, New York; the Holocaust Survivor Group of Century Village, Boca Raton, Florida; the Holocaust Survivor Group of Century Village, Pembroke Pines, Florida; and Temple Israel, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And for technical assistance, thanks to Lou Ellen Hardy, of Designs Art & Framing, and Pearl Artist & Craft Supplies Corp., Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Above all I thank my deceased husband, Jesse S. Siegel, who always so generously gave me the emotional support I needed to complete this project.

Wilma Bulkin Siegel, M.D.

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POSTSCRIPT Contemplating why I am doing this series, besides the very necessity for the world to know the record of the last of the generation who lived through the devastation spewed forth by Hitler, I remembered my own history when I was growing up in this country. My father and mother were born in Kiev, Russia, and escaped to the United States of America from the pogroms spawned by anti-Semitism. When I was a young girl, my father made me listen to the Yiddish programs broadcasted during World War II. I do not know Yiddish, but I think I understood what was being said. My father said to me. “This is history, and you must know history.” We lived in an anti-Semitic neighborhood; in fact, the head of the local Nazi party lived across the street.

I had stones thrown at me and was called “dirty Jew.” Upon the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, the movie theaters were showing the pictures of the horrors that took place within them, and my father insisted that I go to see them. I was about eight years old. Horrified, I turned to my father and asked, “Why could I have not done something about this?” So, you see, I am playing out my guilt and trying to do something about this terrible problem of bigotry in our world. Hopefully, these remarkable people can help all of us think about our purpose in this world of stamping out bigotry since we are a country of Freedom.

Wilma Bulkin Siegel

PHOTO of Wilma Bulkin Siegel

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“The Holocaust is a central event in many people’s lives. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it.”

- Aharon Appelfeld, scholar, writer, survivor

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