Holocaust survivors, veterans gather at DC museum

By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press

  Monday, April 29, 2013

Frank this morning at the Museum – P. Fredlake

Today is the anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. I also got this photo from Peter Fredlake, the director of National Outreach for Teacher Initiatives at the USHMM which he took this morning in Washington.  Big day for Frank!

WASHINGTON (AP) — Elderly survivors of the Holocaust and the veterans who helped liberate them are gathering for what could be their last big reunion at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Some 1,000 survivors and World War II vets are coming together with President Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust activist and writer, on Monday when the museum marks its 20th anniversary. Organizers chose not to wait for the 25th milestone because many survivors and vets may not be alive in another five years.

Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wiesel, who both dedicated the museum at its opening in 1993, will deliver keynote speeches. On Sunday night, the museum presented its highest honor to World War II veterans who ended the Holocaust. Susan Eisenhower accepted the award on behalf of her grandfather, U.S. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and all veterans of the era.

The museum also launched a campaign to raise $540 million by 2018 to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to combat anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and contemporary genocide. It has already secured gifts totaling $258.7 million. The campaign will double the size of the museum’s endowment by its 25th anniversary. Also, a $15 million gift from Holocaust survivors David and Fela Shapell will help build a new Collections and Conservation Center.

Museum Director Sara Bloomfield said organizers wanted to show Holocaust survivors, veterans and rescuers the effort will continue to honor the memory of 6 million murdered Jews, in part by saving lives and preventing genocide in the future.

“We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together,” Bloomfield said, “to not only honor them, but in their presence make a commitment to them that not only this institution but the people we reach will carry forward this legacy.”

The museum continues collecting objects, photographs and other evidence of the Holocaust from survivors, veterans and archives located as far away as China and Argentina. Curators expect the collection to double in size over the next decade.

This week, the museum is opening a special, long-term exhibit titled “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity During the Holocaust.” It includes interviews with perpetrators that have never been shown before, as well as details of mass killings in the former Soviet Union that were only uncovered in more recent years.

Curator Susan Bachrach said the exhibit and its research challenge the idea that the Holocaust was primarily about Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Surveys at the museum show that’s what most visitors believe.

“That’s very comforting to people, because it puts distance between the visitors and who was involved,” Bachrach said.

So, the museum set out to look at ordinary people who looked on and were complicit in the killing and persecution of millions of Jews through greed, a desire for career advancement, peer pressure or other factors. It examines influences “beyond hatred and anti-Semitism,” Bachrach said.

Focusing only on fanatical Nazis would be a serious misunderstanding of the Holocaust, Bloomfield said.

“The Holocaust wouldn’t have been possible, first of all, without enormous indifference throughout Germany and German-occupied Europe, but also thousands of people who were, say, just doing their jobs,” she said, such as a tax official who collected special taxes levied against Jews.

In an opening film, some survivors recall being turned over to Nazi authorities in front of witnesses who did nothing. “The whole town was assembled … looking at the Jews leaving,” one survivor recalls.

Steven Fenves was a boy at the time. He recalled how in 1944, Hungary, allied with Nazi Germany, forced his family out of their apartment. The family was deported to Auschwitz, where Fenves’ mother was gassed.

“One of the nastiest memories I have is going on that journey and people were lined up, up the stairs, up to the door of the apartment, waiting to ransack whatever we left behind, cursing at us, yelling at us, spitting at us as we left,” he said in an interview with the museum.

The museum located images of bystanders looking on as Jews were detained, humiliated and taken away.

Non-Jews were also punished for violating German policies against the mixing of ethnic groups. For the first time, the museum is showing striking, rare footage of a ritualistic shaming of a Polish girl and a German boy for having a relationship. They are marched through the streets of a town in Poland, where the film was located in an attic. Dozens of people look on as Nazi officers cut the hair of the two teenagers. They are forced to look at their nearly bald heads in a mirror before their hair is burned.

“It’s hard not to focus on the cruelty that’s being perpetrated on this young couple,” Bachrach said. “But what we really want people to look at … is all the other people who are standing around watching this.”

Other items displayed include dozens of bullets excavated from the site of a mass grave in former Soviet territory and registration cards from city offices in Western and Southern Europe labeling people with a “J” for Jew.

The federally funded museum’s theme for its 20th anniversary is “Never Again: What You Do Matters.” The museum devotes part of its work and research to stopping current and preventing future genocides. A study released by the museum last month found that the longer the current conflict in Syria continues, the greater the danger that mass sectarian violence results in genocide.

Much more is still being learned about the Holocaust, as well, Bloomfield said. The museum is compiling an encyclopedia of all incarceration sites throughout Europe. When the project began, scholars expected to list 10,000 such sites. Now the number stands at 42,000.

The museum opened in 1993 as a living memorial to the Holocaust to inspire people worldwide to prevent genocide. A presidential commission called for such a museum in 1979. Since opening, it has counted more than 30 million visitors. The museum also provides resources for survivors. It has partnered with Ancestry.com to begin making the museum’s 170 million documents searchable online through the World Memory Project.

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Survivors will help mark Holocaust museum anniversary.

As the museum turns 20, officials understand that the demise of those who survived the prison camps as children means looking backward in a different way.

30th ID Colors, Capitol Rotunda, April 11, 2013

Tonight is the Nation Tribute Dinner. Frank, Leslie and Elisabeth are there- two survivors and their actual liberator. Tomorrow they get interviewed near the 30th Infantry Division Flag, recently installed in the main foyer of the Museum as a liberating division. About time. I nearly cried when I saw it paraded into the Capitol Rotunda for the Days of Remembrance  commemoration this year. First time! I really think the project helped get the 30th on the recognition radar screen…here is a good article, found on USA Today.

(Photo: Max Reid)

WASHINGTON — The adult survivors of the Holocaust are mostly gone now, and those who survived as children — and were old enough at the time to remember their ordeals — are now in their 70s and 80s.

It won’t be long before no eyewitnesses remain.

That’s why, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum marks its 20th anniversary Monday with more than 750 survivors, museum officials are calling it one of the last large gatherings of those who managed to escape Hitler’s death machine.

For those who have dedicated themselves to teaching future generations about the Holocaust and its victims, the demise of the survivors means looking backward in a different way — a way that no longer includes people looking others straight in the face and recounting what they saw and what they lived.

You can read all the documentation of the Holocaust in the world, said Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “but hearing somebody’s voice, sitting across the table or across the room from a human being, there’s no true substitute.”

Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, wants his classes to understand this.

“I tell my students annually that they have a special responsibility,” he said. “They are the last generation that will be able to say that they personally knew survivors of the Holocaust. It is a big change, just like it was when the last Civil War veteran passed from the scene.”

The Holocaust, now “perceived history,” will become “received” history, Sarna said. The challenge is that it doesn’t recede from memory.

Holocaust educators take heart in the many institutions and younger people committed to ensuring that future generations will know about the 6 million Jews who died; of the concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria set up to carry out Hitler’s “Final Solution”; and of the 5 million Roma (Gypsies), gay people and others murdered because the Nazis deemed them, like the Jews, unworthy of life.

That’s the mission of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said Saltzman, which has hosted some 35 million visitors since it opened just off the National Mall in 1993. The institution is full of audio and video testimony from survivors, artifacts from their lives before and after they were sent to concentration camps, and films and diaries that document the genocide.

“The museum stands as that eyewitness going forward,” Saltzman said. “We are the repository of all that evidence, and all of those memories.”

From the Washington museum to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem to smaller museums around the world, these institutions preserve history that will soon no longer be passed on firsthand. So, too, does Holocaust literature, from Anne Frank’s famous diary to Night, by survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who will give the keynote speech at the Washington museum’s anniversary Monday, alongside former president Bill Clinton.

The Shoah Foundation, based at the University of Southern California, has videotaped testimony from more than 51,000 survivors since film director Steven Spielberg started the project in 1994, when there were about 350,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide.

Curriculum programs in schools introduce children in the U.S. and elsewhere to the Holocaust, and these programs will continue, even when survivors aren’t part of them anymore.

Holocaust survivor Norman Frajman.(Photo: Matt Dean)

Norman Frajman, 83, thinks of that day. He was 10 years old when World War II began, and has sharp memories of life in the Warsaw Ghetto and of the Majdanek death camp in eastern Poland, where his mother and younger sister died. All told, he lost 126 members of his immediate and extended family.

“I probably wouldn’t remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember all that happened to me during the carnage,” said Frajman, who now lives in Boynton Beach, Fla., and has been sharing his testimony with schoolchildren for more than 30 years.

But not with young children. “The atrocities are indescribable. I can’t address anyone at the elementary school level,” he said. “It’s too graphic.”

For all the graphic details available from survivors, and primary and secondary texts and film, Holocaust denial still thrives on the Internet and in many parts of the world where anti-Semitism has strong roots.

Even in the presence of Holocaust survivors, there are people who insist the genocide never happened, Sarna said. The hope, when there are no more survivors, is that the museums and the video archives will make it “impossible for most people to accept the word of the deniers.”

In the meantime, as long as he is able, Frajman will tell his story and teach about the Holocaust in hopes of preventing another one. “Yesterday it was directed against the Jews. Tomorrow it could be against Christians, the next day against Muslims — unless people heed and listen,” he said.

But he is optimistic that his words and those of other survivors will resonate long after he is gone.

“Judging by today’s young people that I encounter when I go to schools to speak, we are in for a better tomorrow,” Frajman said. “They listen. They are very perceptive. They take it to heart.”

Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum pass under this gate, a cast taken from the original entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, inscribed with the ironic phrase Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes One Free).(Photo: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)

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Woodstock event remembers Holocaust.

Woodstock event remembers Holocaust

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. — A Yom Hashoah event that will remember the Holocaust will take place April 7 at 3 p.m. at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation, 1682 Glasco Turnpike, Woodstock NY, 12498.

Synagogue Main Number (845) 679-2218
Email info@wjcshul.org
Persons of all faiths are welcome.

The Yom Hashoah  observance will include a candlelight memorial service, followed by an address by Matthew Rozell titled “Honoring the Hour of Liberation and Defeating the Legacy of Hitler.” Rozell is the founder of a project that has reunited survivors from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with the U.S. soldiers who liberated them from a train transport during the closing days of World War II. To date, with the help of Varda Weisskopf and Frank Towers, more than 240 survivors worldwide have been located, and 10 reunions have taken place since 2007. Rozell is also a teaching fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has spoken on behalf of its educational programs. His work can be seen at teachinghistorymatters.wordpress.com.

The ABC News video can be seen here.

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“The world needs saving. So, get to it!”

Helen is a friend of mine. She was liberated in April 1945 by a division of American soldiers that included our high school secretary’s uncle.

At her invitation I traveled to central NY to speak 2 years ago.

She is still going strong. I love her! Her central message to students-”The world needs saving. So, get to it!”

BY RACHEL MURPHY
Rome Observer Staff Writer

Staff Photo by RACHEL MURPHY–Curtis Thompson, an eighth grader , hugs Helen Sperling, a 93-year-old who survived the Holocaust. Sperling shared her story with the eighth grade class on Wednesday, after she finished every student hugged her.

ROME, NY. — Holocaust survivor Helen Sperling, 93, recounted the darkest moment of her life before a crowd of more than 300 eighth-graders at Lyndon H. Strough Middle School on Wednesday.

Sperling spoke for two hours about her time in the concentration camps.

Sperling was born to a middle class family where she lived in Poland.

During a school vacation when she was 22 years old, the Germans invaded her home and took her family into a ghetto.

“For the first time in my life, I was completely and utterly helpless,” she said.

During her time in the ghetto, Sperling remembered being able to contact a close friend to wish her a happy birthday. But when Sperling called her friend, who was a Gentile, the friend responded with a racial slur.

“You did not realize who was your friend and who was your enemy,” she said.

She explained that like many other Jewish families, hers was eventually taken from the ghetto and separated into prison camps. She was first placed into Ravensbrück, where she was forced to perform demeaning tasks the Nazi’s used as a way to break her spirit.

But despite the torture, hunger and fear, Sperling managed to survive, along with her younger brother.

“Ninety-nine percent of our survival was sheer luck,” she said. “A little tiny bit of it was hanging on to dignity. Once you lost that, you didn’t have a chance.”

Sperling’s parents did not survive.

Her family was among the 6 million other Jews that were sent to death camps and were killed by the Nazis.

Sperling placed two family photographs on a table nearby as she spoke to the students.

“These are mine, and I miss them terribly,” she said of her family members.

However, she continues to share her story to hopefully inspire and educate others.

“I want them to know that they can do something. I don’t want them to be bystanders,” she said.

Sperling added that even though it is difficult to retell it’s worth it.

“As long as I can do and as many schools as I can cover I want to,” she said.

Assistant Principal Michael Stalteri explained that he hopes the students learn from Sperling’s life and positive outlook.

“Her story resonates with what goes on in their lives when they’re being persecuted, picked on, harassed, bullied or made to feel different,” he said. “Hearing Mrs. Sperling’s story of triumph and her message is exhilarating.”

After Sperling finished her story each student hugged her, and she gave them an anti-bullying bracelet.

http://romeobserver.com/articles/2013/03/15/news/doc5140d89a9dd53321768186.txt?viewmode=fullstory

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“I found myself running in front of the machine gun yelling ‘Nyet! Nyet!’

February 25, 2013

Cruise recalls time in WWII

By GREG JORDAN

Bluefield Daily Telegraph

BLUEFIELD, Va. — When Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich finally collapsed, the western Allies and their Soviet Union partners were in no mood to be lenient with the defeated Germans. Western and Russian soldiers alike had reasons to want revenge for the costly war, but one American veteran recently recalled how he and a fellow soldier kept some Soviets from unleashing that vengeance on unarmed German civilians.

 

Claude R. Cruise Jr. is photographed at his home in Bluefield Va. recently. He holds the white armband that he wore to show that he was with the police forces during World War II in Germany. Eric DiNovo, Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

Now 87, Claude Cruise of Bluefield, Va., was 19 years old when he was sent to Europe. He trained with the 16th Armored Division before he became a replacement with the 30th Infantry in northern France. He served in four of five campaigns in Europe. While he missed — and he was glad of it — the Normandy Invasion, he found himself in what became Germany’s last offense in the West, a major attack best known as The Battle of the Bulge.

The Germans pursued their offensive ruthlessly. Cruise was among the first Americans to see the results of that ruthlessness — the bodies of American soldiers murdered during the Malmedy Massacre in Belgium. About 70 surrendered soldiers had been killed. Cruise can still remember seeing their bodies covered with snow. The terrible sight steeled the Americans’ resolve to stop the German advance.

“It made you hate like you never hated before,” he declared.

“They were still lying there,” Cruise said during a 2009 interview with the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. “So we moved into the town. We were surrounded one time on three sides, but we held them back.”

When Germany finally surrendered, Cruise and his fellow soldiers were temporarily assigned to occupation duty. By that time, the Russians and Western Allies had linked up at the Elbe River, a waterway that later became a boundary between West Germany and East Germany. Cruise still has the white armband that states both in English and in German that he was with the police. He did, however, find time to explore a little bit and even had an opportunity to be photographed with some German fighter planes.

Claude R. Cruise Jr. stands next to a captured German Focke Wulf 190 in this World War II photograph taken at Oschersleben, Germany on April 27, 1945.

He soon found himself conversing with Russian troops. He couldn’t speak Russian and the Russians couldn’t speak English, but he soon learned that they both could speak some German. Cruise said he cannot read or write in German, but he can still speak the language.

“I was a messenger to the Russian CP (command post) when we linked up with the Russians on the Elbe River at Magdeburg,” Cruise said. “We were in a jeep and there was a Russian tank sitting on the upside of the road. We stopped and gave them a cigarette.”

The Americans and Russians chatted a little in German about the end of the war; in fact, it had ended only two days earlier. As the men talked, about a dozen people — elderly individuals, younger women and some children — appeared about 100 yards away.

“And while we were talking, all of a sudden this guy I was talking to jumped up on the tank and started firing the machine gun. And I looked over and there was a line of civilians coming down the other side of the road there,” Cruise said. “I found myself running in front of the machine gun yelling ‘Nyet! Nyet!’ (No! No! in Russian). They stopped firing and I went down and pretended I was checking their papers.”

Cruise and fellow soldier Bob Klingensmith kept checking credentials and told the German civilians to move along. The Russians did not like this, but they held their fire.

“Those two Russians were staring at me,” Cruise recalled.

Today, he wonders if any of those numbed, shocked German civilians remember that day when two Americans kept them from dying mere days after Germany surrendered. Some of them were children back in 1945.

His son Jerry Cruise found a possible way to find some of those civilians when he became acquainted with Boris Jaeggi of Switzerland, a publisher of several European magazines who believes he can get Claude Cruise’s account into some Magdeburg newspapers.

The plan now is to have the Cruise’s recollections about the incident translated into German. With luck, the story may stir a childhood memory of the moment when two Americans saved them from a sudden death.

Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV-http://bdtonline.com/local/x657737218/Cruise-recalls-time-in-WWII

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I know you are very busy, but please answer my questions.

Soon after liberation, surviving children of the Auschwitz camp walk out of the children’s barracks. Poland, after January 27, 1945. — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day Soviet troops over ran Auschwitz in 1945. This week I received a note from an Israeli survivor friend, shortly after the passing of one of her liberators, Carrol Walsh. Sara lost over 60 of her family there- and her immediate family was saved only because the day they arrived at Auschwitz, the death machinations were working at full capacity and her transport was rerouted to Belsen. She was liberated on 13 April on the evacuation transport near Farsleben, known here as the Train Near Magdeburg…

In her letter she asks important questions of me. I have responded the best that I could, below.

Dear Matthew,

 We were very sad to hear that Carrol Walsh passed away. Only lately did I get to know him, and he risked his life in order to save ours. It is a pity we did not get to meet more.

I can’t express in words the loving feelings for the young tank commander that for sure always had a smile on his face, and never stopped smiling after we met- 65 years after the victory. I am sure Carrol Walsh made the best out of his life; I was fulfilled to know him and his beautiful family.

I read about his profession in the years of his life. It was interesting to see how much meeting with us affected him.

I thank you for your unusual courage to initiate the exciting meeting [reunion].

I suppose you were very excited for the event you had initiated. Did the idea come in different parts? I am trying to understand the development of your thinking.
When you first wrote to me about the meeting [invitation to the proposed reunion], it was on the day we were released- the 13th of April. I got home after meeting my brothers and celebrating the release [liberation]day. I couldn’t relax, I immediately told all my brothers. I was so happy, as if it was happening again.

The meeting completed a missing part in the picture for me, after all the horrifying things we went through we couldn’t even dream of a miracle like that coming out of the blue.

I cannot go back more to the extermination camps and escort groups because I don’t have the physical nor mental power to do that anymore.

There are questions that bother me.

Are you able to answer them?

Why shouldn’t the world forget and let this be over?  

A. So, some people do want to forget. Others will say that it did not happen. For those reasons, it must never be forgotten. This is the biggest crime in the history of the world.

As Walsh states, how could humanity have stood by and let that happen?

Does my work, the hard work I do, do anything against the forgetting?

A.The most impressionable minds in the world are those of the youth. It is they who the Nazis “educated”; it made it easier for the crimes to be committed. This is why they must hear now.

The work that you, and I do, has an impression. I hope to continue this work after you must slow down. Please remember that.

 

You are a historian, should the memory be kept?

A.The memory must be kept. As educators it is our duty to keep it alive. We must fight those who trivialize or denigrate its importance.

Is there a proper way to keep the memory?

A.There is no one way except to be open to the discussion of humanity and how humans could do this to one another. We must also bear in mind however, that the soldiers who helped the suffering to new life bore their own pains in doing so, yet also made a choice to redeem humanity. Some did not sleep soundly for years.

I think this is so, and also must not be forgotten. The war brought out the most evil in the world. But I think it also revealed some goodness in the form of the soldiers who liberated or otherwise cared for the victims.

Who should be documenting everything, the “victim” or the “aggressor”?

A.The aggressor fades from memory. New generations asks questions. It is true that some are bothered by the questions. But the young will always be curious and want to know- is this a stain on the German people? I know some Germans today who work very hard to keep the memory alive, as you also do.

The victims give the testimony. This is all they can do. But it is the evidence of the crime, and one that new generations must work with. That is why your work is so important.

Who is in charge of making the conclusions?

A.I would say that institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem are the world leaders in this area. I have been trained, well, I should hope, by the USHMM. I do not know enough about the German institutions but I hope to raise enough funds to travel to the camps and study there this summer.

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WE WILL BE THERE, WILL YOU??

Matthew Rozell, 30th Infantry Veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors at Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, March 2, 2012.

Frank Towers’ invitation to soldiers, survivors, interested parties and their families to come to Louisville in the spring. The soldiers have convened annually since the end of World War II; since 2008, thanks to the project, the 30th Infantry Division has hosted Holocaust survivors and their families as well for very emotional, uplifting, and fun times. Email for details.

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Don’t forget the dates!!       April 11 – 12 – 13, 2013

Don’t forget to make your Hotel Reservation

and Registration!!

Hotel Crowne Plaza,  Louisville, KY

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Dear Fellow 30 Division Members and Friends:

I hope you all enjoyed your holiday and that the New Year holds only good things for you and your family.

Now that the holidays are over it is time to focus on making your reservations for the Reunion.  Included are the Pre-Registration Form and the Reservation Form and the information to make your hotel reservations. Please do it NOW.

We have a great program planned and will include a trip to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum, a professional photographer that will take a picture of you and/or your family (so bring your medals and ribbons to show off).  We will also have one of Louisville’s noteworthy news casters, Ken Schulz, MC our banquet on Saturday evening.  Our entertainment will include a local bagpiper as well as others.

Why come to Louisville?

Louisville, is a city of urban neighborhoods that have been revitalized, and some of our best known shopping areas are the Bardstown Road and Frankfort Avenue corridors with their small shops and plentiful locally owned restaurants.  The homes and buildings in the Old Louisville neighborhood is one of the largest historic preservation districts featuring Victorian architecture in the U.S.  The Downtown area has had significant renovations over the last few years with the construction of the YUM! Center which is home court for our Louisville Cardinals men’s and women’s basketball teams.  The Center, along with Waterfront Park and Fourth Street Live, have attracted new housing, shops and restaurants breathing new life into the area.

Louisville has museums to interest everyone..  Home to the Frazier International History Museum; The Muhammad Ali Center; The Louisville Science Center; The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft and many, many more.

Our hotel, the Crowne Plaza, is locally owned and operated.  It is near the airport and offers free shuttle service from the airport to the hotel.  The Crowne Plaza also offers many amenities including indoor/outdoor pool, fitness center, boutique shop, 24 hours business center, complimentary Wi-Fi, and more.

You can see Louisville is the place to be, so much so that Louisville was named “The Top U.S. Travel Destination for 2013″ by Lonely Planet’s, the world’s leading travel publisher.

We are looking forward to having you here and sharing some of our history and hospitality with you, and most of all, to meet many of your former friends and colleagues.

Best Regards,

Bill Vaughan. President

30th Infantry Division Veterans of WWII

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Taps – 2012

(Last 6 Months)

ADAMS, Cleveland L. 30 MP Plat. 7/30/12 Stockbridge, GA

ADKINSON, Bruce 743 TkBn B 6/17/12 Beverly, MA

DUMEY JR, (DuMay) Leon 120-G 11/23/12 Cape Girardeau, MOM

FARKAS, Louis 119-I 12/ /12 Colton, OR

HOGUE, Donald W. 117 K 6/12/12 Montevallo, AL

HOUCK, Arthur T. 120-K 6/16/12 Hampstead, MD

LAZINGER, Sol 117-B 6/13/12 Philadelphia, PA

MAXEY, James C. 120 CN 6/ 29 /12 Tullahoma, TN

MILLER, Edmund L. 120-H 9/07/12 Pewamo, MI

PITRUZZELLO, Joseph S. 119-L 5/02/08* Alexander City, AL

PRUITT, Frank H. 120-2BnHq 12/10/12 Spartanburg, SC

PULVER, Murray S. 120-B 9/21/12 Peoria, AZ

STANFORD, Arna V. Widow 8/18/10* Williamsburg, VA

STECKLER, William 105 Engr. B 9/09/12 Palm Harbor, FL

SULLIVAN, Thomas “Jack” 118 FA 8/07/12 Savannah, GA

TURNER, Woodrow W. 117-F 8/15/12 Littleton, CO

UBBES, Jean M 743 TkBn-B 7/28/12 Kalamazoo, MI

VOORHIS, Thomas K. 120-K 8/06/12 Manteca, CA

WALSH, Carrol S. 743 TkBn-D 12/17/12 Sarasota, FL

YOUNG SR., James E. 120 6/26/12 Butler, PA

Those with an asterisk (*) were received too late for a prior publication.

Our Most Sincere Condolences to the Families of These Lost Heroes

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As most of you already know, men of the 743^rd Tk. Bn., and  30^th Infantry Division, liberated over 2.500 victims of the Holocaust from Bergen-Belsen on 13 April 1945.

We will be honored to have some of these Survivors join with us again at Louisville.  Two of them have never been with us before, so they will give a resume of their life history, so be sure to come to hear these stories that have never been told before.

One of these Survivors will be coming all of the way from Jerusalem, Israel, joining with other members of his family, to meet his Liberators for the first time.  The other Survivor will be coming from San Diego, CA with his daughter, also to meet for the very first time with some of his liberators.

To make it clear, each of you veterans were “Liberators” of this group of victims.  Although you may not have had any personal hands-on experience with them at the time of their liberation, You were doing your job which was supporting the action in the local vicinity of this tremendous discovery and the release of these frail humans to Freedom.

Join with us on this occasion to meet these Survivors that you helped to liberate 68 years ago !!

This will be an Historic event !!  68 years to the date of their Liberation !!!

 

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The Golden Book.

Just when you think that maybe things are “quieting down”,  an email comes in your inbox again.

At Thanksgiving Time.

Can’t wait to speak to Kurt. In the meantime, read below. He has to be around the 230th survivor of the train to make our acquaintance…good work Frank and Varda! Frank, you never cease to amaze me, at 95 yrs young, you are doing laps around me! So now I can share with the students, and fellow survivors and soldiers!

In the words of survivor Dr. Micha Tomkiewitz, “welcome to the family!”

—–Original Message—–
From: Kurt Bronner

Survivors Kurt Bronner and his lovely wife. Thanks to Frank and Varda W. for finding them- “welcome to the family”

Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2012 2:31 PM
To: Rozell Matt
Subject: Thanks

Dear Matt…This last week I have been in touch with Frank Towers and Varda W….They found me on the list on survivors of the deathtrain..I have seen movies and stories…Its like my past has been opened up…On this day of Thanksgiving I would like to wish you a happy peaceful Year and thank you for opening up a chapter of many survivors on that train…I live in Los Angeles and the Burbank school system has had a similar program and I have been talking to students in junior and high schools…Have 100s of letters from the students…Teachers like you are in my Golden book..Thank you for your groundbreaking efforts…with my best to You and your family with my love, Kurt Bronner

Teaching tolerance

April 08, 2000

by Irma Lemus, Burbank Leader

MEDIA DISTRICT NORTH — Fifty-five years have passed, but Kurt Bronner can still vividly recall his mother being beaten by a Nazi soldier as he watched helplessly through a barbed wire fence. It was the last time Bronner, now 74, ever saw his mother.

The Encino resident revisited the horrific nine months he spent at Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in northern Germany, Friday during a presentation to Burbank High School students.

The event was part of the Burbank Human Relations Council’s Holocaust remembrance program, held every April and May to coincide with Burbank’s Interfaith Days of Remembrance. About 25 Holocaust survivors and liberators are involved in the program, speaking at area schools about the human toll of hate and bigotry run amok

“If you remember anything from today, remember that hate exists and you, as future leaders, must stop the Holocaust from happening again,” Bronner, a Hungarian native, told the students.

“People think that it can’t happen here, but I remember my father once told me that it couldn’t happen in Hungary and it did,” said Bronner, who was removed from his home along with his family at the age of 17.

Don Duplechein, who served in the U.S. Army’s 567th Ambulance Company during World War II, also spoke to students Friday. He described the scene as he and about 30 other troops arrived at the Nazis’ Dachau death camp at the end of the war.

“You couldn’t believe it. When we arrived we saw people begging for food with lice all over their heads. We knew we had to feed and bathe these people,” Duplechein said.

To a small group of students who gathered after the presentation, Bronner spoke in more detail about his experiences in the concentration camp.

“A lot of people think that children were held at the camps, but the truth is that in a lot of the camps the children were killed and the only ones allowed to live were young people and adults,” he said.

Danny Screws, 17-year-old Burbank junior, said it was difficult to believe that nobody was willing to act to stop what was happening.

“I asked him [Bronner] how the government could let the people be treated that way. He told me that, although they were from Hungary, they were still Jews. I think that was wrong,” Screws said.

Bronner described traveling to the concentration camp by train with hundreds of people piled into a single boxcar, barely able to move or breathe . He talked about the horrible living conditions at the camps where thousands of people died from starvation and disease.

“I remember trying to find my father’s body as he was put on a horse-drawn carriage. I couldn’t find him to say goodbye because of all the bodies piled up,” said Bronner, whose father died at Bergen-Belsen.

Bronner was asked if he hated the Nazis for what they did to his family.

“You know, a student once asked me what I would do if the people that killed my parents walked through the door. I told the student that killing the person wouldn’t bring my parents back and it would make me a killer. You have to forgive, but never forget,” he said.

Copyright 2012 Burbank Leader  http://articles.burbankleader.com/2000-04-08/news/export17568_1_concentration-camp-holocaust-survivors-burbank-high-school-students

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It’s what we do.

Here is the interview that I did with NYSUT last week.

A staff member who is maybe thinking of leaving the profession wrote me a nice card about a month ago. In a follow up conversation she told me she saw me as a “beacon”- her word- for other teachers. That’s fairly heavy stuff to hear.

I feel  responsibility to add some extra comments below for the benefit of  teachers in general, and anyone else who is interested.

http://itswhatwedo.nysut.org/

Photo credit: Kris Dressen.

The reporter was competent, engaged and interested, but she had her deadline and we ran out of time.

I did not have a chance to tell her about the medic. I’ll include it below and will be passing it on to her. Kind of like the “moral of the story”, especially when you realize what it means for the soldiers.

I hope it serves as a reminder to teachers that what we all do every day makes a difference.

Here is the postscript to the story.

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An important epilogue to the NYSUT story.

I know that some of you have been following the unfolding of the train liberation and reunions.  The part that is not mentioned in the article  is a phone call I got last Oct. from an 88 year old man in Scranton, PA who found me- and really wanted to be put in touch with the survivors.

You see, he had been a twenty something Army medic in 1945 when ordered to move out to the abandoned German Air Force hospital grounds at Hilersleben, immediately after the tank commanders came across that “death train” and Frank Towers evacuated the occupants to get them out of the battle zone.

Blessed – or maybe cursed – with a terrific memory, he can vividly recall the screams and overall sense of dread permeating the hospital, where he and his fellow medics wore a daily uniform of surgical masks, gloves and rubber aprons.

He remembers scooping handfuls of lice out of patients’ hair and administering countless needles, and the time he had to carry the body of a little girl to a tent serving as a makeshift morgue.

For six nonstop weeks after the liberation they confronted the horror and the evil. Well over 100 Holocaust victims, now his patients, died after they were freed by our troops. No one had trained Walter for this, and  for all these years he has lived with the guilt, the nightmares, and the trauma.

For 60 years he and his wartime buddies met after the war. Walter told me and some of our kids that in recounting their war stories, not one of them ever brought up that place called Hilersleben.

Those guys must have suffered from PTSD. And like many soldiers, his generation just did not talk about that.

Now he calls me at school, to chat, laugh, to let me know which of our survivors has contacted him, and to tell me he wants to meet me.

********************************************

Wait a minute-rewind- How did that happen?

I mean, Why did HE, find ME?

That all happened WAY before I was born.

I think about this, every single day.
Is there a reason I put on this earth? How do I make sense of my responsibility as a human being?

Did those soldiers have to put themselves in harm’s way, in many respects scarring themselves for life,  to care for “the brutalized and wretched” whom they did not even know?

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What I offer to other teachers:
I’m an educator and so are you. As persons who spend most of our waking hours with young people, I can only postulate that we are in the “business” of molding human beings- which of course is not really a business at all. Like the soldiers thrust into that situation, ultimately we are caretakers of humanity.   It is an overwhelming responsibility, but it is not just a job.
It’s a mission.

Those soldiers made choices, confronted evil, sacrificed a ton, and saved humanity– Carrol, George, Frank, and Walter (“the Babe”)- and in doing so, I know they saved me, too. It sounds cliché, simplistic, Pollyanna, whatever- but it’s true.

You do your best to make a difference.

Lots of times you think you lose.

But here’s the real crazy part- most of the time you probably win.

Like these soldiers, sometimes you don’t know you have won until years later.

It’s just what we do.

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“It’s not for my sake, it’s for the sake of humanity, that they will remember…”

  I am re-posting this on the anniversary of a car crash that would claim the life of Holocaust survivor and later U.S. Army Ranger, Steve Barry.

My friend on the left described himself at one point in his life as the “Happiest Korean War Draftee”. Steve was a  survivor from Hungary who beat the odds and lived through the horrors of the Holocaust after the Germans invaded that country in 1944 and did their best to kill him on several occasions. He spent his 20th birthday jammed in a boxcar destined for Bergen Belsen, witnessed people dying of starvation and disease by the thousands,  and was liberated on April 13th, 1945 at the hands of the 743rd Tank Battalion and the 30th Infantry Division of the US 9th Army, aboard the train near Magdeburg.  He emigrated to the United States in Dec. 1948 after spending years in a displaced persons camp, applied for citizenship immediately, and was drafted in 1950, only to be assigned occupation duty in a far off nation- you guessed it-Germany. He was so happy to serve his adopted country…

Steve passed away yesterday, January 16th, 2012, after a long and difficult ordeal from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in September. I’ll always remember his special Christmas and Easter cards that he sent to me, made personally on his computer; his funny, self depreciating humor; and above all his overwhelming happiness at being able to finally meet the men who saved him. I hope that the memories sustain his wife Stella and his children and their families, and also the friends that he made later in life and became soulmates with- soldiers Carrol Walsh and Frank Towers, the soldiers who arrived on the scene to free him and help him begin his life anew.

Matthew Rozell, Stephen Barry, National DOR Ceremony, Washington, DC April 2010. This photo was taken the day after the 65th anniversary of Steve’s liberation in April 1945. We had just been honored by the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum before the national ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda.

I will leave you with a few of his words-and we will remember. Thanks, Steve, for all that you gave us, and for passing the torch to a new generation of students to carry your message forth.

An earlier post… The Holocaust Survivor and the US Army Ranger…

A fantastic national radio interview that I helped to arrange, knowing he would be the perfect speaker…

And the educational films I constructed from them.

 Stephen B. Barry, 87, of Boca Raton, Florida, passed away peacefully on January 16, 2012 following a serious car accident in late September 2011. A Holocaust survivor,who was proud to be an American, he went on to live the American dream. He is survived by his wife Stella of nearly 58 years, his children Barbara (Paul), Jamie (Jerry) and Randy and his beloved granddaughters, Amanda and Victoria and many extended family and friends. Services to be held at Beth Israel Memorial Chapel in Delray. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions in his memory be made to The United States Holocaust Museum.

Published in Sun-Sentinel on January 18, 2012

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