From the Isles of the Aegean Sea to Auschwitz

“The cars stopped and I saw bald people with striped suits… I told my mother I think they brought us to an insane asylum,” related Violette Mayo in testimony depicting her arrival from the Greek islands to Auschwitz.

A monument in the Jewish cemetery in Rhodes commemorating
the Jews of the island

On Thursday, July 25, 2013 an annual memorial or yahrzeit ceremony commemorating the destruction of the Jewish communities in the Greek islands of Rhodes and Kos was held in the synagogue at Yad Vashem. Survivors and their families lit the Yad Vashem candelabra and gathered to honor those loved ones who were murdered as well as to celebrate the Jewish life that existed in those two deeply rooted communities. Throughout much of the event, Yad Vashem's synagogue was filled with prayer and music reminiscent of the unique culture of the Jewish communities of Rhodes and Kos. The former Chief Rabbi of Uruguay Rabbi Mordechai Maaravi addressed the gathering and recited psalms and the El Maleh Rachamim and Kaddish prayers. Tamar Machado, a musicologist by profession, gave an interesting lecture on the unique qualities of the Jewish community in Rhodes and Kos, explaining that for many Greek Sephardic Jews sent to Auschwitz, Jewish prayer and music was the central unifying quality shared with the other Jews imprisoned in the camp. Through their Jewish tradition, the camp’s inmates shared a common bond which succeeded in bridging various communities together despite the many cultural differences and the wide number of countries of origin for many of the Jewish prisoners who constituted the camp’s populace. Throughout the ceremony, Betty Klein played the harp and beautifully sang a variety of both traditional and original songs in Ladino. Among the songs performed was an original one written by Mario Suriano entitled, “What is Happening on the Big Street”, written to commemorate the vibrant Jewish community and rich culture that existed in Rhodes.

Maggie Cohen detailing a book designed to commemorate the Jewish
communities of Rhodes and Kos in the synagogue at Yad Vashem 

Among those in attendance at Thursday’s event were Avi Rosenthal, director of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel who shared a personal story of his mother who was deported and murdered at Auschwitz, Ezra Tal who recited a poem of a childhood in Rhodes, Maggie Cohen who described a book designed to commemorate the Jewish communities of Rhodes and Kos and Foundation for the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage of Rhodes Chairman Mario Suriano who presented Yad Vashem with a copy of a personal diary of a Holocaust survivor from Rhodes who during the war escaped to Israel via Turkey and Cyprus and was later killed fighting in Israel's War of Independence.

On July 20, 1944, the Jewish men of Rhodes were arrested. Several of them managed to escape the roundup and join the partisans. The women and children were deported later, and on July 24, 1944 1,700 were shipped to Athens on two coal barges with no food or water; 120 Jews from the island of Kos were also added to the transport. The boats then stopped at the island of Leros to deport the single Jewish man who lived on the island. On arrival in Athens, they were imprisoned in the notorious Haidari prison, and from there, were deported to Auschwitz arriving on August 17, 1944. 400 Jews were selected for hard labor and the rest were murdered. Only 150 survived the war.

Art’s Journey: From Nazi Germany to Yad Vashem

Holocaust survivor and artist Ernest (Ernie) Meyer addresses family and
friends during the donation ceremony

Recently, Holocaust survivor and artist Ernest (Ernie) Meyer donated 17 artworks to Yad Vashem. He created the pieces during his youth in Nazi Germany and abroad during the Holocaust. Among the works is a portrait of his teacher, the renowned Jewish-German artist Ludwig Meidner, and depictions of the separation from his family during the Kindertransport and the detention camp in Canada where he was interned. The artwork donated by Ernest will become part of Yad Vashem’s art collection where it will be safeguarded for future generations.  Yad Vashem’s Holocaust Art collection contains                                                                                           some 10,000 pieces. 

Ernest (Ernie) Meyer was born in Cologne, Germany in 1923 to Gustav and Johanna Meyer. Gustav was a butcher and Johanna was a housewife. A teenager during the Nazi regime in Germany, in 1935 he began to study art privately under the instruction of Otto Salomon. That same year, as a consequence of Nazi German racial laws, Ernest was expelled from the public school he was attending and began to study at the Jawne (Yavne) Jewish school in Cologne. There he continued to study art under Ludwig Meidner, one of the most important Jewish-German artists of the era, whose work was denounced by the Nazi regime as “degenerate”, forbidden to be sold or displayed. As a result, Ludwig Meidner had moved from Berlin to Cologne and began teaching at the Yavne school.

The Last Goodbye 1939 depicts Ernie's separation from his family
during the Kindertransport

In 1937, Ernest's older brother Paul moved to England to continue his studies. After Kirstallnacht in November 1938, Dr. Erich Klibansky, the school’s director, worked tirelessly to arrange for his students to immigrate to England through the opportunity provided by the Kindertransport. He managed to send several of his classes together, and in them, separately, both Ernest and his sister Eva. Thus, all three Meyer children were able to survive the Holocaust. In 1941, following Britain’s decision to intern all “enemy aliens” – ironically including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany whose German citizenship had been stripped from them – Ernest was shipped to Canada aboard the MS Ettrick. Upon arrival, he was interned in Camp I, at Ilse-aux-Noix near the Quebec-Ontario border, until his release in 1944 after the Jewish community in Toronto petitioned the government on behalf of detained Jews. Ernest's parents and maternal grandmother, Ida van Blijdenstein, fled Germany to the Netherlands in 1939, and settled in Zaltbommel, Johanna’s hometown. Gustav and Johanna were arrested and deported to Westerbork transit camp and from there to Auschwitz on July 12, 1942 where they were murdered. Ida was deported to Sobibor on May 14, 1943, where she too was murdered.

Holocaust survivor and artist Ernest (Ernie) Meyer with Yehudit Shendar,
Deputy Director of Yad Vashem's Museums Division and Senior Art Curator

Ernest later married, immigrated to Israel, and raised a family, working for the Jerusalem Post newspaper where among other things, he covered ceremonies honoring the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem for many years.

Speaking at the donation ceremony, attended by over 30 members and three generations of Meyer’s family, were Yehudit Shendar, Deputy Director of Yad Vashem’s Museums Division and Senior Art Curator; Niv Goldberg, Art Collection Manager; Ernest Meyer himself; his son Effi Meyer and granddaughter Michal Gillis. Meyer’s grandson, Ronny Gillis,

Family and friends gathered for the donation ceremony

an officer in the IDF, presented his grandfather with a “Witnesses in Uniform” pin issued by the IDF to officers who take part in the IDF’s educational trips to Auschwitz.

“Yad Vashem is pleased to be able to honor Ernest Meyer for his donation of these artworks, which provide important visual testimony to Jewish family life in Nazi Germany, the Kindertransport and enemy-alien internment camps in Canada,” said Niv Goldberg, Art Collection Manager at Yad Vashem. 

Holocaust Survivor Receives Books from Family Home through Grandson of Nazi Officer

Cynthia Wroclawski, Manager of the of the Yad Vashem Shoah Victims’
Names Recovery Project presents Moshe Hofstadter with his father’s
books on behalf of Dr. Christoph Schlegel

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 during an emotional visit to Yad Vashem, Holocaust survivor Moshe Hofstadter (Ramat Gan, Israel) received four books that belonged to his father Avraham who was murdered in the Holocaust. The books were sent to Yad Vashem by Dr. Christoph Schlegel, an Austrian grandson of Nazi officer and Stadtkommissar Herbert Huller who in 1941 was stationed in Rzeszow, Poland. Huller most likely acquired the books from one of the warehouses which contained stolen Jewish possessions. Huller was sent to a prison camp for high-ranking Nazi officers in Wolfsberg for two years immediately following the war. He died in 1978. The books were discovered by his grandson in 2010, a few years after Huller’s widow (Schlegel’s grandmother) moved out of her house and into a nursing home in 2007.

Initially unaware of the name stamped on the inside cover of each of the four books, Schlegel eventually noticed the name “Abraham Hofstadter” printed on them and in May 2013 began to research the person behind the name. Searching Yad Vashem’s online Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names he discovered that Abraham Hofstadter was a Jewish merchant from Rzeszow, Poland who was murdered in the Holocaust.

Commemorating his memory, Abraham’s son Moshe completed a Page of Testimony documenting his father’s murder, and as is customary left his contact information. When Schlegel searched the Internet for information on Abraham Hofstadter he discovered the Page of Testimony and contacted Yad Vashem’s Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project for assistance in reaching out to any surviving family that Abraham Hofstadter may have had, in hopes of returning the books.

Thanks to the information on the Page of Testimony, Yad Vashem was able to put Moshe and Schlegel in touch and the two have been in correspondence ever since. Moshe, 88, is the son and sole survivor of his immediate family. As a boy he was imprisoned in the Lvov Ghetto and survived the Holocaust by working under a false identity; eventually he immigrated to Israel after the war.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2013 Yad Vashem presented Moshe with his father’s books on behalf of Dr. Christoph Schlegel. “These are just a few books which I want in the right hands,” he wrote when he contacted Yad Vashem for assistance in finding members of Avraham Hofstadter's family. “I know the feeling of touching something a person you loved has touched and used.”

Emotionally, Moshe paused as the books clearly brought back good memories of his father from before the war, proudly describing him as an active Jewish and Zionist leader in the community. “My father had a very big library and spoke German, Polish and Yiddish.”

“This is the only thing I have from my father; I have nothing else,” said Moshe upon being presented with the books at Yad Vashem by Manager of the Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project Cynthia Wroclawski during an emotional gathering with his family. “I’m very glad to have them.”

Moshe Hofstadter and his family look at this father’s books at Yad Vashem

Pages of Testimony are specially designed forms filled out in memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. The Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project aims to memorialize each individual Jewish person murdered in the Holocaust by recording their names, biographical details and photographs in the online Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. To date 4.2 of the six million victims are documented in the Names Database. Efforts continue to try and recover the name and identity of each and every Jewish person murdered in the Holocaust.

For more information about the Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project please contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org

Educators’ Summer Break Opens with Yad Vashem Conference

“It is essential that we successfully educate the next generations of students so that they continue to know the history and internalize the lessons of the Holocaust.”

–Orli Gamzo Letova 

Some 1,200 teachers from across Israel participated in the conference

Orli Gamzo Letova, a teacher from the Yarkon School in the center of the country was one of 1,200 teachers from across Israel who gathered at the International School for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem for the fifth National Educators’ Conference on Holocaust Education on 1-2 July 2013. Emphasizing what to her is the key educational purpose when teaching about the Holocaust, she described the two-day event as “well organized with a very diverse number of ideas in how to approach education regarding the Shoah."

Israeli Education Minister Rabbi Shay Piron addresses the teachers

The goal of the conference was to create dialogue and commitment to Holocaust education among teachers and help provide the educational tools to effectively teach students of different age groups, each according to their different needs. The conference, which consisted of over 140 workshops and lectures, took place in cooperation with Israel’s Ministry of Education and Teachers’ Union, and with the generous support of the Azrieli Foundation, the Claims Conference and the Adelson Family Foundation. One of the central themes discussed in length dealt with the appropriate methods in which educators should endow the lessons and memory of the Holocaust for future generations. Among the wide variety of lectures offered and topics discussed were the use of Holocaust imagery in political cartoons, Holocaust in the media, theater and the performing arts during the Holocaust and the choice of music played during Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. In addition, some 25 Holocaust survivors shared their stories with the teachers in a more intimate setting so as to provide them with a firsthand account of personal testimonies.  

Conference participants with Chairman of the Yad Vashem
Directorate Avner Shalev second from left

Israeli Education Minister Rabbi Shay Piron and Chairman of Yad Vashem Avner Shalev also addressed the teachers concerning the importance of Holocaust instruction and the way in which it should be implemented in the Israeli education system. Referring to the fact that there currently is not a single, widespread, cohesive organized program for Holocaust education in schools, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said that, “The fact that more than 1,200 teachers came here during the start of summer vacation is reflective of the need, recognized from the bottom up by teachers and students, for value-based ​​education concerning the Holocaust. I believe that the challenge to build a program within the education system is one we can overcome. There is no doubt of the need for a program that can be implemented in the education system.”

Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony Memorial Repository Now Part of UNESCO Memory of the World Register

The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem houses the Pages of
Testimony Memorial Repository

The Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony Memorial Repository has been included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, marking the first time that Israeli collections have been included in the registry. Pages of Testimony are specially designed forms filled out in memory of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Yad Vashem, which literally means a memorial and a name, has for the past 6 decades, endeavored to recover the names and identities of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and has been collecting Pages of Testimony from Holocaust survivors and those who remember the victims since 1954. Thus far, 2.6 million names have been documented on Pages of Testimony, which together with other documentation have allowed Yad Vashem to identify by name 4.2 million out of the 6 million victims. The Pages of Testimony Memorial  Repository is housed in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem.

“For many Holocaust survivors and their families, Pages of Testimony are the only tangible evidence that their murdered loved ones once lived,” said Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem. “The Nazis and their collaborators strove to murder each and every Jewish man, woman and child and to erase any vestige of their existence. These pages, together with information gathered from around the world as part of our names recovery efforts, restore to them their names – their identities. We will continue our efforts to bring the names and identities of the victims back from oblivion as long as we are able to do so. I urge anyone who has not yet submitted Pages of Testimony to do so now.”

Filling out a Page of Testimony

“The Pages of Testimony Repository represents a huge-scale collective memorial to Holocaust victims, unprecedented in history in both its dimensions and its intent to preserve the names as symbols of their humanity. Comprised of invaluable personal hand-signed testimonies, it is unique in the world," said Dr. Alexander Avram, Director of the Hall of Names.

Pages of Testimony are available in some 15 languages, and continue to be filled out by friends and family of the victims, as Yad Vashem continues this historic effort. The entire collection has been uploaded to the Yad Vashem website as part of the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names and is available in English, Hebrew, Russian, German and Spanish.

UNESCO's Memory of the World Program raises to a global level the awareness and the imperative of preservation of, and access to, unique and irreplaceable documentary heritage in various parts of the world. The Memory of the World Register, founded in 1995, includes so far only 299 items worldwide endorsed by the Director-General of UNESCO.

Keeping the Memory of 8-year-old Ruda Chaya Alive

Page of Testimony submitted to Yad
Vashem  in memory of Ruda Huberband

Ruda Chaya Huberband was only eight-years-old when she was murdered by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. She was a child, an innocent who had not yet experienced and lived life. Having died before reaching the age of 12, Ruda Chaya did not get to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, which signifies the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood.



Ruda Chaya’s cousin, Joyce Kahn from Israel, commemorated her by submitting a Page of Testimony, including a haunting photograph of the young girl with ribbons in her hair, to Yad Vashem in 2008. Joyce serves as a dedicated volunteer for the Shoah Victims’ Names Recovery Project, assisting Holocaust survivors and others with commemorating the names of Shoah victims.

In March 2013, Joyce was surprised when she was contacted by a young girl named Nicolette Cure who sent her an invitation to her bat mitzvah, explaining that she would be honoring the memory of Ruda Chaya in her upcoming celebration. Nicolette found Joyce thanks to information on the Page of Testimony for her cousin Ruda Chaya.

Ruda Chaya Huberband

Joyce related the following via e-mail:

“...On Erev Pesach of this year, I received an invitation to a Bat Mitzva in New York from someone whom I have never heard of before. On reading the invitation properly I could see that during the synagogue service Kaddish was to be said by the Bat Mitzva girl, in the name of Ruda Chaya Huberband a second cousin of mine, who was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1942. The Bat Mitzva was that of Nicolette Cure. Inside the invitation was a letter explaining that she had taken upon herself to remember someone who had died in the Holocaust in order to make her Bat Mitzva more meaningful. This project of remembrance is coordinated by an American based organization called Remember Us, a group that twins children preparing for their Bar/Bat mitzvahs with the memory of children lost in the Holocaust. For me, this took on special meaning because - I thought it interesting that out of 1.5 million children just Ruda Chaya was chosen, and also Ruda's Mother Chava was my Grandfather's youngest sister. Ruda was one of five children who all perished, together with both parents. My Aunt Chava even traveled to London June 1938 for my parents' wedding and I still have the gift she brought. When the family was alive they were all very close. The interesting thing is of all the Huberband children Ruda resembles my sister when my sister was the same age.

May the memory of Ruda Chaya and all the other 6 million Jews be blessed.”

For more information on Yad Vashem's Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project please contact: names.outreach@yadvashem.org.il

For more information on Remember Us please contact: info@remember-us.org

Theater in Holland: A Cultural Refuge During the Holocaust - Part 2

The Jewish Theater in Amsterdam during a deportation
in Summer 1942 

Expanding on last week’s entry regarding the day-long symposium on May 6, 2013, which discussed performing arts in Holland during the Holocaust and was sponsored by the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem along with the International Institute for Jewish and Israeli Culture, the following post will shed additional insight concerning the continual use of theater in an increasingly terrible period following the deportation of Dutch Jewry and their internment in camps. Beginning in the summer of 1942, the Jewish Theater was dissolved as a cultural forum and began to be used by the Nazis as an assembly point to begin the mass deportations of Dutch Jewry, taking them by train to the concentration and transit camps: Westerbork and Vught.

Part 1: http://www.yad-vashem.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/theater-in-holland-cultural-refuge.html

The orchestra in the Westerbork camp followed by a line of inmates

Located in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, Westerbork, the larger of the two camps, was initially established before the Nazi occupation by the Dutch government in 1939 to detain German Jews who fled the Nazi regime and entered the country illegally. Following the occupation of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany, Westerbork became a concentration and transit camp used to gather and deport Jews to other Nazi extermination and concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Sobibor, Theresienstadt, and Bergen-Belsen. Among those concentrated in Westerbork were many of the talented Jewish performing artists living in Holland at the time who were taken to the camp temporarily before eventually being sent to one of the various Nazi camps in Europe mentioned above.

Prisoners performing a show in the camp's theater in Westerbork

On October 12, 1942 SS-Obersturmfuehrer Albert Konrad Gemmeker was put in charge of the camp, overseeing and carrying out the orders from the office of Adolf Eichmann concerning the timing, extent and destination of the mass deportations. The way in which the Nazis administered Westerbork was unusual in that it tried to give the Jews deported there a false sense of normality and a feeling that through obedience they would be decently treated. This was done for a number of reasons including providing a cover that would aid the level of ease, compliance and control in deporting the inmates to their deaths in extermination camps in the East as well as assist Nazi propaganda purposes in portraying the conditions within the camps as “humane”.  However, perhaps one of the strangest and most distinctive occurrences at Westerbork, which characterized the German deception regarding the camp’s ultimate purpose, was Gemmeker’s decision to allow many of the renowned Jewish performing artists imprisoned in the camp to put on elaborate theatrical productions. Such extensive encouragement by the Nazi camp commander in allowing Jewish prisoners to partake in cultural activities such as theater made Westerbork stand out as a rare outlet for the performing arts during the Holocaust.

The orchestra in the Westerbork camp's theater. Willy Rosen
and Erich Ziegler are seen left on the pianos

The “Camp Westerbork Theater Group” was established under the direction of Max Erlich, a famous German-Jewish actor, writer and director imprisoned at the camp, who led the company in putting on a number of original full-scale theatrical and cabaret productions in addition to a weekly performance. At its height the theater group had over 50 performers including well-known Jewish German and Dutch artists such as Willy Rosen, Erich Ziegler, Franz Engel, Kurt Geron, Esther Philipse, Jetty Cantor, Camila Spira and Johnny & Jones. For many camp inmates, the Westerbork theater was a temporary distraction and cultural refuge from the devastating reality that, at any time, one could be deported East to a far worse fate. Since there was no telling how long one would be kept at Westerbork before being put on a list for deportation (ranging from a week to over a year), to a large extent the theater was permitted as it provided an element of control over the camp’s population. By having a performance the evening before a forced deportation to an extermination camp, the Nazis used the medium of art that is theater to maintain a sense of calm among the camp’s Jewish prisoners during a period of great turmoil and tension. Nevertheless, for many at Westerbork the theater provided an artistic escape from the daily forced labor and the grim realization that one could be sent on a train to a more terrible place. While the theater did prolong the time at Westerbork for its many famous and talented performers, it only delayed those Jewish artists, such as Erlich, Rosen, Engel, Geron, Philipse and Johnny & Jones, from the same horrible fate suffered by the almost 100,000 Jews detained in the camp who were sent to their untimely deaths at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. For most of those detained at the camp who would ultimately fall victim to Nazi cruelty, a performance at Westerbork would be their last.

Jews being deported by train from Westerbork, Netherlands to Auschwitz