Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory : simplebooklet.com

PREFACE As we mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Europe and many thousands of Holocaust survivors from the brutal terror of Nazi Germany it is worth reflecting on the legacy and message of Holocaust survivors Survivors testimonies live on through their own words as a gift and as a warning By listening to the witnesses we too bear witness Survivors have the final say Hitler is gone the Nazis are defeated and the survivors continue to resist their attempt to wipe out memory speaking their words of truth and insight They tell their stories because they do not want us to wait they want action now for a better world We are grateful for their courage because their stories are foundational for our descendants to know the full turn of history We are working together with International March of the Living and with survivors today to preserve and tell their stories in new ways In years to come people will still be able to attend March of the Living and virtually meet them in the very places they lived and survived Patiently bravely survivors are traveling to their places of memory recounting home and hiding ghettos and concentration camps all recorded on 360 degree video They walk and talk stand and cry laugh and sing and enable us to witness history all while giving a face to hope They are our guide stars now and into the future To all the survivors who have given their testimonies thank you for sharing your lives with us Stephen D Smith PhD Finci Viterbi Executive Director USC Shoah Foundation UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education Left to right Stephen Smith Edward Mosberg First 360 Survivor Video Testimony USC Shoah Foundation Founder Steven Spielberg with Torah rescued from the Holocaust

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This special edition of Witness is dedicated to the memory of Cecile n e Storch Mosberg beloved wife of Edward Mosberg A survivor of the Holocaust Cesia together with her endlessly devoted husband Edward rebuilt their lives in America raised a loving family and contributed enormously to their community and far beyond Her legacy will forever be remembered by those whose lives she so deeply touched PASSING THE TORCH OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY LIBERATION 75 TO NEW GENERATIONS Global Gathering of Holocaust Survivors Descendants Educators and Friends Compiled by Eli Rubenstein with March of the Living LIBERATION75 SPECIAL EDITION LIBERATION75 with New Chapter of Liberation Stories Global Gathering of Holocaust Survivors Descendants Educators and Friends

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title Witness passing the torch of Holocaust memory to new generations compiled by Eli Rubenstein with March of the Living Names Rubenstein Eli 1959 compiler March of the Living Organization compiler Description Second edition Identifiers Canadiana print 20200206745 Canadiana ebook 20200206753 ISBN 9781772601497 hardcover ISBN 9781772601503 softcover ISBN 9781772601510 EPUB Subjects LCSH March of the Living Organization LCSH Holocaust Jewish 1939 1945 LCSH Holocaust Jewish 1939 1945 Personal narratives LCSH Holocaust Jewish 1939 1945 Pictorial works LCSH Holocaust survivors Travel Poland LCSH Jewish youth Travel Poland Classification LCC D804 3 R82 2020 DDC 940 53 18 dc23 Copyright 2015 by Eli Rubenstein with March of the Living Second edition copyright 2020 by Eli Rubenstein with March of the Living Edited by Carolyn Jackson Copyedited by Phuong Truong Designed by Melissa Kaita Printed and bound in Canada The views or opinons expressed in this book and the context in which the images are used do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of nor imply approval or endorsement by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l Ontario Published by Second Story Press 20 Maud Street Suite 401 Toronto ON M5V 2M5 www secondstorypress ca Cover photo Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg and his granddaughter Jordana Karger light a memorial torch in Auschwitz Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 2016 March of the Living

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TABLE OF CONTENTS vi Words from Their Holinesses Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II 1 Dear Reader 3 Introduction 6 CHAPTER ONE What Happened And to Whom 14 34 CHAPTER TWO Where It Took Place and Who Let It Happen CHAPTER THREE Who Resisted And How 56 CHAPTER FOUR We Who Survived 74 CHAPTER FIVE Survivors and Students Passing the Torch of Memory 100 CHAPTER SIX The Commitment of a New Generation of Witnesses 116 CHAPTER SEVEN Liberation A Complex Legacy 132 Faces of the March 142 The March of the Living 144 Afterword Remarks by Steven Spielberg 145 Photo Credits and Acknowledgments INTERACTIVE BOOK View Survivor Testimony from the Archives of USC Shoah Foundation and March of the Living To Scan and View Videos Download the free Digimarc Discover app on your smartphone or other device and scan images that carry the blue flame icon to unlock exclusive stories from survivors of the Holocaust

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KEEP AN OPEN HEART POPE FRANCIS A BLESSING FROM POPE JOHN PAUL II Camila Gorban Acosta Francisco I ve just been on the March of the Living What can we teenagers do to prevent another genocide The first official Vatican commemoration of the Shoah took place in the Vatican on April 7 1994 under the direction of Polish born Pope John Paul II The event was held on Holocaust Remembrance Day the same day as the March of the Living Among the young Marchers was Canadian Jennifer Shneer whose father had an audience with the Pope that same day When I met the Pope her father recalled I mentioned that my daughter was in Auschwitz that very day on the March of the Living The Pope smiled and said I know all about the March of the Living God bless your daughter and God bless the March of the Living Pope Francis Work for peace Unite with people from different cultures and religions Keep an open heart Don t discriminate Welcome and understand others May God bless you Camila Gorban Acosta with Pope Francis Vatican City 16 year old Camila Gorban Acosta of Buenos Aires Argentina took part in the 2018 March of the Living Pope John Paul II was the first Pope to establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel and to ask forgiveness for the church s treatment of Jews over the last 2 000 years Edith Zierer was a starving 13 year old Polish Jewish girl from Krak w who fled the Nazi German camp at Cz stochowa after its liberation by the Soviet army in January 1945 Edith reached an old train station and sat there for two days without food or water until a stranger a young man arrived bringing her tea and two pieces of bread with cheese He covered her with his cloak to protect her from the cold and then carried her on his back for three kilometers until they found a train to Krak w There she was taken in by a relative and eventually made her way to Israel The young man who rescued her was Karol Wojtyla later known as none other than Pope John Paul II

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DEAR READER When the March of the Living program was founded over three decades ago little did its founders realize the exceptional impact the program would have in the ensuing years Since that first journey in 1988 more than 260 000 people presidents and prime ministers community leaders and religious figures teachers and chaperones students and survivors have joined this life changing experience All are to be commended for traveling to Auschwitz Birkenau the place that symbolizes the very abyss of humanity to commit to building a world free of hate prejudice and genocide Indeed many have returned to their homes to become important agents for positive change within their communities But of course it is the Holocaust survivors the voices of our past and the students the custodians of our future who deserve the most praise We have the utmost admiration for the survivors who courageously share their difficult stories even though each telling brings back memories of a dark era beyond our imagination to comprehend We are forever grateful to them for entrusting their stories to the next generation And to the young students thank you for agreeing to carry the torch of memory for the survivors to be the witnesses for the witnesses As you leaf through the pages of this book please notice this there is not one poem not one quote not one statement that promotes anger hatred or revenge not one expression of bitterness This is a true testament of the character of the survivors and students who take part in this remarkable journey Anne Frank taught us How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world As you observe the images and the texts from over 30 years of the March of the Living we ask each one of you to decide how you are going to change the world how you are going to honor the legacy of the survivors Take a 1

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moment to pause and reflect and make a silent pledge to yourself to do your part in the fight for justice and equality And after you finish reading the work please continue to carry with you the message of the March of the Living a message that proclaims that the world must finally rid itself of all forms of anti Semitism and racism that all human beings deserve dignity and equality and that a tragedy like the Holocaust must never be allowed to happen again at any time in any place to any people Phyllis Greenberg Heideman President Dr Shmuel Rosenman Chairman International March of the Living THE MARCH OF THE LIVING A BRIEF HISTORY Over the years the program has grown exponentially attracting participants from many different countries and more diverse populations and age groups making it the largest program of its kind in the world with over 260 000 alumni Today the March includes young and old survivors and students educators and world leaders members of many faiths and backgrounds all marching together in memory of the victims of Nazi genocide and against prejudice intolerance and hate As it evolved the March of the Living in Poland also broadened its focus from exclusively concentrating on the Holocaust These elements include celebrating Jewish life in Poland and Europe before the Holocaust connecting with the contemporary Polish Jewish community establishing dialogue with Polish students meeting with Polish Righteous among the Nations and learning about other victims of Nazi Germany s genocidal actions during WWII The March of the Living was founded in 1988 during a period of rising anti Semitism and Holocaust denial across the globe In Israel the initiative was led by politician Abraham Hirschson educator Dr Shmuel Rosenman and attorney Baruch Adler a child of a Holocaust survivor They were assisted by Jewish communal leaders and philanthropists from the United States Alvin Schiff Gene Greenzweig and Joseph Wilf the first North American Chair of the March of the Living France Prosper Elkouby and Canada Walter Hess Shlomo Shimon Rabbi Irwin Witty and Eli Rubenstein Initially the March of the Living was comprised mainly of a relatively small number of Jewish high school students and teachers mostly from North America France and Israel 2

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INTRODUCTION In the history of humanity replete with wars massacres and wanton destruction the Holocaust stands out among the darkest stains on our morally fractured past In the first half of the 20th century German achievements in music art literature philosophy and science epitomized the height of Western civilization yet this was the nation that singled out for eradication an entire people in the most horrifying manner And it very nearly succeeded But Nazi Germany did not target Jews alone Members of other minorities and innocent populations Poles Roma Soviet POWs the disabled homosexuals and many other groups were viciously persecuted or slaughtered en masse Since the fall of Communism in 1989 more than 260 000 young people accompanied by Holocaust survivors have traveled to Poland and other parts of Europe on programs like March of the Living and March of Remembrance and Hope to study the history of the Holocaust and other WWII genocides perpetrated by Nazi Germany on millions of innocent victims Anne Frank one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust wrote while still in hiding In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart To which pre war camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim responded If all men are good at heart there never really was an Auschwitz How does one comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust How can we understand the appalling cruelty that Nazi Germany and its collaborators exhibited How do we preserve our young people s innocent belief in the goodness of humanity in the grim face of Auschwitz Should we In fact does the Holocaust not teach us that humanity is inherently evil And if humanity is so utterly hopeless so beyond salvation why should we care one whit about each other We may never have a definitive answer as to why the Holocaust took place But we do know how to respond The answers resound in the pages of this book 3

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The photos and quotes in this book emanate from two similar but distinct programs March of the Living and March of Remembrance and Hope The March of the Living brings high school students the majority of whom are Jewish from all over the world to Poland to visit once thriving sites of Jewish life and culture as well as Holocaust related sites On Holocaust Remembrance Day the students march from Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of all victims of Nazi genocide and against prejudice intolerance and hate Some groups travel to Israel after their experience in Poland The March of Remembrance and Hope is aimed at university students of all religions and backgrounds Its purpose is to teach about the dangers of intolerance through the study of the Holocaust and other WWII genocides The trip includes a short visit to Germany followed by a longer visit to Poland including many of the same sites as March of the Living On both programs Holocaust survivors share the memory of their wartime experiences with the young people in the very places where they unfolded Image after image story after story statement after statement attest to the commitment of both survivors and students to build a world far different from the one Hitler sought to shape The Nazis wanted to build a world founded on hatred We will build a world based on love The Nazis wanted to use race religion and culture to divide people We will accept and celebrate the diverse religions races and cultures that populate our world The Nazis championed brute force and power Our weapons will be kindness compassion and empathy The Nazis descended to levels of inhumanity never before imagined We will honor our common humanity There is a solution to the divide between Anne Frank and Bruno Bettelheim Anne Frank one may contend was right for the most part The majority of people are good at heart but that is not nearly enough We must also act stand up make a difference Otherwise we become accomplices to the victimizers and ultimately enablers of Auschwitz The Holocaust happened because of its twisted and evil perpetrators and because most of the world s good people did not stand up tall enough or soon enough To listen to the survivors and to act upon what they have learned this is the commitment of the young people who embark on the challenging journeys reflected throughout this book By doing so the listeners become the tellers and in the words of one young student after hearing a survivor s story the bearers of their memories Eli Rubenstein 4

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T ragically genocide has been perpetrated by the human race since the beginning of recorded history The term was first coined by Raphael Lemkin a Polish Jew whose many family members were murdered during the Holocaust In his younger years Lemkin was troubled by the intentional mass murder of Armenians by the Turks in 1915 and later by the slaughter of Christian Assyrians by Iraqis in 1933 After painstakingly documenting the brutal Nazi treatment of conquered populations throughout Europe in WWII Lemkin dedicated his life to having the word genocide accepted and to the need for the world community to ban its practice With the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933 human rights became its foremost victim Many groups were targeted government opposition trade unionists communists homosexuals Roma and the disabled but none were more vigorously pursued than the Jewish people who alone were ultimately subjected to the goal of total annihilation CLASSICAL VS MODERN ANTI SEMITISM I t is important to distinguish among the various forms of classical anti Semitism or anti Judaism that existed over the centuries modern anti Semitism more racial in tone and Nazi racial ideology Classical anti Semitism was often based on theological positions cultural stereotypes fear of the Other economic competition superstitious beliefs or combinations of the above While these forms of anti Semitism were never pleasant and often resulted in violence and even murder the goal was never the complete annihilation of the Jewish people Further the Jews usually had two escape routes conversion or expulsion Nazi racial ideology built itself upon the more modern 19th century anti Semitism with its additional emphasis on alleged racial differences To the Nazis the Jews were doubly cursed Their blood was tainted and their values were emblematic of everything wrong in the world equality morality democracy The Nazis made it their mission to rescue the world from the perils of Western Civilization Destroy the Jewish people and everything that Judaism represents such as the theories of Einstein and Freud and the world will be safe again While initially this meant total removal of Jews from society it developed into the goal of their total removal from the world The Nazis dramatically changed anti Semitism into the belief that the redemption of the world relied on the 7

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extermination of Jews from the face of the earth Only extermination would do While the Nazis did not invent racist anti Semitism they combined ancient and modern forms of anti Semitism with their Nazi ideology to the point where they viewed the Jews as a dangerous race that threatened the existence of Germany and of the world To the German Nazis the logical extension of their racial ideology was eventually the Final Solution whereby they forced large numbers of Jews into ghettos organized mass murdering death squads such as the Einsatzgruppen and other police battalions and army units built a network of death concentration and labor camps throughout Europe and then transported the Jews to these camps where most of them perished In addition to their war against the Jews the Nazis committed war crimes against numerous other groups An estimated two million Soviet POWs 275 000 disabled and up to 220 000 Roma were murdered by the Nazis Other persecuted groups included homosexuals political leftists Jehovah s Witnesses and many others with whom the Nazis found fault for various reasons THE MOST EXTREME FORM OF GENOCIDE The Holocaust according to one writer has become the master narrative for suffering shaping discussions about every present conflict over genocide and human rights C ertainly at first glance there are aspects that seem to make the Holocaust stand out even though each genocide is unique The Holocaust is uniquely unique as some have described it not just because of the staggering number of victims but also because of the machinery of death created by the Nazis in pursuit of their goal They used modern technology to create assembly lines of death where the raw materials were Jewish men women and children and the finished product was ash and side products of plundered Jewish possessions and gold teeth hair etc The terrifying efficiency of this Nazi machine cannot but cause one to shudder and to recognize the level of ultimate evil to which humanity can descend Conceptually too the Holocaust was different from all other genocides In mass murder large numbers of people are killed by a government or other force in genocide mass murder takes place on an ongoing basis with the goal of destroying the culture and or national existence of another people The Holocaust however was mass 8

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murder plus genocide plus the attempt to annihilate the existence of an entire group of people and obliterate it forever What the Jews faced at the hands of the Nazis was unprecedented in human history What makes the Holocaust unique is the combination of three conditions it was driven by ideological rather than pragmatic land resources etc reasons it was global in reach and the intended target was the entire Jewish people from infancy to old age The Nazis were looking for Jews for all Jews in the words of eminent Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer As Dr David Silberklang notes The very goal itself a state plan to annihilate an entire people without exception not to leave a single Jew alive under any circumstances is what makes the Holocaust unique When one understands this one comes face to face with the utter irrationality of the Holocaust which maintained that the very redemption of the world relied upon the extermination of every last Jew to finally and totally rid the world of this contemptible virus No course of action of any kind by the victim supplication conversion bribery slavery or exile could ever suffice or placate the Nazi agenda No other mass murder or genocide was ever conceived or implemented on the basis of such an absolutist worldview In light of this it has been argued that on the continuum the Holocaust is the most extreme form of genocide and should be the starting point of any attempt to understand genocide not because Holocaust victims suffered more than others but because of its unprecedented and total nature The Holocaust perhaps more than any other genocide teaches us warns us that lacking restraint humanity s potential for extreme evil and cruelty is virtually without limit beyond our worst fears and our wildest imagination Of course the deaths of victims of mass murder genocide and the Holocaust are all unjust and must be mourned by the world community As humanitarian Lieutenant General Rom o Dallaire former Canadian senator reminds us No human is more human than any other The victims of the various genocides throughout history may have perished for different reasons and under different circumstances and this indeed is worthy of examination but their lives were equally infinitely and immeasurably sacred Our study of all genocides should lead us to the acceptance of the fundamental equality of every member of the human family their right to life justice freedom and dignity and the resolve to live together in peace 9

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W hile persecution of the Jews began in 1933 in Germany with Hitler s assumption of power the mass murder of large numbers of Jews did not begin until the onset of WWII and Nazi Germany s occupation of much of Europe With a few notable exceptions the Nazis in every occupied European country and every country controlled by Nazi allied regimes targeted Jews and those who assisted them along with numerous minorities ethnic and religious groups and many others they deemed inferior or a threat The Nazis murdered their victims the largest number of whom were Jewish in a variety of ways After invading Poland many of the country s Jews were herded into ghettos where they awaited eventual transportation to slave labor or death camps Ghettoization followed in many other countries invaded by Nazi Germany mostly in the Soviet Union The ghetto Jews were often rounded up and shot in random actions or died of disease or malnutrition From July 1941 before the death camps assumed the role for the vast majority of murders the Nazis sent mobile killing units called Einsatzgruppen into various parts of eastern Europe Together with German Austrian SS police and military as well as tens of thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of local collaborators by war s end they had slaughtered approximately two million Jews in town squares forests and pits often burying their victims alive In a vast array of forced labor camps numbering some 42 500 at last count Jews and other prisoners were often forced to work under extreme conditions hundreds of thousands perished from arbitrary executions disease starvation or from being worked to death According to the most recent research reported in the New York Times the forms of Nazi incarceration across Europe included 30 000 slave labor camps 1 150 Jewish ghettos 980 concentration camps 1 000 prisoner of war camps 500 brothels filled with sex slaves and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm performing forced abortions Germanizing prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers 15

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MASS EXTERMINATION CAMPS At the infamous Wannsee Conference held in Berlin January 20 1942 the Nazis formally agreed upon the establishment of a number of camps in occupied Poland whose primary purpose was mass extermination through the use of poisonous gas The estimated numbers of murders at each camp are chilling Auschwitz Birkenau 1 1 million Treblinka more than 870 000 Operation Reinhard Belzec 500 000 Operation Reinhard Chelmno 300 000 Sobibor 250 000 Operation Reinhard Majdanek 80 000 In each case the vast majority of those sent to the gas chambers were Jewish Jews were shipped in to the camps from every European country conquered by the Nazis or allied to them Austria Belgium Bulgaria Czechoslovakia Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Soviet Union including Belarus and Ukraine and Yugoslavia The Death Marches that took place toward the end of WWII forced long columns of prisoners under heavy guard to walk over vast distances under intolerable conditions The marches began in the summer of 1944 and continued right up to the Third Reich s last days the final Death March took place on May 7 the day before Germany surrendered in most places to the Allies Approximately 750 000 prisoners almost half of whom were Jewish were forced on to the Death Marches and some 250 000 of those Jewish prisoners perished on the marches between the summer of 1944 and May of 1945 Of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust approximately half were murdered in the death camps two million or more were executed by the Einsatzgruppen and other Nazi killing units across Europe and their collaborators and the remaining approximately one million were killed in ghettos slave labor camps on Death Marches and by other methods As was noted above the Holocaust took place in virtually every country in Europe occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany Notable exceptions were countries such as Albania and Denmark where most of the Jewish population was saved through the heroic actions of local citizenry While Bulgaria did protect its own citizens it deported more than 11 000 Thrace and Macedonian Jews to Treblinka 18 of its total Jewish population In northern Africa in Morocco which was under the control of the Nazi allied Vichy government 16

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during much of WWII King Mohammed V protected his Jewish citizens from deportation and certain death and refused to implement racist laws issued by the Vichy government Yet in far too many countries in occupied Europe not only were the local populations indifferent to the plight of Nazi victims but they also collaborated with Nazi Germany s murderous policies THE ROLE OF THE WEST Just before the outbreak of WWII an elderly Jewish man walks into a German travel agency hoping to flee Hitler s grasp The travel agent hands him a globe Where would you like to go he asks him gently But no matter where the old man points the travel agent says the same thing Sorry they don t take Jews Finally in exasperation the man looks up at the travel agent and asks Excuse me maybe you have another globe Tragically while the Nazis carried on their wholesale slaughter in occupied Europe the Western world also turned a deaf ear The United States and Canada shut their doors tightly not even filling the small quotas their own immigration rules had allowed for European refugees clamoring to reach their shores The callous indifference had begun in the pre war period before the wholesale slaughter of European Jews took place which began in earnest in the summer of 1941 In June of 1939 both Canada and the United States turned away the SS St Louis which was crammed with German Jewish refugees trying to escape Hitler s viciously anti Semitic Germany The ship was forced to return to Europe Britain France Belgium and Holland allowed them in where many of the passengers were subsequently murdered during the Holocaust Also in 1939 the United States Congress rejected the Wagner Rogers Bill which would have admitted 20 000 Jewish children from Germany Laura Delano Houghteling President Roosevelt s cousin and wife of the US Commissioner of Immigration noted in her opposition of the bill that 20 000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20 000 ugly adults 17

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Anne Frank was one of those charming children who could have been saved by the passage of this bill F C Blair Canada s Minister of Immigration at the time said that Jews trying to enter Canada reminded him of his father s farm during feeding time with all the hogs trying to get into the trough at the same time After WWII ended and the full extent of the tragedy visited upon European Jewry was known to all a senior Canadian immigration official was asked about how many Jews would be considered for entry into Canada His now infamous response None is too many The Holocaust that took place in Nazi occupied Europe was for the most part initiated and implemented by Nazi Germany Yet the Holocaust was also enabled by the active collaboration of local European populations and the callous indifference of Western countries JUST LIKE ME Those victims of man s hatred were children just like me Those who once had normal lives were children just like me Those one and a half million innocent souls were children just like me Yes those children of the Holocaust were children just like me And you who killed my neighbors my friends and my family You too were children just like me Jody Kasner 16 March of the Living 1990 excerpted 18

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The Auschwitz camp complex built on the site of former army barracks in the Silesian district of Poland consisted of Auschwitz I Main Camp Auschwitz II Auschwitz Birkenau and Auschwitz III Monowitz and the subcamps Auschwitz I was constructed to hold Polish political prisoners who began to arrive in May 1940 The first extermination of prisoners took place in September 1941 and Auschwitz II Birkenau went on to become a major site of Operation Reinhard the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question From early 1942 until late 1944 transport trains delivered Jews from all over occupied Europe to the camp s gas chambers where they were killed with the pesticide Zyklon B At least 1 1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz almost 90 percent of them Jewish approximately one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at the camp More than one third of all Jews murdered in Auschwitz Birkenau were of Hungarian origin the largest of any single group In mid 1944 and less than a year to the end of the war within a period of only 10 weeks approximately 400 000 Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz Birkenau the majority of whom went directly to the gas chambers AUSCHWITZ Students visiting Auschwitz left roses on the barbed wire which was electrified to prevent prisoner escapes 20

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BIRKENAU In the spring of 1943 the SS completed four new crematoria in Birkenau Although constructed to burn two corpses at once in practice however according to testimony by inmates and by Auschwitz Camp Commander Rudolf H ss this number was often exceeded At times in the summer of 1944 during the height of the destruction of Hungarian Jews more than 9 000 people were killed daily At these times the incineration capacity of the ovens no longer sufficed The duty of the Sonderkommando a special detachment of mainly Jewish prisoners was to remove bodies from the gas chambers and operate the crematoria Women prisoners who worked in a munitions factory smuggled gunpowder into the camp and passed it to the Sonderkommando for use in the uprising This is all that remains of Birkenau Crematorium No 4 destroyed by Jewish Sonderkommando in the uprising of October 7 1944 21

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The mausoleum at Majdanek was erected in 1969 and contains ashes and remains of cremated victims that had been collected into a mound after the liberation of the camp by the Soviet Army in 1944 I Have Found My Parents Grave Anna Heilman was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the death camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz Along with her sister Ester Wajcblum she helped smuggle the gunpowder into Auschwitz Birkenau used to destroy Crematorium No 4 Ester was executed less than two weeks before the evacuation of Auschwitz and barely three weeks before its liberation After her first trip back to Poland since the end of World War II Anna wrote to the 40 students who had accompanied her saying we came to the collective grave of the ashes a round mound of ashes that were carefully scooped to rest in one place under a protective dome of gray stone What I felt there was relief I have found my parents grave I told the students but I suddenly felt that it was not me talking that I was surrounded by thousands of faces smiling at me pushing me talking to the students through my voice saying Tell them and thank them for coming here for remembering us and for never forgetting Anna Heilman dedicates plaque in sister s memory Auschwitz 1994 March of the Living 26

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FROM ONE WHO HAS TASTED ASHES Long I stood staring at the mound numb death is not a concept not an event it has a shape mass dimensions So I stood and stared mouth agape here is death in this pile of bones and ashes It is cold the wind blows I cannot feel the cold not on the outside it happens quite natural wind ashes a strong gust I squint my eyes something in there they start to tear then a taste of grit in my mouth FALLING It is so hard to be coherent about Majdanek It is still all too raw for me to worry about punctuation and sense Some days it would seem as if I had never gone Others like today I neglect my work to read books about the Shoah to go over my pictures and to cry It seems that if Majdanek is real school and society as a whole should not be what happened during the Shoah wasn t okay and there are so few words that we can use to comfort each other Our language rings hollow and when we try to form sentences we detract from the feeling of the shoes that we caressed through the grates and from the coarseness of the soil at Treblinka as it ran through our fingers I have given up any pretense of understanding All that I know is this at Majdanek I was terrified of falling into the ashes Excerpt from an essay by Lisa Gruschcow 15 27 how can one swallow when one has tasted ashes how can one dare to spit them out Mark Charendoff March of the Living 1990

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TREBLINKA From July 1942 through September 1943 Treblinka operated as an extermination camp The facility was built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland near the village of Treblinka northeast of Warsaw The camp consisted of Treblinka I and Treblinka II Treblinka I was a forced labor Arbeitslager where more than half of its 20 000 inmates died from summary executions hunger disease and mistreatment Treblinka II was designed as a death factory where the Germans killed approximately 870 000 Jews making it the deadliest of all the extermination camps in the Operation Reinhard effort Hungarian Holocaust survivor Irving Roth enters the memorial to the victims of the Treblinka death camp located in northeastern Poland 30

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SO WRONG I want the trees to break and fall The grass to wither and die I want the sky to turn black as night The sun to go and hide I want the air to be heavy and thick The birds to stop singing their song I want the stones to turn into people To find out why humans went so wrong Daniella Weber March of the Living 1992 A student searches for an ancestral town at the Treblinka Memorial The Memorial suggestive of a cemetery is a field of 17 000 jagged stones 700 of which bear the names of Jewish communities in Poland obliterated during the Holocaust 31 ALL AROUND ME ARE STONES All around me are stones but I do not feel scared I feel comforted assured that what I m doing is right It is meant to stand as a message for the world Atrocities are atrocities no matter how many people were involved We have come to remember To mark it To show that even though somebody many attempted to do us in still we have come back We ve come back to this place to show the world that harmful things cannot go unnoticed It has been noticed and will be marked Eliyanah Delicate 16 March of the Living 1990

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BELZEC Operation Reinhard the code name given to the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question was the plan to murder all Jews within their General Government territory of Poland Operation Reinhard marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust with the introduction of extermination camps Be zec Sobib r and Treblinka More than 1 5 million people virtually all of whom were Jews were murdered at these sites between December 1941 and November 1943 Belzec the first of the extermination camps built was situated about a kilometer south of the local Belzec railroad station in the Lublin district of Poland and operated from March 17 1942 to the end of December 1942 The Nazis razed the camp in an effort to erase all evidence of the extermination center s existence In constructing the Belzec memorial completed in 2004 forensic scientists determined the layout of the original camp and the most appropriate layout for a memorial The pathway shown at right is thought to be the original camp road since it was the only earth devoid of human remains 32

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I Miss My Mommy and My Little Brother Anita Ekstein Holocaust survivor and hidden child visited the Belzec death camp memorial where her mother Ettel was murdered The names of the camp s victims are inscribed on the memorial wall 33 In the Holocaust archives there is a letter written in 1943 by a Jewish girl by the name of Deborah Katz She was nine years old when she and her family were loaded into cattle trains destined for the death camp of Belzec Her parents managed to pry open a window of the car and threw the child out hoping that a miracle would happen and she would be saved A Catholic nun happened to pass by and found the injured child She took her to the convent hid her among the sisters and nursed her back to health The child was in comparative safety and she had a good chance to survive One morning the nuns woke up and found a letter on Deborah s bed This is what the child wrote It s bright daylight but there is darkness around me The sun is shining but there is no warmth coming from it I miss my Mommy and my little brother Moses who always played with me I can t stand being without them any longer and I want to go where they are The following morning Deborah Katz was put by the Gestapo on the next trainload Destination the gas chambers of Belzec Miles Lerman survivor Opening of Belzec Memorial June 3 2004

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T he horror and scale of the atrocities that took place during WWII often mask another aspect of this history the heroic resistance that so many showed in the face of unimaginable cruelty During the students encounter with the Holocaust in Europe they hear the stories of resistance and meet with some of those who risked their lives to save Jews and when possible with WWII veterans who liberated the camps where the Nazis imprisoned the survivors Why must this other side be told So that the entire picture of the Holocaust is shown So that the study of the Holocaust does not cause us to give up completely on humanity So that these courageous people who resisted can serve as role models in our own lives Spiritual resistance throughout the war was shown by millions of the Nazis victims who displayed remarkable courage in adhering to their faith and values From Jehovah s Witnesses who refused to join Hitler s war and courageous church leaders such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who spoke out against Nazi policies at the cost of their own lives to Hitler s Jewish victims who maintained their faith and dignity even during the most difficult of times all refused to let their spirits be crushed in the face of overwhelming brutality Young girls and women like Jewish Anne Frank in the Netherlands and Christian Krystyna Wituska in Poland wrote words in hiding and in prison that reflected an unbroken spirit and a moral conviction and love for humanity that has outlived the hate filled Nazi proclamations The Polish Jewish doctor Janusz Korczak refused to abandon his 200 young orphans even after numerous offers of help from Polish friends outside the Warsaw Ghetto Instead when the Nazi deportation order arrived he led a march through the streets of Warsaw with his orphans clutching their favorite toys and their handmade flags to the waiting train that took them to Treblinka where they met their fate with 870 000 other Jews The very stones of the street wrote Yiddish novelist Yehoshua Perle wept at the sight of the procession Physical resistance came from both partisans and liberators In fact there were large numbers of armed uprisings against the Nazis throughout Europe Most had little chance of success given the overwhelming military might and brutality of the Nazi enemy 35

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On April 19 1943 the remaining Jews trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto launched the heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Germans had planned to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto in three days but the stubborn ghetto fighters held out for four weeks Thirteen thousand Jews were killed in the ghetto during the uprising many of whom were burnt alive The Warsaw Uprising which began in August of 1944 was the largest single military revolt initiated by European resistance fighters during World War II The courageous Polish resistance led by the Armia Krajowa Polish Home Army fought for 63 days with almost no outside assistance until they were crushed by the Nazis In addition to thousands of military casualties some 200 000 Polish civilians died the majority during mass executions and some 250 000 were exiled from the city By the end of the war more than three quarters of the city had been destroyed Throughout Europe Jewish partisan and resistance units displayed remarkable courage in resisting the enemy in the face of the overwhelming military superiority of the Nazi war machine An estimated 30 000 Jewish men and women served as partisans in the forests in Poland alone Armed Jewish resistance took place in approximately 60 ghettos three major concentration death camps and 18 forced labor camps From outside occupied Europe the Allied armies fought to liberate Europe from the deathly grip of Nazi Germany In the latter stages of the war with the Soviets approaching from the east and the other Allied forces from the west and south Nazi Germany s hold over Europe began to crumble When these forces encountered the labor camps and death camps they came across thousands upon thousands of corpses and emaciated prisoners who seemed more dead than alive Indeed many perished in the immediate days following their liberation as a result of the years of torture and deprivation they endured Those who did survive lived the rest of their days with a feeling of deep gratitude for those who liberated them at the last moment from the jaws of death often referring to them as angels in their post Holocaust memoirs For the sake of historical accuracy of course one must distinguish between the various forms of physical resistance The national movements such as the Polish Home Army often rife with anti Semitism had a different motivation from the Jews in their fight against the Nazis just as the Allies did Their impetus was not to save European Jewry but to defeat Hitler Further uprisings by Jews against overwhelming odds and abandoned by the entire world are not comparable to organized armies fighting with the support of their governments and fellow citizens 36

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As well individuals who are now called Righteous Among the Nations risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from murder at the hands of the Nazis Today more than 25 000 names of the women and men who have been given this honorific title by the State of Israel appear in Yad Vashem Israel s national Holocaust Museum The rescuers hailed from every country in Europe and from every possible background They were young and old Christian Muslim believers atheists society s aristocrats and humble peasant farmers All of them risked life and limb sometimes for years to save thousands of Jews who were often complete and utter strangers These are people such as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who along with other diplomats such as Carl Lutz Friedrich Born Angelo Rotta and Giorgio Perlasca saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews and then disappeared into the Soviet Gulag the German factory owner Oskar Schindler who boldly rescued more than 1 000 Jews destined for the death camps and the Polish nurse and underground worker Irena Sendler who together with fellow Polish underground members smuggled Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto to live in monasteries and with Polish families under assumed identities I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning regardless of religion and nationality Sendler said Sendler was part of Zegota the Polish Council to Aid Jews an underground resistance effort that helped thousands to find places of safety in occupied Poland The Righteous Among the Nations displayed courage bravery and altruism beyond belief They took enormous risks and even sacrificed their lives to save others It has been aptly stated that the Righteous Among the Nations not only saved Jews during the Holocaust they also saved the very reputation of humanity Dr Naomi Azrieli reminds us that we must remember this part of the Holocaust story as well No one survived the Holocaust without the help of another It could have been a hiding place an extra ration a pair of shoes even a kind gesture It is these acts of nobility we must remember along with the all too familiar acts of Nazi horror and cruelty and the willing participation of their collaborators Our young people must be given hope for the future and an understanding that evil was indeed resisted during the darkest of times and can still be confronted today 37

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TO EACH OF THEM And to each of them I will give a name and a monument To every man to every woman to every child And to each of them I will give a name and a monument To those who fought And to those who had no way to fight To those who sang on their way to their deaths And to those who were silent To those who found God in the camps And to those who declared God dead And to each of them I will give a name and a monument On April 19 1943 a small band of Jewish fighters launched the heroic Warsaw Ghetto Uprising holding off the mighty German army for almost a month Ultimately the Nazis defeated them but only after burning down the entire ghetto The Rapoport Memorial in Warsaw features sculpted images of the ghetto fighters led by Mordechai Anielewicz who fell during the uprising 39 To those who went hungry so their children could eat And to those who stole their children s bread in the night To those who displayed the strength of the human spirit And to those who let the pain overtake them And to each of them I will give a name and a monument To those who were there When every bite of bread was a decision When every step could cause death To the heroes and to the non heroes The strong and the weak To those who were superhuman And to those who like you and I Were merely most importantly Human Aviva Goldberg 17 March of the Living 1990

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RESISTANCE THROUGH KRYSTYNA WITUSKA 1920 1944 A Young Polish Heroine ANNE FRANK 1929 1945 I am First a Human Being Anne Frank perhaps the most well known victim of the Holocaust was a talented and sensitive writer She and her family were hidden by their Dutch friends until they were betrayed and sent to Auschwitz Birkenau Her entire family with the exception of her father perished in the Holocaust Anne died in Bergen Belsen in March of 1945 just a few months before the war s end at the young age of 15 Her diary later called The Diary of a Young Girl was published after the war and has sold millions of copies and been translated into many languages I Still Believe that People are Good at Heart Krystyna Wituska was born near Lodz Poland in 1920 After the Nazis evicted her family from their home she came to Warsaw with her mother and saw firsthand the brutal treatment of its Jewish population She later fell in love with Karol Szapira a Jewish boy hiding in Warsaw In 1941 she joined the Polish underground but was arrested in 1942 and sent to the Alt Moabit Prison in Berlin She continued to write from prison to her family and to Karol who was shot by the Nazis in 1943 a fact her family kept from her Krystyna Wituska was beheaded on June 26 1944 in Halle Saale near Leipzig Today a monument in her memory stands in Halle Saale initiated by Irmgard Sinner the daughter of Werner Lueben the officer who sentenced Wituska to death How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world It s really a wonder that I haven t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart On the day that I die I want to die for freedom and justice and for all humanity and not just for my Poland I am first a human being and then a Pole Consciousness of a universal humanity will comfort me But please don t misunderstand It is not that I don t love my country but I would relinquish my country s objectives if they were not also good for all of humanity No one has ever become poor by giving I hear the approaching thunder that one day will destroy us too I feel the suffering of millions And yet when I look up at the sky I somehow feel that this cruelty too shall end and that peace and tranquility will return once again If you have a good understanding of life you know how to accept death The important thing is to maintain one s human dignity to the end 40

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WRITING HANNAH SENESH 1921 1944 Blessed is the Heart with the Strength to Stop Beating for Honor s Sake The poet Hannah Senesh emigrated from Hungary to Palestine in 1939 after experiencing anti Semitism as a child in her native country She lived on a kibbutz on the seashore near Caesarea When World War II broke out she and other Jewish residents of Palestine volunteered to fight the Nazis She was trained by the British as a paratrooper and was dropped behind Nazi lines in Europe The Nazis captured tortured and executed the 23 year old on November 7 1944 She left us a remarkable legacy of poetry Krystyna Wituska Stars There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth though they have long disappeared There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark They light the way for humanity Blessed is the Match Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart Blessed is the heart with the strength to stop beating for honor s sake Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame Anne Frank Oh Lord My God Oh Lord my God I pray that these things never end The sand and the sea The rush of the waters The crash of the heavens The prayer of the heart 41 Hannah Senesh

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So The World Does Not Forget Bronka Krygier a Jewish partisan during the Holocaust traveled with students on several March of the Living trips before her death in 2010 After the 2004 March of the Living she said To see the death camps to touch them reminds me of the tragedy of my people and the Six Million who should not have died who should not have been murdered Those we must remember the children must be witness to the truth of this past The tragic lessons and legacy must be passed on to the children so they can be watchful so they can be certain the world does not forget Bronka was caught several times by the Nazis On one occasion she was lined up in front of a firing squad but was freed by a group of partisans at the last moment On another occasion she was accused by a Polish boy of being a Jew But Bronka kept arguing she was Polish and the Nazis themselves were not certain At one point in the interrogation which was conducted in German then translated into Polish the Nazi officer said Nu Chana retz neisht kayn Yiddish So Chana do you not speak any Yiddish at all Bronka almost fell for the trap but at the last moment she held herself back and said in Polish Please translate At that point one of the Nazis said She might not be Jewish but just look at her nose Bronka stared back and then pointed to the Nazi officer s nose which apparently was just as big as hers and said And him What about his nose Bronka s quick retort may have saved her life but not some of her teeth The enraged officer took his gun and smacked Bronka across the face knocking out several of her teeth 43

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A hundred children a hundred individuals who are people not people to be not people of tomorrow but people now right now today Janusz Korczak until the last moment of his life dedicated himself to the rights of children He was one of the first people in history to understand that children were not potential people not half adults but individuals who deserved full respect and dignity each and every day of their lives Korczak ran orphanages in Warsaw before and during the war wrote children s stories was on Polish radio and even today is a beloved figure in the eyes of many Poles Dr Korczak had one rule that he almost never broke never lie to children a rule he was forced to violate one tragic day in August of 1942 when the Nazis ordered him and his children to report to the train station for their deportation to Treblinka death camp Giving up a number of last minute chances of escape for himself Korczak asked the children to prepare for a picnic They got dressed grabbed their favorite dolls and other objects and off they marched through the streets of Warsaw to the cattle cars in which they were transported to Treblinka and murdered together with some 870 000 souls almost all Jews Today there are 17 000 jagged stones and markers in Treblinka many with the names of the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust but only one stone bears the name of a single person Dr Janusz Korczak 44

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Jerzy Kozminski Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific title conferred on those who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis At the age of 17 Jerzy Kozminski 1924 2010 and his mother Renia smuggled out all 13 members of the Glazer family one by one in a horse and buggy on the night of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Kozminskis hid the Glazers in the basement of their home on the outskirts of Warsaw for more than a year Jerzy a member of the Polish underground was captured and tortured by the Nazis but did not disclose that 13 Jews were hiding in his family s basement Jerzy was deported to Auschwitz and then to Mauthausen where he was liberated by American troops in May of 1945 Over the years many Righteous Among the Nations have participated in the March of the Living and shared their stories with the students as did Jerzy Kozminski Christian Muslim agnostic and atheist from almost every nation in Europe 25 000 have been recognized as Righteous 47

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Not From This World Kenigswein Family Warsaw 1957 Top row Moshe 20 Stefania 18 Bottom row Rachel 12 Arieh 9 Regina 43 Stanislaw renamed Shmuel after father s death 13 Stefania 2019 March of the Living Warsaw Zoo Stefania Sitbon was born in Warsaw Poland in 1939 and grew up in the Warsaw Ghetto In 1942 her family was smuggled into the Warsaw Zoo by Zygmunt Pietak and hidden by its director Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina During WWII 300 Jewish men women and children hid in the zoo in the Zabinski home and in animal cages During that time the courageous Polish couple kept cyanide capsules at hand in case they were caught German zoologist Lutz Heck pillaged the zoo seizing the most prized animals for German zoos Enamored with the blond and beautiful Antonina Heck did not closely watch the Zabinskis While the Zabinskis were able to protect Jewish escapees their animals were not so fortunate Heck invited SS officers to an exclusive hunting party inside the Warsaw Zoo The sounds of gunshots and the cries of wounded and dying animals in cages soon filled the air It was sheer gratuitous slaughter Antonina wrote questioning ominously How many humans will die like this in the coming months From the zoo Stefania and her family were sent to convents and surrounding villages still being assisted by Pietak and another Pole Feliks Cywinski Stefania s father Shmuel Kenigswein a boxer and leader of a Jewish platoon in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising had 13 siblings and her mother eight None of them their spouses or children survived Jan Zabinski wrote I do not belong to any party and no party program was my guide during the occupation I am a Pole a democrat My deeds were and are a consequence of a certain psychological composition a result of progressive humanistic upbringing which I received at home as well as in Kreczmar High School Many times I wished to analyze the causes for dislike for Jews and I could not find any besides artificially formed ones Zygmunt Pietak said What I did was my duty as a human being and a believing Christian Feliks Cywinski who saved many other Jews including delivering a baby for a Jewish woman stated While Jews are being killed we must view the birth of a Jewish baby as something sacred They were not from this world Stefania said of her rescuers They knew if the Germans found out they will be the first to go They were people who did everything to help others 48

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What We Have Is What We Give Born in Grodno Poland Felix Zandman survived the Holocaust with the help of a courageous family of Catholic Polish Righteous Among the Nations Jan and Anna Puchalski hid him and his uncle for 17 months Anna the family s housekeeper remembered the kindness Felix s grandmother had shown her in times of trouble Their main hiding place was a dugout 170 cm long 150 cm wide and 120 cm tall that they shared with two other Jewish escapees His uncle Sender Freydowicz taught Felix trigonometry and advanced mathematics in the long hours of darkness After the war Felix went on to become a scientist inventor and philanthropist founding an electronics company employing more than 22 000 people worldwide His inventions continue to be used today The late Felix Zandman kisses in gratitude one of his rescuers Krystyna Puchalski Maciejewskai as he shares his story with thousands of March of the Living students during the 2008 program in Auschwitz Birkenau Krystyna her two siblings and their parents are honored as Righteous Among the Nations Zandman s inspiration was his grandmother who taught him What we have is what we give If you give to somebody you give yourself Nobody can take it away from you even after your death If you give this stays with you forever 49

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Righteous Reunion Sidney Zoltak grew up in the village of Siemiatycze in eastern Poland During the Holocaust at the age of 11 he escaped to live in the forest He was eventually sheltered in a barn for 14 months by the Krynski family In 2014 he returned to his hometown to reunite with remaining members of the Krynski family In his story told in the presence of the son of his rescuer and recorded at Treblinka where nearly one million Jews were murdered he relates that of all of his classmates he is the only one who survived When we got back to our hometown less than one percent had survived Less than 70 from a community of 7 000 The most difficult part for me was that none of my classmates none of my friends survived I am the only one I think about it The only reunion I can have is in this place among the memorial stones Then turning to Stanislaw Krynski the son of his rescuer he said I feel like kissing him Righteous Among the Nations Zygmunt Krynski right kissing his friend Sidney Zoltak in front of the barn where he hid Sidney during the war 50

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Sigmund Rolat Gratitude to Those Who Saved Us On Holocaust Remembrance Day 2015 Sigmund Rolat gave the keynote address in Birkenau following the March of the Living Stating he would prefer not to have his painful memories in the first place he articulated a number of reasons to remember the Holocaust Solidarity with the victims ensuring the victims memories live on and prevention of future genocides His fourth and final reason was gratitude toward the Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to save Jews during WWII Rolat recalled his Polish nanny Elka who chose to remain in the ghetto and perish in the Shoah because she loved a Jewish child himself Sigmund Rolat also gave a speech at the University of Warsaw to the March of the Living In the presence of Righteous Among the Nations Czeslawa Zak he spoke about his hope to build a monument to the Righteous Among the Nations next to the Polin Museum You have no idea how proud I am of you I speak in the name of all my friends who cannot be here who lost their lives and I can tell you they are also proud of you After all it s we who say Lador Vador From generation to generation And our generation and those after us will always remember You will recall that two days ago I talked about four reasons to remember And the last reason I mentioned perhaps I should repeat here while Ms Czeslawa Zak is with us You see we are going to build a monument to honor Czeslawa and to honor all those wonderful people who at the risk of their lives at the risk of their families rescued others We are very proud of the saying He who saves one life saves the world Well we will say thank you properly And next year when you come here and in years long long from now your children will come here and they will also see that monument to thank those who saved us 52

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Two Dreams Named Righteous Among the Nations for saving 14 Jews during the Shoah Czeslawa Zak right had two dreams to fly on a plane and to travel to Israel to meet with those she saved Here she is greeted by survivor Miriam Zakrojczyk native of Makow Mazowiecki Krasnosielc Poland 53 In the summer of 2013 Ms Zak then 87 years young met Olga Kost above left and the many members of her extended family who are only alive because of Czeslawa s valor We have managed to meet again in this world Czeslawa said upon greeting Olga who was surrounded by her many grandchildren and great grandchildren One grandchild presented Czeslawa with a small amulet and said Thanks to you we are all alive

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Candles of Kindness Joe Gottdenker was born in a Polish convent in Sandomierz then hidden for three years by Petronela and Wladyslaw Ziolo who risked their lives every day to hide the toddler In 1992 Joe returned to his ancestral town of Mielec where his parents and grandparents once lived Joe encountered an old man who remembered the Jewish residents of the town including Joe s parents and grandparents When Joe identified himself as Benny and Bina Gottdenkers son the old man almost fell over and turned white as a ghost thinking that no one from the Jewish community had survived He then showed Joe where his mother s parents once lived The two elderly Polish sisters who now lived in Joe s grandparents tiny home a turn of the century cottage with dirt floors and few amenities remembered Joe s family and warmly welcomed him Just before he left a dramatic gesture took place As I was ready to leave one of them got up and she walked out of the room and she came back and she was holding these candlestick holders which are sterling silver She gave them to me and she said This is all we could save from the Germans and we knew that one day somebody would come back for these It was the first direct concrete link between me and my family s life in Poland before the war What struck me very very emotionally was that they had saved them didn t pass them on to anybody didn t sell them They kept them They knew one day somebody would come back for these When my children start lighting these candles and my grandchildren start lighting these candles that is going to be their connection to Poland their connection to the Jewish life in Poland They re going to know that these were lit in Mielec by my grandmother by their great grandmother I will also instill this in them These candles are significant to the goodness that was in these two sisters And they should then also remember the courage and humanity of the Ziolos that they exhibited in hiding me at the risk of their lives and the lives of their family When I see the light of these candles I see there is goodness out there at the worst of times 54

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Au Revoir Maman Alex Buckman was only four years of age when he was hidden by Mademoiselle Andr e Geulen a 20 year old teacher in a Brussels Belgium school who also saved many other Jewish children On that fateful day in 1943 before he was handed over to Mademoiselle Andr e his father kissed him for the last time Alex asked his father Where is Maman His father pointed to the bedroom Alex ran to the bedroom but the door was locked Alex did not know why since there were no locks inside the house He was never to see his parents again They were both murdered in Auschwitz So in my mind as a child I never said good bye to my mother We re back in 2010 on the March of the Living in that room the former gas chamber in Auschwitz Birkenau where my mother and her sister were waiting for the showers And obviously there was no water or shower as the Nazis placed poison above the shower heads They the guides told us that the women became hysterical because they did not see the water so they ran toward the walls and scratched the walls with their fingernails And I turned around and caressed the walls so I could still feel the scratches these women did maybe my mother did the same thing And as I caressed it I said Au revoir Maman because I never said good bye when I was a child Many years later Alex reunited with Mademoiselle Andr e now 95 years of age and found out from her that indeed the bedroom door had not been locked His mother was holding the doorknob and wouldn t let go She didn t want to see you because she was afraid she was going to keep you Instead of that she let you go and saved your life she explained In 1989 Yad Vashem declared Mademoiselle Andr e a Righteous Among the Nations She said I deserve nothing for what I did I am not a hero I did not seek recognition and medals 55

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T he United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines as survivors all those who were displaced persecuted or discriminated against due to the racial religious ethnic and political policies of the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945 Today there are approximately 350 000 Holocaust survivors still alive around the world Many of these survivors overcame their trauma and began their lives again starting new families launching careers and founding businesses becoming active contributors to their communities and their societies as a whole Yet as any survivor will readily acknowledge they live constantly with their tragic memories Not a day goes by when they don t think of and deeply miss their lost family members and communities In the twilight of their lives many survivors have taken to recording their life stories so that the memory of their family members is preserved and so that the record of their extraordinary experiences and the lessons to be learned from them is not lost to future generations Some survivors have also been moved to record their stories because of the large number of Holocaust deniers whose actions are a source of tremendous pain for the survivors These deniers simultaneously refute the historical truth of one of the world s most tragic and extensively documented events while continuing to blame the Jews for all the world s troubles past and present It should be remembered that in some countries most notably Germany Holocaust denial is treated as a crime In deciding to rebuild their lives survivors demonstrate exceptional fortitude courage and faith To quote Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel To be a survivor after the Holocaust is to have all the reason in the world to destroy and not to destroy To have all the reasons in the world to hate and not to hate to have all the reasons in the world to mistrust and not to mistrust To have all the reasons in the world not to have faith in language in singing in prayers not in God but to go on telling the tale to go on carrying on the dialogue and have our own silent prayers and quarrels with God Despite their disappointment in the world most survivors did not become embittered While many did and still do wrestle with their faith the vast majority of survivors did not give up faith in life itself in the capacity for 57

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humanity to renew itself and to learn from past mistakes Many of these same survivors have become eloquent spokesmen for the battle against not just anti Semitism but also any kind of discrimination racism or intolerance Contemporary survivors often echo the same sentiment When society pushes people to its fringes when it mistreats the marginalized and the disenfranchised be they immigrants or people with disabilities or a different skin color they are among the first to raise their voices saying We the survivors have been there we above all people know what that feels like and we know the terrible path down which these behaviors can lead us Let us not repeat the same moral tragedy The survivors who are with us today serve three significant roles among others S torytellers Survivors are repositories of the stories that reflect one of the most cataclysmic moral failures in the history of humanity Teachers Survivors are often the voices of moral clarity modern day and eloquent prophets who teach us of our civic duties and our responsibilities toward our fellow human beings and how we so often have failed them Faigie Libman at Auschwitz Birkenau odels of Resilience Survivors remind us that human beings have the capacity to M rebuild their lives after having experienced the most devastating of losses imaginable I n every country where they found themselves after the war survivors made their mark They are the ultimate example of the ability of love to overcome darkness of faith to overcome adversity of hope to overcome despair Perhaps Holocaust survivor Faigie Libman standing in Poland with a group of young people from Canada the US and Australia summed up best what many survivors feel when she said When you have hatred in your heart there is no room for love 58

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Prisoner 157615 My father Icek Irving Cymbler from Zawiercie Poland was prisoner number 157615 That number was tattooed on his arm He was 15 when he arrived in Auschwitz but he lied about his age As a result he was not gassed as his parents and three sisters eventually were Instead he was sent to a slave labor camp in Warsaw In August 1944 he was sent on a Death March to Dachau On April 30 1945 the US Army liberated him as he rode a train headed to the Tyrolean Mountains The Nazis were waiting there to execute him and his fellow prisoners In 2008 my father returned with me to Auschwitz Birkenau on the March of the Living He had a photo of himself in his Dachau prisoner uniform taken a year after the liberation I had an enlargement made and he held it proudly as we marched in Auschwitz He had survived My father passed away in 2011 two days shy of his 84th birthday I miss him Jeffrey Cymbler 59

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It Seems Like Yesterday I was born in Krak w Poland When the war started I was 13 years old I came from an intact family a set of parents two sisters grandparents aunts uncles and cousins I am the only survivor I lost my whole family My children do not know what it is to have an uncle cousin or grandmother I can still see my mother waving her hands toward me it seems like yesterday She was murdered at Crematorium 5 right here on June 14 1944 My wife was in several concentration camps She could not be there today but my granddaughter is wearing her uniform and she is here in honor of my wife The March of the Living is teaching the children when we the survivors will be gone they will be here to talk about the Holocaust Edward Mosberg Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg a native of Krak w Poland lights a memorial torch in Auschwitz Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day during the 2016 March of the Living together with his granddaughter Jordana Karger 61

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Do Not Create the Same Hatred That Was Done to Us Max Glauben was born in Warsaw Poland in 1928 During the war he survived the Warsaw Ghetto and several camps including Majdanek where much of his family perished Budzyn and Flossenburg before he was liberated on April 23 1945 He has returned to Poland on the March of the Living eight times sharing his difficult story with young students in a way that he hopes will encourage them to build a better world for all humanity As he says I am a strong believer that we must tell the stories to the youngsters they are going to be our witnesses But please present them in a way with the kind of emotions that will not create the same hatred that was done to us The 2012 March of the Living was especially significant to Max when he saw the group of blind participants with their guide dogs When I saw the dogs I wanted to honor the courage these blind people had to come on a trip like this It so touched my heart to see that the same animals used by the Nazis to maim us are now helping us here in this very spot 62

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Drop By Drop By Drop Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter chanted a traditional prayer in a restored synagogue in the village of Tykocin in northeastern Poland I always tell the young that I am carrying a torch of well being and goodness Despite the fact that it could have been a bitter one I believe that my torch should be like the Olympic torch a torch that brings goodwill on Earth We had a person named Moses on our trip a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda It was incredible how he bonded with me by my being able to tell my stories He wrote a letter about how it s much easier for him to accept to live in the future because I have given him another Weltanschauung another worldview It s very important for Holocaust survivors or anybody else to spread togetherness and goodwill and I think it s the young people specifically who can create this Because drop by drop by drop like water on a stone the world can become a better place At the 20th anniversary dinner of the USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles on May 7 2014 President Barack Obama had this to say I think of Pinchas Gutter a man who lived through the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and survived the Majdanek death camp I tell my story he says for the purpose of improving humanity drop by drop by drop Like a drop of water falls on a stone and erodes it so hopefully by telling my story over and over again I will achieve the purpose of making the world a better place to live in Those are the words of one survivor performing that sacred duty of memory that will echo throughout eternity Those are good words for all of us to live by 65

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What Drew Him Back Ernest Ehrmann was deported to Auschwitz when he was only 16 years of age When he returned home after liberation he discovered his beloved parents had been murdered in Auschwitz Angry at God about being a Jew he vowed never to enter synagogue ever again I felt like I lost a big part of my youth I didn t have the life of a young man it was robbed from me It was taken because I was a Jew But his love and respect for his parents drew him back One night he had a dream his parents who he loved dearly appeared and pleaded with him Is this the way we brought you up Without any regard for our tradition for how we raised you He woke up in a cold sweat and began crying I loved and respected my parents so much I decided that for their sake I d return to Judaism Since that fateful dream Ernest has lead an Orthodox Jewish life But when asked if he still believes in God after the Shoah he shakes his head sadly and says he is simply unable to answer that question SURVIVORS Survivors they say I say ha Survivors of the Holocaust Survivors of Death maybe but the Holocaust No No one survived the Holocaust We see reminders train tracks sheds old bowls clothes pictures books eyes We see the eyes of survivors Miriam Naylor 20 March of the Living 1990 66

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Under This Same Sky Frank Lowy related his story to participants on a March of the Living standing in front of a cattle car used to transport Jews to AuschwitzBirkenau For more than half a century what happened to Frank Lowy s beloved father was a mystery A chance meeting with another Holocaust survivor the last person to see Frank s father alive revealed his tragic yet heroic fate He was beaten to death by the guards for standing up for his religion and for refusing to relinquish his articles of faith 69 A few months after my Bar Mitzvah my father disappeared I waited for almost 50 years to find out what happened to him In all that time I never forgot him Even in my dreams So here I am with you all in Birkenau I know he was also here under this same sky Just like almost half a million Hungarian Jews he came to this place in a wagon and almost immediately after arriving disappeared as smoke into this sky I was 13 when I lost my father and now I am 82 and you know I still miss him I still feel the loss of my father But there is something I have gained I never realized that he had strength the spiritual strength to take on the brutal guards here No matter how hard they hit him he protected the sanctity of his tallit and tefillin religious objects They could break his body but they could not break his spirit The tallit and tefillin were part of him part of his personal relationship with God He was ready to die for them And he did

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Like a Hand Reaching Out One freezing night on January 18 1945 15 year old Jewish prisoner Max Eisen was forced to march out of Auschwitz herded at gunpoint by SS guards with dogs The prisoners were wearing wooden clogs and were slipping in the snow Many prisoners were shot when they could not keep up the pace or had dropped out from exhaustion Max walked for four or five days without food or water only managing to pick up a few handfuls of snow for moisture on the way Eventually they were loaded onto open metal boxcars whose sides were so cold their skin almost froze to the metal When the boxcar arrived in Pilsen some kindly Czech people appeared on the overhead bridge and began to throw pieces of bread into the open boxcars The guards shouted Don t throw any bread These are Jews But the people just kept on throwing bread into the boxcars below until the guards started to shoot at them For Max even though he was too far away to snatch any of the bread this was one of the most important moments of his life After all he had been through to learn there were still decent people left in the world this began to restore the boy s faith in the world It was like a hand reaching out to me Max tells the students He never forgot the goodness of the people of Pilsen for whom he felt a debt of gratitude every day of his life Max Eisen arrived in Auschwitz when he was only 15 years of age After being beaten unconscious by an SS officer a Polish doctor Tadeusz Orzeszko in Auschwitz took pity on Max and saved him from certain death by engaging him as an assistant in the camp s clinic Max was liberated from Ebensee on May 6 1945 by members of the 761st Tank Battalion comprised of African American soldiers in the then segregated American army The troops were shocked by the piles of bodies they saw and by the condition of the sick and emaciated prisoners many of them dying in front of their eyes The black soldiers were horrified Max recalled I ll never forget how big their eyes were Without the 761st I would not be here to tell the story he would say many times Max always wondered what happened to Dr Orzeszko if he had survived the war and how he could ever repay him On the 2008 March of the Living Max learned that the good doctor had indeed survived the war and had passed away in 1974 in Radom at 67 years of age When Max met the members of Dr Orzeszko s family for the first time they were moved to tears when they learned about his heroic efforts in saving Max s life And Max learned from them that Dr Orzeszko was a member of the Polish resistance carrying on activities even in the heart of this notorious death camp The Eisen and Orzeszko families have grown extremely close since they discovered each other Dr Orzeszko s latest great grandchild was even named after Max Every time Max shares his story the courage of the members of the 761st Battalion and the kindness expressed by the people of Pilsen and by a brave Polish doctor to a young Jewish boy live on his thankful eyes 71

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Why I March Why I Speak Holocaust survivor David Shentow explains to students that when he first learned there were people today denying the Holocaust denying all the suffering he went through I said there and then I would crawl on my hands and knees all the way to Auschwitz Birkenau or anywhere else to tell my story to anyone who was willing to listen This is why I march and why I still speak We Will Walk In Together We Will Walk Out Together Nate Leipciger Holocaust survivor marched in memory of his mother Well when we went to Auschwitz it shook me up Especially when I saw the big sign Arbeit Mach Frei It brought back such painful memories I just stood at the gate I was mesmerized Then one student came up to me David David we will walk in together and we will walk out together They were holding on to me or I was holding on to them I don t remember anymore the sympathy the hugging there are no words to describe it It will be with me forever 73

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S ince the fall of the Iron Curtain large numbers of students and Holocaust survivors have returned to the killing fields of Eastern Europe to encounter the Holocaust and other WWII genocides in the very places where these tragic events transpired These young people and their aging mentors come thousands of miles from their homes and with their own two feet tread upon the very earth where so many of their ancestors prayed loved and perished This act of traveling to these former places of life and learning destruction and martyrdom is in itself a cry of protest over the injustices of the past It is an act of sacred memorialization a statement to the entire world and perhaps even to those who have perished that the martyrdom of so many millions will never be forgotten The students who participate are not just learning about history but with their physical presence they also are touching and indeed entering history They make a statement with their entire being in the present about the past Sally Wasserman a Holocaust survivor and hidden child from Poland recalled one moment from all her March of the Living trips that still stands out for her She and her students had visited a lovely town called Tykocin a shtetl right out of Fiddler on the Roof The synagogue in the village square dating back to 1642 had been lovingly restored and was a reminder of the traditional way of life that once thrived there The group then left the idyllic town and traveled to the nearby Lupochowa forest where the Jews of the town were marched into the forest in August 1941 ordered to dig pits then shot en masse into the graves they had been forced to prepare for themselves Silence engulfed the students standing at this somber site of grievous carnage I m not a religious person Sally recalled but I couldn t help myself I shouted Please please someone say a Kaddish Jewish memorial prayer for the dead The prayer was recited in the middle of the lush green forest that hid this terrible crime And everyone answered Amen Why do we return We come to say We are here and with all our might and all our strength we proclaim on this very ground with our bodies and our souls We remember we shall always remember And to answer Amen when a prayer is recited in the memory of so many martyrs 75

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The single most significant aspect of these pilgrimages is the role of the survivors who share their painful Holocaust experiences with the students in the very places their stories unfolded Over the years thousands of stories have been transmitted by survivors to students in Europe standing near the dome of ashes in Majdanek or in barracks or the ramp in Auschwitz or in a synagogue in Krak w or near the wall of names in Belzec or the silent stone markers in Treblinka Each story is more heartbreaking than the last each a story of life and love interrupted of irreparable loss Who can forget Pinchas Gutter telling of the last time he saw his twin sister in Majdanek All he can remember is the long golden blonde braid swinging behind her back as she was herded with their mother to her end He cannot try as he might recall her face And how could anyone forget Judy Weissenberg Cohen telling of the last time she saw her mother during the selection on the train tracks in Birkenau and how to this day she still wishes she had given her mother one last hug and kiss good bye Which student could ever forget Anita Ekstein whose life was saved by righteous Poles visiting Belzec on of all days Mother s Day and finding her mother s name on the memorial wall in the Belzec death camp Or the recounting of her father s last words to her his eight year old daughter Always remember who you are And yet in the survivors act of telling of transmitting their memories to a new generation a new seed of hope is planted In the act of embarking on these trips the young people are in effect pledging this Your struggles will be remembered and your loved ones will not be forgotten We a new generation of young people commit to creating a better world for all humanity a world far different than the one that sought to destroy your generation The Holocaust literally shattered our world We who were born in the post Holocaust era have inherited a broken world For many the Holocaust still challenges their faith in God their faith in humanity or in both But as we study this broken world of ours and then look at the earnest faces of our young people who so much want to understand to make a difference to not repeat the mistakes of the past we are reminded of what a Jewish mystic taught us some two centuries ago If you believe it can be broken then know it can also be fixed 76

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Each time we return to Poland each time a Holocaust survivor shares his or her story of survival we are denying Hitler s aims each time survivors share the stories of their martyred relatives we are lifting them from their anonymous deaths and denying Hitler a posthumous victory Each time a group of young people arrives in Auschwitz and proclaims the values of human dignity and equality we know our broken world can yet again be made whole Looking out on the sea of humanity upon thousands of young people from around the world marching from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day Anita Ekstein told her daughter Ruth You see Hitler did not win Our Holocaust survivors and our young people have banded together to remind the world of the terrible wave of hatred that once engulfed it and how we must strive to set a new course for humanity one that embraces love dignity and empathy for each and every member of the human family Their legacy is our hope MARCH ON It s hard to walk on in their shoes the shoes we saw at Majdanek Me without scars in the scraped up shoes dirty soft and old But new for me It s hard to decide when to put them on And when to take them off Marni Levitt 15 March of the Living 1990 77

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The Last Time I Saw My Mother I never had a chance to say good bye to my mother We didn t know we had to say good bye I am an old woman today and I never made peace with the fact that I never had that last hug and kiss They say When you listen to a witness you become a witness I am only asking you to work for a world where nobody will have to live with memories like mine ever again Please heal the world Judy Weissenberg Cohen a Hungarian Holocaust survivor shares her story with her young students in Auschwitz Birkenau on a March of the Living What God Will Ask My father was ill in the hospital and he was perplexed When I asked him what troubled him he said that soon he would meet God and God would ask him how he could justify that he lived when so many died The next day when I visited him he was smiling He told me that he had an answer When God will ask me what I did with my life I will tell him I spoke with young people at Auschwitz so that they never forget My father talked about the March of the Living until his dying day it was the most meaningful experience he ever had Marilyn Sinclair daughter of survivor Ernie Weiss Ernie with his granddaughter Jennifer Bronsteter Apple March of the Living 2008 78

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Blind Love and Blind Hate Liron Artzi a blind participant on the 2012 March of the Living wrote to her guide dog Petel Raspberry after their experience on the trip Dear Petel You were with me in the Jewish cemetery at the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto and in the frozen forest where the shooting pits were found at the synagogues and in Treblinka Majdanek Auschwitz You were there during all of this and couldn t speak But your love for me I felt in every lick every time I stroked you every time you came and placed your head on my knees If you re confronted by Holocaust deniers tell them that blind people accompanied by their service dogs can see and feel the evidence of the Holocaust even though they are blind said survivor Sol Nayman with tears in his eyes But Holocaust deniers are blind to the Holocaust even though they can see with their own eyes Petel I always say that you are in my heart This time you entered straight into my soul you are part of my blood part of me forever These words were written directly from the heart to a guide dog that is one big heart Liron Sol Nayman in Treblinka in front of the stone with the name of his destroyed community with a rainbow in the background Guide dog Petel licks tears from Liron Artzi s face after an emotional moment in the former Majdanek Gas Chamber 80

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Leaving the Gates of Auschwitz Blind delegates from Israel leave the gates of Auschwitz with their guide dogs The Nazis murdered not only Jews but also people with disabilities often using viciously trained dogs to terrorize prisoners The sign on the entrance gate above them reads Arbeit Macht Frei Work makes you free the cynical Nazi slogan used to deceive arriving prisoners about the ultimate purpose of the camp It s love not work that sets us free stated David Matlow a 2015 March of the Living participant He was referencing the last line of Lay Down Your Arms a peace song sung by the March of the Living students in Auschwitz which concludes with the words And love will someday set us free 81

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Here We were marching in AuschwitzBirkenau and we saw Max was alone So we decided to go over to comfort him We each took one of his strong arms and marched with him As we approached the gates I asked him What happened to your family He stopped his eyes filled with tears and he just pointed down He said one word Here That s all he had to say we knew Here was where his family was murdered Aria Smorden 15 March of the Living 2013 Max Iland a teacher from Sault Ste Marie Ontario is surrounded and comforted by his children Yaacov and Hannah in Auschwitz Birkenau where Max s mother and his three year old brother Kopel were murdered 83

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Stones of Memory Bill Glied pictured with his granddaughter on the March of the Living was born in Subotica Serbia and deported to Auschwitz Birkenau in April 1944 with his entire family He never saw his mother or sister again They just disappeared from my life I didn t get to say good bye Mayer Schondorf shared his story with teen students on the March of the Living in Auschwitz Birkenau Mayer died in 2009 87 There is a unique and noble custom in the Jewish religion We go to the cemetery and find the graves of our loved ones Then we take a small stone and place it on the tombstone to say We are here We haven t forgotten you We love you We remember you In Auschwitz there are no tombstones All those who perished here my mother my sister my whole family they have no monuments But all of you who are standing here today you are the little stones and you are saying We are here We haven t forgotten you We love you Bill Glied March of the Living 2009

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I Was a Lonely Rock Asher Aud was 12 years old when his father and older brother were deported from the ghetto of their Polish town Zdunska Wola near Lodz Two years later his mother and younger brother were murdered in Chelmno Now on his own the 14 year old was sent to Lodz Ghetto From the moment I was separated from my mother I was a lonely rock I didn t have friends I didn t have anyone There were no days of the week no Monday or Tuesday all the days were the same In August 1944 Aud was deported to Camp E Block 4 at Auschwitz There he found his older brother Berl who helped him survive the brutal camp In January 1945 17 year old Asher Aud was sent on a Death March finding himself in Mauthausen and Gunskirchen before being liberated and immigrating to Israel Almost 40 years later he was reunited with his brother How did a young boy survive this I went through it Aud says but can t explain it I wanted only one thing I wanted to live There was nothing else just the desire to live I didn t talk about the Holocaust for more than 50 years It wasn t that I wanted to forget but there were no social workers no psychologists to tell us how to act after this If we wanted to live we couldn t talk about it To talk is to live it Then following a visit to Poland I told my story for the first time In light of all the Holocaust denial I came to the conclusion that anyone who could talk must The impact is very different I see and hear its effect in the responses from the students 90

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You Become Our Survivors Hearing my story you young people become in a way our survivors You must never ever let this memory die you must keep the torch burning Because one day my generation will pass Then in your lifetime when you hear someone say that the Holocaust did not happen you can say I met a woman who was in Auschwitz and survived Auschwitz The Holocaust did happen because this person lost her entire family in it her two sisters her mother and father And so did six million other Jews along with gypsies the disabled Christians who tried to save Jews gays and many others As a survivor of 70 years when I see what the world is like today I fear we have not learned much from the past People are suppressing other people The best way to honor those who perished is to educate the future generations We must ensure that these atrocities never happen to any other human being 91 Trudy Album Holocaust survivor from Hungary Czechoslovakia accompanied by two students on the March of the Living where she shared her experiences

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To Honor and To Remember When she was eight years old Sally Wasserman was smuggled out of the Dombrowa Ghetto and hidden by two Polish Righteous Among the Nations Eva and Mikolaj Turkin She never saw her father mother and little brother again After the war Sally was adopted by her aunt her mother s sister in Canada It was not until 1998 that she read the last letter her mother wrote to her sister in Canada from the Dombrowa Ghetto on July 22 1943 before being deported to Auschwitz Birkenau Sally has shared her feelings about her mother and the contents of this last letter with thousands of students in many settings including Auschwitz Birkenau the very place where her mother and little brother perished Sally tells students that before she discovered the letter and visited Poland she resented her mother Why did my mother leave me behind Why did she only take my little brother with her Of course I understood my mother had saved me but when I read the letter and visited the camps and stood in the gas chambers that was the first time I felt the sacrifice of my mother and her courage and what her decision to give me up must have meant to her I no longer have resentment now I have compassion and empathy for her She was heroic so courageous She had a strong belief that somehow somewhere regardless of the world she lived in there was some goodness That s what I like to think Sally Wasserman with students at Auschwitz Birkenau 92

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Excerpts from the letter Dombrowa July 22 1943 My Dear Sister and Brother in Law I was able to leave my Sheindele Sally with Mr Turkin I met him only a few months ago He and his wife are very decent people they took Sheindele under their care with love I am writing this letter to you during the last days of my life We are expecting death any time We know what kind of death to expect My dearest the end is bitter and tragic I thank God for Mr Turkin I am sure he and his wife care for and will save my child s life I see the Angel of Death before me I don t believe even a miracle can help us now My little son Vovek and I are the last sacrificial victims My dear ones I write this letter with blood instead of ink The only thing that makes it easier on my heart is knowing that Sheindele will be saved She is in good hands with good people I can feel the pain in your hearts when you read this letter It is not our fault We are innocent our future is lost and it cannot be changed It is terrible to die when your mind knows everything that is going to happen It hurts me terribly it breaks my heart to have to write this letter to you but you must know what happened to your family and how they disappeared I am sorry to say that from the whole family nobody is alive we are the last We are in danger and there is no possible way for us to live through this We do not have a way out We are surrounded on all sides I cannot write any more I do not want to pain you This is the last letter from me to you Your Sister Toby Eleven year old Sally in 1946 after the war with her Polish rescuers Eva and Mikolaj Turkin A few days later Dombrowa was liquidated and declared Judenfrei Jew free Shortly thereafter Sally s mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz 93

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Your Baby Survived Mama Robbie Waisman 81 year old Holocaust survivor returned to his hometown of Skarzysko Kamienna Poland with a group of high school students on the 2012 March of the Living It took over 60 years before I found the courage to go back to relive and to face these dark memories I entered my former home in the ghetto my heart pounding overcome with all the memories of long ago I stopped closed my eyes and I heard my Mom s beautiful voice saying to me as she always did every night before I went to bed Shluff Gesinter Hite Sleep well with a kiss and a hug After a while I walked down the stairs to find all the teenagers who I had thought were waiting for me in the buses There they were all of them keeping vigil arm in arm awaiting me in the courtyard a wall of support to help me deal with all those thoughts emotions and memories Next together we proceeded to find the site of the synagogue in Skarzysko It was demolished only two crumbling brick walls left I said Kaddish again for my beloved Mom murdered in Treblinka where I found the Skarzysko monument Supported by a fellow survivor Robbie looked upward and proclaimed I survived I survived Your baby survived Mama Then he burst into tears embraced by the other survivors and surrounded by all of the children I needed to go back after all these years to acknowledge to all my loved ones that I the baby of the family survived I have no words to describe my love and respect for all of our young people who joined from all over the world for the amazing March from Auschwitz to Birkenau Top Reuniting on the March of the Living with fellow survivor and Buchenwald inmate Israel Meir Lau later to become Chief Rabbi of Israel Above and right Robbie Waisman with students 94

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Her Last Words We arrived in Auschwitz July 19 1944 The minute we arrived Dr Josef Mengele was there And they separated us and we didn t want to separate They started kicking her And I said Go Mommy I don t want to see you suffer Later on I m going to see you But I never saw her any more And always always I remember her last words to me Oh my dear my glasses are in your pocket I said Ok Mommy I m going to give you them back later When I was back with the group of kids on the March of the Living we went to the museum in Auschwitz We stepped into a room with glasses from the floor to the ceiling I said I m sure my mother s glasses are here too Eva Gelbman 99 A young March of the Living participant lights memorial candles at Auschwitz as Holocaust survivor Eva Gelbman remembers

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T here is an old saying that maintains with the birth of every child the world begins to hope anew Each group of students returning home after spending time overseas traveling with survivors studying and learning from the history of genocide reflects this optimistic notion In the applications submitted by many of the students we see similar questions What was the real nature of this terrible event How could people act this way And how could the world let them Could it happen again Are our own friends and neighbors capable of the same actions Are we A second theme also prevalent in the students motivation is this It is not enough to study to learn and to read about the tragedies of the past There is a need to examine the event in its place of origin and to somehow begin to mend the world now and to begin in the very place where the evil was perpetrated This journey had to conclude on a note of hope In one extraordinarily memorable moment on the last day of one trip a young man who had been silent most of the time revealed that to his great shame his grandfather had been a Nazi during WWII Without hesitation a young woman a student he and the entire group knew was the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors rose up to comfort him My intention the young woman reflected later was to tell the young man this Let s not bring prejudice into a new generation I don t blame you for what your grandfather did You are not your grandfather and I don t blame you for his history This is not your fault You didn t do these things He was sobbing so emotional It was almost like a confession and I felt compelled to show him empathy and to absolve him of his guilt She then proceeded to hug him as the entire circle of students applauded through their tears Indeed the students on this trip are not only studying history they are also repairing history creating and shaping a new future together one where the grandchildren of perpetrator and victim embrace one another in a startling contrast to the murderous dynamic that existed on the very soil barely a few generations ago 101

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The questions the doubts the need to confront the evil and to somehow overcome it through a demonstrated allegiance to life were the prevailing sentiments evinced by the students who have participated in these trips As one student wrote THE FIRE WITHIN ME The fire in which my feelings burn is forever growing stronger This trip represents more than the sites at which millions perished It means life hope dreams and the future Being a part of this future I wish to experience the past When the wind ceases to blow When the trees refuse to grow When the mountains no longer touch the sky And the stars do not shine bright That is when the children cease to remember Kristallnacht As the children of the future As the hope our mothers bore We must learn of the horrors past To prevent the world from more Robyn Hochglaube March of the Living 1992 One of the responses to the Holocaust might be that the human experiment is a failure given the depravity of human conduct in this era On pilgrimages to Holocaust and genocide sites in Europe the students deny this conclusion by recommitting themselves to the concept of universal dignity and by valuing the human rights of all members of the human family The students uniformly reflect the conviction that the course of history can indeed be changed As one AfricanAmerican student wrote upon her return from the March of Remembrance and Hope They say that history 102

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repeats itself as if that is an unchangeable reality But the truth is history does not repeat itself it is people who repeat the mistakes of the past But they don t have to and we don t have to A student of Polish background Bart Bonikowski after listening to survivors on the trip wrote I came to realize that we must listen we must welcome opportunities to become exposed to other cultures and to other peoples and we must educate each other Hope can only be realized through mutual understanding Only through such an understanding can we promote knowledge and diminish hatred And then maybe just maybe will we be able to say never again And from a Muslim student Ayesha Siddiqua Chaudhry when she returned I think the trip to Poland forced us all to transcend our religious political and cultural boundaries in order to bear witness to the common humanity we all share This common humanity is what should unite us when injustice is inflicted upon any one of us Finally it is worth quoting African American student Marie Mirlande Noel who in a speech at the United Nations on January 27 2008 after she came back from Europe said I challenge you as I challenge myself to be a beacon of change and to dare to question any inhumane treatment of others I know that we cannot take care of all the world s injustices but I urge you to at least identify one step that you can take toward making a positive difference however small This is how change begins 103

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Today there is a generation of young people who are returning to their communities to their universities churches temples mosques sweat lodges synagogues and other places of worship and meaning with one message We can we must and we will do better These young people have matured into leaders in their own right advocating for human dignity and compassion in a myriad of ways founding organizations on campus to speak out against genocide and human rights abuses abroad fighting against discrimination intolerance and injustice in their own countries and teaching the children of the next generation about what they have learned on their journeys These students have fiercely committed themselves to changing the world in which we live Many already have Polish students carry the Polish flag on railroad tracks in Auschwitz Birkenau Polish students make up one of the largest delegations on the March of the Living 104

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ALL I CAN DO I want to hug that person but all I will feel is a gravestone I want to return it upright but the stone stands crooked History stays put and all I can do is remember Marni Levitt 15 March of the Living 1990 I felt a deep sense of loss in Poland a loss in humanity for the sacredness of life My faith in the human race deteriorated a little more with each death camp we visited But my deep sense of loss was accompanied by something greater something that restored my faith It was accompanied by hope which I found in my fellow participants Each of my companions has a gift of giving me the ability to attempt to make a difference The camp Auschwitz Birkenau that was once run by savage murderers was now overcome by people who condemned such acts of evil This gave me hope that one day we shall overcome I hope that it does the same for you Trisha Lynn Cowie Irish Ojibway Canadian March of Remembrance and Hope 107

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O n January 27 Auschwitz survivors and their families world leaders dignitaries and others gathered in Auschwitz to observe the 75th anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of the world s most notorious killing field which took place on January 27 1945 A few months later the world marked the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe VE Day which took place on May 8 1945 At first glance these moments of liberation might be viewed as overwhelming instances of elation and positive experiences after all millions of people were no longer under the merciless grip of Nazi Germany But for many of the Holocaust survivors these were not necessarily moments of unbridled joy For some it came with the realization that not a single member of their immediate family parents grandparents children siblings uncles and aunts were alive They were literally alone in the world strangers to everyone on planet earth What now was the first question many survivors had on their minds almost immediately after liberation For others there was no home to return to either their homes had been destroyed or had been occupied by others who greeted them with surprise that they were still alive even with open hostility and worse threats of murder which tragically were sometimes acted upon Many of the survivors who managed to rebuild their lives in new countries carried the trauma with them for the rest of their lives While this was true to some extent for almost all survivors it was especially true for child survivors hidden children who survived in basements and attics behind false walls in holes in the ground in forests or under false identities during the war years Hiding often involved complicated situations during and after the war as many were separated from their rescuers and returned to broken communities and broken families Some children lost their entire identity in hiding which later wasn t always easy to restore Many children had no normal baseline with which to compare and no memories of childhood and sometimes even of their parents The lack of these foundations and the wartime reality made it difficult to readjust Some never did remaining broken people 117

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An example of the lasting impact of the trauma even many years after liberation occurred during one March of the Living trip to Auschwitz As an Auschwitz survivor led the students into the gates of the former death camp a student was heard to say innocently so we are now entering Auschwitz To which the survivor replied gently with this corrective No you are not entering Auschwitz For you will never enter Auschwitz And I will never leave One survivor in her 90s Eva Shainblum from Montreal attended the January 2020 commemorations and returned to Canada with a handful of earth from Auschwitz When her life s journey was over her wish was to be buried together with the earth from the very place where her loved ones were murdered Even many years after liberation the trauma and memory of her ripped asunder family remained and the longing to be reunited with her long deceased loved ones had not dimmed As one student suggested after looking into the mournful eyes of the survivors on her trip No one really survived the Holocaust We see the eyes of survivors While many perhaps even most survivors showed remarkable resilience and courage in rebuilding their lives after liberation their victory was never complete as the loss of their loved ones was never far away But the survivors also express unending gratitude to the soldiers American Soviet English and Canadian who liberated them and to their adoptive countries around the world who allowed them to strike roots rebuild their lives and begin new families In return these same survivors contributed immensely to the fabric of life in the communities and in the countries who gave them refuge and welcomed them to their shores Triumph does not erase the memories of a tragedy It does not mend the scars that were left behind nor does it bring back what was forever lost Quoted by Hannah Berdowski 16 March of the Living 2012 118

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Infantrymen of D Company The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada with their Universal Carrier which is inscribed Germany Kaput Italia Tutto Finito Here We Come Canada De Glindhorst Netherlands May 5 1945 In 1995 the 50th anniversary of WWII s end Canada Post issued a Holocaust stamp bearing a montage of Holocaust faces a yellow Jewish star and a Jewish identity card of 17 year old Robert Engel The Most Beautiful Song in the World The next morning we came out to the gate in Westerbork and the German soldiers were gone We went on the watchtower and we saw them hopping through the grass And we saw tanks rolling over the highway I grabbed the hand of a soldier looking out All I could say I was out of breath was Thank you thank you So he pulled me up and I sat behind him and he looked through the binoculars and he saw all the other people coming He said What s that I didn t know the English word for concentration camp so I said It s a Jewish camp And we rolled in and the people went bananas I mean I have never seen anything like it I will never forget that sight They screamed they cried all hell broke loose And all of a sudden those soldiers sang a song We had never heard that song before But I realized it was an important song because they looked so proud And it was O Canada That s the first time I heard it And I always say that it s the most beautiful song in the world And we were free Robert Engel

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The Youngest Survivor of Auschwitz Angela Orosz sharing her story with students in Auschwitz where she was born Angela Orosz was born in Auschwitz on Dec 21 1944 the youngest prisoner ever to survive the notorious death camp Her survival is a testament to the power of love in this case the love of a heroic mother to overcome even the endless horrors of Auschwitz 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 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 According to Orosz her survival is due to the determination and heroism of her mother Vera Bein who underwent medical experiments by the notorious Dr Mengele and was never able to have any more children Angela herself was almost never born When her mother was seven months pregnant Mengele s team injected a burning substance into her body near her uterus Right behind in her uterus was the foetus me These injections were terrible painful Injection one the foetus moved to the left side the next day another injection and the foetus moved in the other direction Since Angela was so small the doctors did not notice the pregnancy If not for this we would both have been killed before I had taken my first breath 120 Orosz weighed only one kilogram at birth and was even too weak to cry but that inability to make a sound saved her life I was so malnourished I was unable to cry That saved me But still she believed I would live She said to me I looked like a little bird without feathers and that I was really ugly though not to her Even after her liberation doctors in Hungary did not believe she would live but her mother never gave up on her even though she was unable to walk until age seven She was so happy to have survived and to have saved my life I want to make sure her fight to save my life is not forgotten In spite of giving birth to me in the worst nightmare imaginable she never gave up She planted in me the need to be happy too to see the sunshine to see a flower and to be happy to be alive Her mother also saved another child s life in Auschwitz Gyorgy Faludi who was born on liberation day January 27 1945 His own mother was too malnourished so Angela s mother breastfed him instead His mother was so weak she didn t have enough milk so my mother fed us both My message is don t be a bystander the opposite of love is not hating it s indifference

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He Held the Door Open for Me In May 1945 Gerda Weissmann Klein was liberated by the United States Army in Volary Czechoslovakia Among the soldiers was Lieutenant Kurt Klein who had escaped Nazi Germany as a teenager in 1937 Both of his parents were murdered in Auschwitz On the day of her liberation Weissmann though only one day short of 21 was white haired and weighed 68 pounds Covered in rags she had not bathed in three years Gerda My very clear view of freedom and liberation came that morning when I stood in this doorway of the abandoned factory and I saw a car coming down the hill And the reality of that came when I saw the white star and not the swastika There were two men in that car One jumped out Kurt I saw some skeletal figures trying to get some water from a hand pump But over on the other side leaning against the wall next to the entrance of the building I saw a girl standing and I decided to walk up to her Gerda I remember the aura of him the awe of the disbelief in daylight to really see someone who fought for our freedom for my ideals And he looked like a God to me Kurt And I asked her in German and in English whether she spoke either language and she answered me in German Gerda I knew what I had to say And I said to him We are Jewish you know For a very long time at least for me it seemed very long he didn t answer me And then his own voice betrayed his emotion He was wearing dark glasses I couldn t see his eyes He said So am I He said May I see the other ladies A form of address we hadn t heard for six years I told him most of the girls were inside They were too ill to walk And he said to me Won t you come with me I didn t know what he meant So he held the door open for me and let me precede him And that was the moment of restoration of humanity of humaneness of dignity of freedom And this first young American of Liberation Day is now my husband He opened not only the door for me but the door to my life and my future 121

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Have You Got the Bread Around the 27th of April 1945 we arrived in central camp Dachau I was exactly 17 and my father and I were together But my father was dying He was very weak his legs were swollen from hunger and disease and his eyes had that faraway look that unfocused look I knew the signs He could hardly walk and I knew I was losing my father And I was very sad because I knew the war will be over very soon Either they will kill us or we will be freed by the American army We knew they were very close When we were in the camp in the last days of the working camp the commandant who was a vicious man saw that we were a bit happy that we looked sort of expectant And he assured us You think the war will soon be over and you will be free Forget it We are keeping the last bullet for you no matter how the war will end you will not come out alive And that s what we believed might happen And the first day they came and brought food at four o clock in the afternoon or so and my father wouldn t get up I had to take his dish and pick up the food for him together with my own and a piece of bread And the next day again the same thing and I could see that he was getting weaker he s not going to survive So four o clock on the 29th of April I m in line I pick up the soup for myself and I say this is for him and they gave me another bowl of soup and another piece of bread And I m going to him and he takes the soup and at that moment the prisoners are shouting The Americans are here we are free I told my father Father the Americans are here we are free The war is over So he looks at me with that faraway look and he says That s good Have you got the bread That was my moment of liberation Elly Gotz 122

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Elly Gotz Be Careful Who You Follow Father I said to him if you say it a third time I ll go to the Gestapo He was going to report his father He says I was ready to send my father to Dachau Now I was shocked You may disagree with your father politically but you don t send him to a concentration camp to die So I said Was he a bad father No he was a wonderful father he says That s what I want you to understand he says When I heard that man speak Who is that man Hitler When I heard that man speak cold used to run down my spine I was prepared to do anything for him So I asked him carefully And did you do anything And he understood immediately He said No I was at Stalingrad I nearly lost my leg I was wounded just before they were surrounded but I survived I said Did you know what was done in your name Yes he says I saw it I saw in the Ukraine They took a bunch of Ukrainian peasants stuck them in their wooden church poured gasoline and burned them all to death in their own church So I said Tell me why is it that Germans now say We didn t know this was done in our name I want to tell you one quick story about one man a Nazi who actually indirectly asked me for forgiveness And I learned a lot from him I had a company in Toronto and we were buying hardware and some metal parts from a company in Germany So I went to deal with them The vice president of accounting comes up to me takes me aside puts his arm around me takes us a little in the corner and he says Mr Gotz you were in Dachau Yes You re a Jew Yes Come let s go and talk I want to tell you something We go to a coffee shop and as soon as we sit down he says I joined the Nazi party when I was 18 After all day doing business I m not going to argue with him about it I said I suppose you had to I ll make it easy No he says I didn t have to I wanted to Okay He says My father said to me one day Don t run with these people they are bad people And I was furious with him I walked away Two weeks later he said it again Don t go with these Nazis they are bad people 124

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He says Don t you understand Because we are ashamed We have committed a crime which will not be forgiven for a thousand years And then he said something I want you all to hear He said to me I want you to understand one thing I joined the Nazi party not because I wanted to be a murderer I joined because I was an idealist I was prepared to give my life for my country Remember that Remember those words Young people can be led to Hell singing Young people like to be idealistic Young people at 18 are willing to give themselves to something greater than themselves greater than just getting a job or doing something We can be misled And we can go singing doing terrible things So I teach students now Be Careful Who You Believe Be Careful Who You Follow If you think that one politician suddenly has all the answers to all the questions in the world be careful Listen to someone else because you are being hypnotized That s the message Elly Gotz at Memorial for Murdered Jews Police School of Torture Rabka Poland with Carla Wittes Director March of Remembrance and Hope Speaking to students on the 2019 March of Remembrance and Hope 125

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Now I Feel I Can Live Forever Joe Mandel right a Holocaust survivor originally from Munkacs Hungary carried one regret for his entire lifetime never thanking the American troops who liberated him For many years Joe never shared his Holocaust experiences with anyone until he took part in the 2012 March of the Living Joe s return to Eastern Europe yielded by complete chance a most surprising and welcome reunion with one of his liberators Mickey Dorsey had blown open the gates to Gunnskirken 67 years earlier and Joe was finally able to thank him After this emotional experience Joe said Now I feel I can live forever 126

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What The Messiah Looks Like Irving Roth in black suit and tie is flanked by US Army WWII liberators including Rick Carrier the first Allied soldier to enter Buchenwald and witness the atrocities committed by the Nazis there Irving Roth recalls that day By 11 00 in the morning every guard disappeared By 3 00 in the afternoon on April 11 1945 Rick Carrier and his comrades came to Buchenwald Two American soldiers walked into my building You may not know what the Messiah looks like but I do There were two of them one was black and one was white There were 300 of us 15 year olds weighing on average 75 pounds skeletons They looked at us and broke down But I was free 128

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Miriam A16891 On January 27 1945 the Russian Army liberated Auschwitz Birkenau About 7 000 people remained in the camp too sick or too young to go on the Death March including 52 children under nine years of age One of the children Miriam Ziegler appears in a famous picture taken on the day of liberation showing the number on her arm In 2015 she returned to Auschwitz to commemorate the 70 th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and her own liberation as well Miriam n e Friedman Ziegler second from left showing the number on her arm A16891 the day of her liberation from Auschwitz at nine years of age Miriam Ziegler returning to Auschwitz on the 70th anniversary of her liberation She was imprisoned in the barracks where medical experiments were performed Miriam Ziegler looking at famous photograph I feel very lucky very blessed that at that age I could save myself This is when we saw the Russian soldiers coming in on their trucks and walking and marching We couldn t believe it No more Nazis over us My feelings were Now what What s going to be next I m nobody Where am I going I m wearing a kerchief My hair is very short because we were shaven completely I see that famous picture of me in magazines in the encyclopedia but I can t believe it s me I know it s me I recognize myself but no feelings just emptiness When the Russian soldiers asked for the children s names Miriam pointed to her tattoo the only child in the photo to do so I was so used to responding to my number she explains I was standing there numb because I didn t know where my family was I didn t know where I was going to end up I feel it is my duty to go back I know there are not many survivors left to speak and I need to speak on behalf of the millions who were killed who had no voice And I need to tell my story to future generations so they will never forget I don t know why I was picked and why I m alive This happened to many millions of people I m the lucky one I feel now I have to talk about it I don t know how much longer I can talk about it 130

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Like Angels from Heaven Faigie Libman reading her mother s account of the moment of liberation after the Death March in January 1945 Germany The living skeletons crawled out of their huts Some of the stronger women went to the highway to find out what is going on Suddenly they saw men riding on horses One of the women yelled I think those are Russian soldiers The other women stayed frozen in their tracks The riders stopped to ask the women who they were and what are they doing here The captain of the group on a white horse was a Jew He told the women that the Russians are marching a mile behind them With all the strength they could muster the women pulled down the captain from his horse and started to hug him and kiss him They nearly choked him to death had his friends not reached him in time Women were laughing and crying some got hysterical Like angels from heaven you saved us In reality we still thought it was a dream Faigie continues The moment I knew I was free we were hugging and I think that this was the first time that my mother was at a loss for words It was like the most unbelievable thing was happening The Russian soldiers looked after us they liberated us And I didn t have to worry that somebody will squeal to the authorities that I am impersonating that I am not who I am It made me so happy that I could climb a mountain I can go to school I can be my own self A ten and a half year old child As long as I live I am always going to have a warm spot in my heart for the Russian soldiers If not for them I wouldn t be sitting here They gave me life Faigie Libman singing the Partisan Song with Eli Rubenstein in front of the Rapoport Monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 131

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AND STILL I CANNOT HATE I see bones and hair shoes and glasses While in a Nazi hell ruled by the devil s brother But still I cannot hate I see women s brushes men s talisim and babies tattered clothing But still I cannot hate I see splintered boards where people laid their weary bodies I see where people slaved and tried to exist And still I cannot hate I see the death and destruction But still I cannot hate I won t continue this tragedy I won t spread the disease I won t fan the flames that hate like this inspires Jennifer Staffenberg 17 March of the Living 1994 141

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AFTERWORD Remarks by Steven Spielberg to the 2020 Virtual March of the Living Holocaust Remembrance Day April 21 2020 We ve never had a Remembrance Day quite like this But today on Yom HaShoah we gather for our first ever virtual March of the Living And I wish we could all be together in person But what s important is that we are together now Because this virtual gathering not only gives us a chance to remember the horrors we faced in the past it also shines a light on the struggles that lie ahead and those we face as a community this very day Over the years we have persevered again and again and the strength of this community will once again lead us all through these difficult times together The USC Shoah Foundation was founded as a lasting resource for future generations and the bravery and wisdom of our survivors words have already reached our children grandchildren and even our great grandchildren guiding them through the obstacles they will face in their own lives The work we are doing which is your work is already having a generational impact So for that I can only say thank you Thank you for your bravery Thank you for your commitment to the March of the Living And thank you for gathering today to look back as we continue the vital work of ensuring a better future So to the survivors among you Your stories are safe with us They remind not only of your unwavering courage but also that the days ahead are going to be filled with light and hope So stay healthy and stay safe and I hope to see you all soon Steven Spielberg is the founder of USC Shoah Foundation whose mission is to develop empathy understanding and respect through the testimony of Holocaust survivors and other genocide witnesses USC Shoah Foundation houses the largest digital collections of its kind in the world His remarks were given at the 2020 Virtual March of the Living ceremony the actual March of the Living in Poland was cancelled because of the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic 144

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Acknowledgments Portions of this book are based on the United Nations Exhibit When You Listen to a Witness You Become a Witness Created by Eli Rubenstein and Lara Silberklang Designed by Sara Jaskiel Chief Advisor and Associate Creator Dr David Machlis Academic Advisor Dr David Silberklang Additional Book Credits For You Who Died I Must Live On Reflections on the March of the Living Eli Rubenstein ed Mosaic Press 1993 Liberating the Ghosts Photographs and Texts from the March of the Living Raphael Shevelev and Karen Schomer Lenswork Publishing 1996 Photographic Credits Nir Bareket 26 114 115 Jacek Bendarczyk EPA 81 Rikki Bennie 78 Sergey Bermeniev 13 Francois Blanc Banff Technologies 19 Ryan Blau 22 23 66 88 96 140 top 143 Eli ben Boher 63 80 Laina Brown 122 123 Lior Cohen 73 Monique de St Croix 55 91 94 95 Ariella Daniels Living Legacy Experience 80 Jen Freedman 120 Jesse Gold 58 Rosemary Goldhar 31 32 33 84 99 138 left 140 bottom Film Marcha Director Marcos Gorban vi Naomi Harris 78 Igal Hecht 85 87 126 Natasha Hossack 125 Eynat Katz 48 70 Kenigswein Family 48 Christopher Le 131 Adele Lewin 79 March of the Living 25 45 Dafna Lorber 21 26 113 Moshe Milner 90 Katka Reszke 50 51 52 Emmanuel Santos 28 Michael Soberman 83 David Sondervan 129 Manuel F Sousa 106 Tomek Steppa 41 Dominique Teoh 69 USC Shoah Foundation ii 119 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM 10 11 121 USHMM courtesy of Beit Hannah Senesh 41 Yad Vashem 12 13 41 142 Sally Wasserman 93 Elad Winkler 42 92 Naomi Wise 130 Yonatan Zaid 53 Yossi Zeliger front cover 20 24 30 38 46 49 53 59 60 64 68 72 73 82 86 97 98 104 105 108 109 110 111 112 127 128 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 right 139 Bonnie Zipursky 54 Special Thanks to the International March of the Living Board of Directors Phyllis Greenberg Heideman President Dr Shmuel Rosenman Chairman Baruch Adler Shlomo Grofman Mark Moskowitz Scott Saunders Shimon Yarel International March of the Living Staff Executive Staff Yossi Kedem Dr David Machlis Aharon Tamir Support Staff Liz Sinnreich Panitch Naomi Sion Survivors Righteous Among the Nations Liberators Featured Trudy Album 91 Asher Aud 90 Halina Birenbaum 72 Teddy Bolgar 98 Lillian Boraks Nemetz 79 Friedrich Born 37 Alex Buckman 55 Rick Carrier 128 Judy Weissenberg Cohen 78 Jeffery Cymbler 59 Feliks Cywinski 48 Mickey Dorsey 127 Ella Ehrmann 96 Ernest Ehrmann 66 Max Eisen 70 Anita Ekstein 33 97 Robert Engel 119 Anne Frank 41 Eva Gelbman 99 Max Glauben 63 Bill Glied 87 Joe Gottenker 54 145

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Thank you to Yad Vashem the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Polin The Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the USC Shoah Foundation for their significant assistance Also to Dr David Silberklang for his patient and expert advice and to Dr Sharon Kangisser Cohen for her wise suggestions Elly Gotz 122 125 Mademoiselle Andr e Geulen 55 Sylvia Ruth Gutmann 68 82 Pinchas Gutter 64 Anna Heilman 26 Max Illand 83 Shmuel Kenigswein 48 Gerda Weissmann Klein 121 Lieutenant Kurt Klein 121 Janusz Korczak 45 Olga Kost 53 Jerzy Kozminski 46 Bronka Krygier 42 Rabbi Israel Meir Lau 94 Nate Leipciger 73 84 85 Faigie Libman 58 131 Frank Lowy 69 Carl Lutz 37 Joe Mandel 126 Hilbert Margol 129 Edward Mosberg cover 60 Sol Nayman 80 Tadeusz Orzeszko 71 Angela Orosz 120 Giorgio Perlasca 37 Zygmunt Pietak 48 Krystyna Puchalski Maciejewskai 52 Sigmund Rolat 52 Irving Roth 30 Angelo Rotta 37 Mayer Schondorf 86 Rena Schondorf 88 Hannah Senesh 41 Irena Sendler 37 Eva Shainblum 118 David Shentow 73 Stefania Sitbon 48 Eva and Mikolaj Turkin 93 Robbie Waisman 94 95 Raoul Wallenberg 37 Sally Wasserman 92 93 Ernie Weiss 78 Elie Wiesel 13 Krystyna Wituska 41 Antonina and Jan Zabinski 48 Czelawa Zak 53 Miriam Zakrojczyk 53 Felix Zandman 49 Miriam Ziegler 130 Petronela and Wladyslaw Ziolo 54 Sidney Zoltak 50 51 Additional Support Alvin Abrams Nancy Ditkofsky Shira Gelkopf Michael Hirsh Linda Kislowicz Roberta Malam Ali Newpol Dr Karen Palayew Sherri Rotstein Alana Saxe Ralph Shedletsky Michael Soberman Sherrie Stalarow Irene Tomaszewski Shauna Waltman Naomi Wise Carla Wittes Evan Zelikovitz To all the staff at Second Story Press Margie Wolfe Publisher Kathryn Cole and Carolyn Jackson Editors Melissa Kaita Design Thank you for your tireless effort and dedication in producing this book The testimonies of many of the survivors who appear in this book are available online at March of the Living Digital Archives Project http molarchiveproject com and the USC Shoah Foundation Archives https sfi usc edu what we do collections and by accessing the USC Shoah Foundation or the Digimarc digital watermarks on selected pages Special thanks to BlueSoho for their dedicated work with this emerging technology March of the Living Digital Archives a project of Jewish Federations Canada UIA has received funding from Department of Citizenship Immigration Canada Multiculturalism Section The Claims Conference and Laura Dennis Bennie Special Note of Gratitude Mordechai Ben Dat and Christina Mairin Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of people young and old alike survivors teachers and students of all faiths and backgrounds for embarking on this difficult and sacred pilgrimage and for your faith and belief that the world can and indeed must learn from this most tragic period of human history 146

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HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS ARE AGING ONCE THEY ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO WHO WILL TELL THEIR STORIES For more than 30 years the March of the Living has brought together survivors and students from all over the world to ensure that firsthand accounts of the Holocaust are not lost During their visits to Poland where millions of innocent people were enslaved and murdered by Nazi Germany during WWII survivors those who helped them and liberators all share their memories with young people As they walk through concentration camps ghettos and towns depleted of Jewish communities a special bond forms as the original witnesses to the Holocaust pass their mantle to a new generation whose task it is to remember what they hear and see Moving photographs and personal accounts show us the remarkable passing of the torch to the young of many faiths and cultures who become the new witnesses carrying the torch toward a future of peace I tell my story for the purpose of improving humanity drop by drop by drop PINCHA S GUTTER Holocaust survivor and March of the Living participant Those are the words of one survivor performing the sacred duty of memory that will echo throughout eternity Those are good words for all of us to live by US President BARACK OBA M A in response to Pinchas Gutter at USC Shoah Foundation s 20th Anniversary Event May 7 2014 The March of the Living is an educational program that brings survivors and young people from around the world to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of all victims of Nazi genocide and against prejudice intolerance and hate 32 95 View survivor testimonies of many of those appearing in this book by scanning images with the blue flame icon or online at March of the Living Digital Archives Project http molarchiveproject com and USC Shoah Foundation Archives https sfi usc edu what we do collections ISBN 978 1 77260 149 7 LIBERATION75 Global Gathering of Holocaust Survivors Descendants Educators and Friends Second Story Press www secondstorypress ca