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PEOPLE
12 Jews survived.
12 JEWS SURVIVED the Holocaust hidden by a maid in a Nazi officer’s basement, tells the true story of faith and humanity that led a young Polish woman to risk her life to save the lives of others.
16 JULY 1942
16 JULY 1942. By order of the Nazis, the French police arrests more than 13,000 foreign Jews, among whom are 4,000 children. Most of them die in Auschwitz. Collection and rights: Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem. 1495/9
100-year-old Holocaust survivor Joseph Alexander
100-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR JOSEPH ALEXANDER at the Holocaust Museum LA on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Joseph is a speaker in LAUSD’s speaker series and alongside other Holocaust survivors, shares his stories with students via Zoom. Joseph Alexander holds a book about his life and experience in the concentration camps. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
100-year-old Holocaust survivor Ruth Sherman
100-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RUTH SHERMAN this week shared the story of how Shanghai saved her and her family’s life.
1939, A Polish mother and child
1939, A POLISH MOTHER AND CHILD amid the rubble on a street in Warsaw, Poland. It had been bombed during the German invasion, marking the start of World War II.
A BROTHER AND SISTERS
A BROTHER AND SISTERS, members of a Jewish family. One of the sisters pictured here, along with other family members, did not survive the Holocaust. Nove Zamky, Czechoslovakia, May 1944.
A CONCERT
A CONCERT, BRONZE 2002: "The Image of Treblinka in the Eyes of Samuel Willenberg"
A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO
A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO, in 1942, a group of Jewish doctors carried out a secret investigation into hunger and starvation in the Warsaw ghetto, in which they were both scholars and victims of the consequences of food deprivation imposed by the Nazi regime.
A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO 2
A DAY IN THE WARSAW GHETTO 2, in 1942, a group of Jewish doctors carried out a secret investigation into hunger and starvation in the Warsaw ghetto, in which they were both scholars and victims of the consequences of food deprivation imposed by the Nazi regime.
A DUTCH POLICEMAN
A DUTCH POLICEMAN looks out the hatch of a small bunker that served as a hiding place for Dutch Jews in the Eibergen region in 1942-1943. The bunker was discovered by the Germans one day before this photograph was taken.
A JEWISH CHILD, JACKY BORZYKOWSKI
A JEWISH CHILD, JACKY BORZYKOWSKI, with the priest who placed him in hiding on a farm. Belgium, 1943.
Alfréd Israel Wetzler
ALFRÉD ISRAEL WETZLER, who wrote under the alias Jozef Lánik, was a Slovak Jewish writer. He is known for escaping from Auschwitz concentration camp and co-writing the Vrba-Wetzler Report, which helped halt the deportation of Jews from Hungary, saving up to 200,000 lives.
ALICE SCHIFFERBELGIUM
ALICE SCHIFFER BELGIUM Anzegem, Belgium…June 1942 – Stefka and Hubert Kollmann and their two daughters, Inge and Lydia, lived in Brussels during the war. They were good friends with their neighbor, Lydia Wegielski. In 1942, it became very dangerous for the Jews of Belgium. The Germans required them to wear the yellow star of David, rounded up many for forced labor, and deported them to Auschwitz. Lydia Wegielski’s cousin, Alice Schiffer, came to visit from the countryside. During the visit, Lydia suggested to Alice that she take Inge and Lydia Kollmann with her when she returned home. Despite the danger, Alice agreed to take the children to her small village of Anzegem. Alice cared for the children from June 1942 until the end of the year. Alice adopted the children and had them baptized, enabling them to be placed in a convent where they would be safe. Alice continued to look after the girls for the entire time they were in the convent. Inge and Lydia’s parents remained in Brussels. During a raid of the apartment, Hubert Kollmann was captured by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz, where he died in 1942. Stefka Kollmann was hidden by Lydia Wegielski. Inge and Lydia survived the war. Alice Schiffer died in September 1996. Copyright © Jewish Foundation for the Righteous.
ANGELA OROSZ
ANGELA OROSZ holds a photo of her parents while attending the trial of former Nazi SS guard Reinhold Hanning in Detmold, Germany. Photograph: Friso Gentsch/AFP/Getty Images. It was at the age of seven, when asked at school to write down her name and place of birth, that Angela Orosz was first made aware she had been born in Auschwitz. “I really had a hard time with that word,” she said. “I was begging my mother, ‘can we change it?’ She said ‘no, I’m not going to change it, this is what you have to know.” Orosz said she had no idea then what Auschwitz, the Nazi extermination camp, actually meant. “It wasn’t that I struggled with having been born there. That only struck me later,” she explained. “It was just because it was so awfully difficult to spell.” It would take her more than a further half century before she felt able to recount the story of her and her mother, who died in 1992. At the age of 60 she finally broke her silence to tell a local journalist at her home in Montreal how her mother, Vera Bein, had given birth on the top bunk in the barracks of camp C at Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1944. She had weighed just 1kg and was too weak to cry. “That’s what saved me,” she said. Today she only stands at 5ft – a direct consequence of malnutrition during pregnancy and her first five weeks of life.
ANTON SUKHINSKI
ANTON SUKHINSKI was a loner and an outcast. Some even described him as the village idiot. He never married and lived – always on the verge of poverty – in a small modest house in Zborow. His neighbors often made fun of him because of his gentle nature and his love of all living creatures. But at the time of total moral collapse, when the great majority either participated in the murder of the Jews or indifferently turned their backs on their neighbors, it was Anton Sukhinski – the village idiot – who stood up for his beliefs and in stark contrast to his surroundings preserved human values. Without any help or support he was responsible for the survival of six people.
ARMIN T. WEGNER
ARMIN T. WEGNER, the only writer in Nazi Germany ever to raise his voice in public against the persecution of the Jews, was born on October 16, 1886 in the town of Elberfeld/Rhineland (today part of Wuppertal). He was the scion of an old aristocratic Prussian family, with roots reaching back to the time of the Crusades. After receiving his doctorate in law, the young Wegner tried his hand successively at being (in his own words) a “farmer, dock-worker, student of drama (with Max Reinhardt), private tutor, editor, public speaker, lover and idler, filled with a deep desire for unraveling the mystery of things.” Already at sixteen, he published his first book of poetry, I Have Never Been Older than as a Sixteen-year-old. Between 1909 and 1913, he wrote his cycle of poems, divided into five, Face of the Cities (Antlitz der Städte), which established his reputation as one of the promising pre-expressionist poets. However, the real driving force of his life was a burning moral passion, an unfailing commitment to the causes of justice and humanity, which made him raise his voice whenever he saw these values betrayed or traduced. The history of the twentieth century provided Wegner with plenty of opportunity to speak out against evil and injustice. On the road to Baghdad in the spring of 1915, serving as an ensign on the staff of German Fieldmarshal von der Golz, he could observe first hand some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by the Turkish army against the Armenian people. The horrendous scenes of dead and emaciated people that he had witnessed in the Armenian refugee camps - visible proof of the first systematic genocide of the twentieth century - continued to haunt him long after. He protested against them in his Road of No Return: a Martyrdom in Letters and in an open letter, which was submitted to American President Woodrow Wilson at the peace conference of 1919. In the 1920s Wegner reached the height of his success as a writer. He became a celebrity with his Russian book, Five Fingers Over You, which foresaw the advent of Stalinism; his travel book, At the Crossroads of the World, sold over 200,000 copies. In April 1933, he sacrificed it all - his German home, his well-being, his liberty - because he could not bear to be party to the complicity of silence that surrounded the persecution of the Jews in the Third Reich. Wegner’s open letter (“Sendschreiben”) to Hitler was written a few days after April 1, 1933, the date of the general, state-organized boycott against the Jews of Germany. Since no German paper would publish it, Wegner sent the “letter” to the “Brown House” (the headquarters of the Nazi party) in Munich, with the request that it be forwarded to Hitler. The six-page letter - originally titled “For Germany” - constituted an eloquent panegyric on the historical greatness of the Jewish people and their immeasurable contribution to human civilization at large and to Germany in particular. It warned that a continuation of the antisemitic campaign was bound to bring disgrace upon the German people. The receipt of the letter was acknowledged by the head of the chancellery, Martin Bormann, with the remark that it “would be laid before the Führer shortly.” Instead of an answer, Wegner was arrested a few days later by Gestapo thugs in Berlin and thrown into the dungeons of the infamous Columbia House, where he was tortured and brutalized until he lost consciousness. He would suffer incarceration in seven Nazi concentration camps and prisons before he could make his escape to Italy. After that, he could never again bear to live in Germany and remained in exile for the rest of his long life. He died in Rome in 1978, virtually forgotten by his own people. His obituary gravestone carries the following Latin lines: Amavi iustitiam odi iniquitatem Propterea morior in exsilio (“I loved justice and hated injustice Therefore I die in exile” - lines attributed to Pope Gregory VII as he lay on his deathbed in 1085 A.D.) On May 23, 1967, Yad Vashem decided to recognize Armin Wegner as Righteous Among the Nations.
At 106
AT 106, She’s One of the Oldest Holocaust Survivors on Record. Risa Igelfeld experienced unimaginable terror during the Holocaust. Her unwavering positive attitude has kept her alive and strong for over a century.
Auschwitz survivor Alina Dabrowska
AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR ALINA DABROWSKA, 96, shows her Auschwitz prisoner number tattoo at her home in Warsaw. She was sent to Auschwitz after she was caught by the Nazis helping the Allied forces in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Rob Schmitz/NPR
AWAITING DEATH IN BORYSLAV
AWAITING DEATH IN BORYSLAV, the historic facts are these: the Germans occupied Drohobycz in September 1939 and then left about a month later as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression pact. Their place was immediately occupied by the Soviets. The Soviet occupation marked significant changes for the Jewish population. Community institutions were closed, activity of the various political parties was prohibited, the refineries and Jewish oil companies were nationalized or closed. Jews were ordered to leave their private homes and large apartments. The community, Zionist, business and industrial leaders were forced out and exiled into Russia.
BAKING MATZAH
BEDRICH FRITTA
BEDRICH FRITTA, (Friedrich Taussig) (1906–1944) Rear Entrance, Theresienstadt Ghetto, 1941–1944. Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem.
BELA HAZAN
BELA HAZAN, top right, with her mother, brother and four sisters. Hazan's family all perished during the Holocaust. Photo is dated circa 1936. (credit: YOEL YAARI)
BESIM AND AISHE KADIU
BESIM AND AISHE KADIU. We lived in the village of Kavajë. In 1940, for a short time, our family sheltered two Greek Jews from the Italian fascists. Their names were Jakov and Sandra Batino, and they were brother and sister. They came to us from Tirana. Their father had been interned in a camp by the Italians. Later, in 1944, both Jakov and Sandra again sought shelter with us, fearful of the Nazis. Another family took their parents into hiding. Sandra, Jakov and I were close friends. We all lived in the same bedroom. I remember we cut a hole in the bars of our rear bedroom window so they could escape if the Germans discovered that they were hiding with us. We were constantly watching for German patrols. When the Germans began house-to-house searches, looking for Jews, my father took Jakov and Sandra to a remote village. We then supplied them with all their needs until the liberation. There was a great celebration in Kavajë. I remember the telegram we received from Jakov and Sandra and the joy of liberation. Soon they left for Tirana and then for Israel. I have so many wonderful letters and pictures from Israel. In 1992, I was invited there to receive the Righteous Among the Nations award on behalf of my family, and for a time I was the head of the Albanian-Israeli Friendship Association. Those years were fearful, but friendship overcame all fear. Story as told by Merushe Kadiu (daughter of Besim and Aishe Kadiu). On July 21, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Besim Kadiu and his wife, Aishe Kadiu, as Righteous Among the Nations.
Born Naftali Saleschutz
BORN NAFTALI SALESCHUTZ, Norman was the youngest of nine children in a devout Hasidic Jewish family. They lived in Kolbuszowa, Poland. In the Hasidic tradition, he wore a long black coat and shoulder-length earlocks. He first faced antisemitism in the second grade when his teacher cut one earlock off each Jewish boy.
BROTHERS HAMID AND XHEMAL VESELI
BROTHERS HAMID AND XHEMAL VESELI. Our deceased brother Refik was the first to be honored in Albania as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Now we both have been given the same honor for sheltering the family of Joseph Ben Joseph as well as the Mandil family. Under the Italian occupation Joseph worked for me [Hamid] in my clothing shop and Moshe Mandil worked in our brother Refik's photography studio. Both families were refugees from Yugoslavia. With the coming of the German occupation in 1943 both Jewish families were moved to our family home in Krujë. Xhemal walked the parents night and day for 36 hours to our family home. We dressed them as villagers. Two days later we transported the children to Krujë. During the day we hid the adults in a cave in the mountains near our village. The children played with other children in the village. The entire neighborhood knew we were sheltering Jews. There were other Jewish families that were being sheltered. One day the Germans were conducting a house-to-house search looking for a lost gun. They never found the gun and executed the soldier who lost it. We sheltered the Jews for nine months, until liberation. We lost all contact with the Ben Joseph family. They left for Yugoslavia too early and we fear that the retreating Germans may have killed them. The Mandil family also left for their home in Yugoslavia. Our brother Refik visited them, after the war, and studied photography with Moshe. The Mandil family subsequently immigrated to Israel. Four times we Albanians opened our doors. First to the Greeks during the famine of the World War I, then to the Italian soldiers stranded in our country after their surrender to the Allies, then the Jews during the German occupation and most recently to the Albanian refugees from Kosovo fleeing the Serbs. Only the Jews showed their gratitude. Story as told by Hamid Veseli and Xhemal Veseli. On May 23, 2004, Yad Vashem recognized the brothers Hamid and Xhemal Veseli as Righteous Among the Nations.
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