The Jerusalem Post cited the B’nai Brith World Center-Jerusalem posthumously awarding Joseph Bau its Jewish Rescuers Citation in its coverage of the Joseph Bau House Museum in Tel Aviv struggling to stay open during the coronavirus pandemic. If there are any Hollywood moguls out there looking for a real-life character to serve as the central character in a superhero-type blockbuster, they could do a lot worse than to read up on Joseph Bau.
There is no need to engage in hyperbole or florid epithets when sketching a profile of Bau, who died in 2002 at the age of 81. In fact, he was fortunate to make it past his mid-20s, surviving several ghettos, a concentration camp and all manner of other horrific tests of his mettle along the way. Some of that is today commemorated, nay, celebrated, at Joseph Bau House Museum, an independent boutique museum in downtown Tel Aviv that tells the extraordinary life story of an extraordinary person. The repository – which is run by Bau’s daughters Hadassah and Clilah Bau – has somehow managed to survive over the years on a shoestring budget, but is now running out of funds and may be forced to close down. The Baus have instigated a Headstart drive (headstart.co.il/project/60369) that is aiming to raise NIS 100,000 to keep the museum afloat, and to continue to enlighten the public about their father’s incredible journey on terra firma. Bau was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1920 and died in Tel Aviv in 2002. Between those two temporal goalposts, he managed to wriggle his way out of numerous life-threatening situations, and even found love en route. I first encountered Bau’s name, and learned of some of his amazing achievements, 20 years ago when I met his daughters at his studio on Berdichevsky Street off Rothschild Boulevard. It felt like stepping into an Aladdin’s cave. The cozily proportioned premises were stuffed to the rafters with specimens of Bau’s wide-ranging graphic work, including posters he crafted for early Israeli movies, such as the iconic 1964 dark comedy about aliyah and absorption Sallah Shabati, starring Haim Topol. There were also examples of his animation work, paintings, caricatures, graphics, copies of the nine books he has put out over the years, and evidence of his immersive research into the Hebrew language. For Bau the latter was a labor of love, which helped him bond with the country and culture he had dreamed about almost all his life. “Reaching Israel was the fulfillment of an ambition he had since the age of 13,” says Clilah. “He talks about that in his book Shnot Tarzach.” Typically, the title of the book is a play on words. By slightly altering the punctuation you get tirzach, which translates as “you shall murder,” while as an abbreviation, the four letters in Hebrew spell out the year 5698, which equates to 1938-39 in the Gregorian calendar and possibly references the outbreak of World War Two. The tome contains Bau’s recollections of the Holocaust and his life in Israel, and is liberally seasoned with comical word play, and dark and sometimes raucous humor. It has been translated into seven languages, including English, Arabic and Chinese. I met Bau in his apartment after visiting the studio with his daughters. He was a slight, gentle-looking, well-groomed character, with a full head of snow-white hair, but he had lost his power of speech following the death of his wife, Rivka (née Tennenbaum), three years earlier. Rivka was the love of his life who, in fact, saved his life by giving him her place at Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow, which employed hundreds of Jews, and saved around 1,200. Happily, Rivka subsequently survived Auschwitz and was reunited with her husband in Krakow, where they lived until they made aliyah in 1950. They met in Plaszów concentration camp near Krakow. It was love at first sight and, incredibly, the couple contrived to get married there, after Bau snuck into the women’s quarters, with the other female inmates standing guard. The nuptials were immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar Award-winning epic Schindler’s List, which Joseph and Rivka went to see, notwithstanding their daughters’ remonstrations. “WE DIDN’T want our parents to see the movie, but they said it was their duty, toward all those who were murdered,” Hadassah recalls. “We were very concerned and sat on either side of them [in the cinema]. During the movie, when they showed something terrible, we asked dad, ‘Was it like that?’ and he replied, ‘It was 10 times worse!’ Dad also said that the movie was a work of genius, and that if Spielberg had shown all the horrors, no one would have gone to see it.” One of the more remarkable aspects of Bau’s unimaginable life odyssey is the fact that he not only got by in Hebrew, he mastered it to such an extent that he was able to sculpt it, and mine its nuances and vagaries to a level achieved by few born into the language. That comes across succinctly in, for example, his 1987 book, Brit Mila, again a play of words that can reference the Jewish circumcision ceremony for male babies or translate as Covenant of a Word. As a trained graphic artist who studied German Gothic lettering before the Holocaust – a skill that also helped him to survive by providing that service to German officers in Krakow Ghetto and later at Plaszów – he was also, naturally, drawn to its aesthetics. He also used his graphic skills to save the lives of many Jews by forging papers for them. Those heroic efforts were recently recognized by the B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem when it posthumously awarded Bau its Jewish Rescuers Citation. He created a number of Hebrew fonts that found their way into the country’s earliest animation works and commercials. As he was there at the very inception of the field in the young State of Israel, he had to start from scratch. That included crafting the lighting, cameras and other requisite equipment out of old X-ray apparatus and refitting all kinds of machinery to get the job done. Although Hadassah and Clilah say their parents were not coy about their Holocaust experiences, Bau kept one aspect of his work to himself. It was only several years after his death that the Bau daughters learned of their father’s espionage work for the Mossad. “His work included forging papers for spies,” says Clilah. “That included documents for [Israeli spy in Syria] Eli Cohen and the whole team that went [to Argentina] to capture [Adolf] Eichmann. ”Bau might have had an easier life in the States, but opted to stay here. “Our father’s dream was to make animated films, but there was no awareness of cartoons in Israel then, so he worked in graphics and creating fonts for movies,” Hadassah explains. “His brother wanted him to come to New York to work as an animator, but he didn’t want to leave Israel, which was everything to him.” His expertise in that field was also put to good use by the Israeli security forces. “We discovered he made classified animated films for the IDF and Mossad, but they are not willing to show us the movies. ”Our chat is interspersed by lots of laughing, and the daughters say there was plenty of merriment at home. “He taught me to write songs, all with humor, and he taught Clilah to tell jokes,” Hadassah notes with yet another peal of laughter. Now the Baus just want to keep the memory of their parents’ amazing life, and their father’s invaluable work, alive. Prior to the pandemic, tours of the studio included theatrical enactments of some of Bau’s experiences. “Dad said we should turn the studio into a theater. Today it is a museum/theater where we perform and tell the story of the place and the wonderful life story of our parents, illustrated by his paintings and drawings of the Hebrew language. ”The idea is also to convey some much-needed positive vibes, particularly in these trying times. “Our father always wanted to make people happy,” says Clilah. “He always said, ‘If we were happy in the darkest of times, everyone can learn the meaning of happiness and love from us.’ That’s what we do.” Swissinfo.ch (SWI) shared an op-ed by B'nai B'rith International Geneva Representative Anita Winter about remembering Kristallnacht and her family's personal history during the Holocaust. Kristallnacht - what a creation of a word. Broken windows become sparkling stones that glitter in the night. Reichskristallnacht. What a masterpiece of propaganda. In the collective memory of the National Socialists, the night of November 9, 1938, was to be associated with something beautiful, something to be celebrated.
My father was a witness In fact, many people were in an exuberant mood at the time. When my father walked alone through the streets of Berlin on the morning of November 10, 1938, he saw not only the destruction of the previous night, but also how the SA soldiers (from the Nazi paramilitary wing), women and men, young people and children continued to rage happily. No one intervened. My father was 16 years old when he understood that being a Jew meant that he had to leave Germany as soon as possible. Because the broken glass scattered everywhere could only be a harbinger of much worse things to come. How right he was – that night was the first step on the path to the Final Solution. What he had seen with his own eyes in Berlin had happened all over Germany. Everywhere the SA had destroyed and looted Jewish shops, burned down synagogues, abused Jews, murdered hundreds and deported thousands to concentration camps. The last witnesses of the Shoah My father, Walter Strauss, used to tell me, my siblings and his grandchildren, even at a very old age, again and again about that night, this orchestrated outbreak of violence. But he would also talk about the period that preceded it, when the Jews had been increasingly marginalised. Even the Iron Cross, which his father had been awarded during the First World War, was of no help to the family. Jewish families were integrated in society but found themselves outside of it within a very short time. Back then my father was still a pupil in Heilbronn but he was not allowed to study for the only reason that he was a Jew. And so he came alone to Berlin to do an apprenticeship with a tailor. Here, he witnessed the night of November 9, 1938 – alone, hidden behind a cupboard, filled with fear and horror. From here he fled alone via detours to Switzerland. Only because of this he escaped the Shoah. After the Second World War, many believed that the Holocaust – the murder of six million Jews – would mean the end of anti-Semitism. My father was much more pessimistic. He did not believe that people had really learned from this break in civilization. In his old age he witnessed anti-Semitism flaring up again. That is how he, my beloved father, Walter Strauss, died – warning us, the next generation. And that is also how the remaining witnesses of the Holocaust will die. Memory against forgetting Reichskristallnacht – the crystals stand for the cynical cold and the frosty ice in which the faces of all those who have participated or remained silent are reflected. Reichskristallnacht – Reichspogromnacht, the Night of the Pogrom. What we ultimately call this night is irrelevant, as long as we understand what happened that night: that the broken glass was only the prelude to extermination. Today we know it and we can fight it, as long as we keep the memory of November 9 alive. It is about the importance of never forgetting, never remaining silent, and never being indifferent. Neue Zürcher Zeitung shared an op-ed by B'nai B'rith International Geneva Representative Anita Winter about remembering Kristallnacht and her family's personal history during the Holocaust. In dieser Nacht vom 9. auf den 10. November 1938 brennen in Deutschland die Synagogen, von Berlin bis Hamburg werden jüdische Geschäfte zerstört und geplündert, die Friedhöfe geschändet und die Juden zu Tausenden verschleppt – mindestens 400 Juden werden ermordet oder sterben an den Haftfolgen. Es ist keine «Kristallnacht», wie die Nationalsozialisten die Ereignisse fortan beschönigend nennen, sondern eine Pogromnacht.
«Stürmischer Beifall. Alles saust gleich an die Telefone. Nun wird das Volk handeln.» Diese Sätze, niedergeschrieben von Joseph Goebbels, belegen die organisierte Gewalt, die bei Polizei und Partei ihren Anfang nahm und die Bevölkerung mit einschloss. Es zeigte sich hier der sich anbahnende Zivilisationsbruch: Die Pogromnacht markiert den Übergang von der Diskriminierung der Juden zu ihrer systematischen Vernichtung. Der 9. November 1938 hat darum zu Recht eine besondere Bedeutung im kollektiven Gedächtnis: So wird in Deutschland und anderswo in jedem Jahr an diese Schreckensnacht erinnert. Zeitzeuginnen und Zeitzeugen bündeln noch einmal ihre Kräfte, treten an Veranstaltungen oder in Schulen auf, um nochmals Zeugnis abzulegen. Um den jungen Menschen zu berichten, wozu Menschen fähig sind, wenn die Saat von Intoleranz und Hass aufgeht. Wo die Zeitzeugen verstummen 2020 ist alles anders. Es ist nicht allein die Corona-Pandemie, welche die Begegnung zwischen den betagten Opfern und der nächsten Generation verunmöglicht. Die Zeit lässt die Stimmen allmählich verstummen. Es werden immer weniger, die über die Reichspogromnacht und den Holocaust erzählen können. Mit Walter Strauss ist einer dieser Zeitzeugen im letzten Jahr verstorben. «Wir wurden gedemütigt und gepeinigt: In Berlin wurde die antisemitische Hetze immer penetranter», hat sich Strauss wenige Monate vor seinem Tod in einem Gespräch mit der NZZ erinnert. Geboren wurde der Sohn eines Arztes 1922 im deutschen Heilbronn. Der Vater war im Ersten Weltkrieg mit dem Eisernen Kreuz ausgezeichnet worden, seine Mutter stammte aus dem aargauischen Baden, verlor aber bei der Heirat ihre Schweizer Staatsbürgerschaft. Nach Hitlers Machtergreifung im Jahre 1933 verschlechterten sich die Lebensumstände der jüdischen Familie rasch: Die Eltern flohen nach Liechtenstein, und Walter begann in Berlin eine Lehre als Schneider, weil ihm eine akademische Ausbildung verboten war. Walter Strauss fuhr am Morgen des 10. Novembers allein als 16-jähriger Junge mit der Strassenbahn durch Berlin und beobachtete fassungslos das Ausmass der Zerstörung. An seinem Arbeitsplatz in der Nähe des Alexanderplatzes stand der Betrieb still. Fast alle Angestellten der jüdischen Textilfabrik waren geflohen oder von den Nazis verschleppt worden. «Während ein jüdisches Porzellangeschäft kurz und klein geschlagen wurde, herrschte eine geradezu ausgelassene und fröhliche Stimmung im Volk. Die Polizisten standen zwar herum, machten aber keine Anstalten einzuschreiten», erinnerte sich Strauss. In diesem Moment wurde es dem Jungen klar, dass er so rasch wie möglich das Land verlassen musste. Ihm gelang die Flucht in die Schweiz, und er konnte sich trotz bürokratischen Hürden dank seiner Familie in Baden niederlassen, wo er bis zu seinem Tod lebte. Wohin Intoleranz führt Europa erlebte nach dem Krieg eine Zeit der Sicherheit, aber sicher ist nichts, davon war Walter Strauss überzeugt. Kurz vor seinem Tod sagte er im Interview: «Ich glaube nicht, dass die Menschen aus der Geschichte lernen und gescheiter werden. Ich bin Realist. Der Weg von der Zivilisation zur Barbarei ist kurz.» Wie gehen wir mit dieser Vergangenheit um? Die Schrecken der Pogromnacht sind dank den Berichten von Zeitzeugen dokumentiert. Aber damit ist es nicht getan. Ohne die direkte Begegnung mit den Menschen, die den Holocaust überlebt haben, braucht es neue Formen des Erzählens und Lehrens, um die Erinnerung an den Holocaust auch bei der nächsten Generation wachzuhalten. Wir müssen aufzeigen, wohin Intoleranz, Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Antisemitismus führen. Wir müssen aufzeigen, was Menschlichkeit bedeutet. Wir müssen beweisen, dass wir dem Hass etwas entgegenstellen können. Dies ist unsere Aufgabe, dies ist unsere Verpflichtung gegenüber den letzten Zeitzeugen. Dies muss unser Versprechen sein. Denn, wie Walter Strauss sich ausdrückte: «Wir müssen wachsam bleiben. So etwas darf nie mehr geschehen.» JBS covered our statement welcoming Facebook’s decision to ban any content that denies or distorts the existence of the Holocaust. View coverage here (beginning at 1:49) or below. Tablet Magazine covered the Jewish Rescuers Citation, B'nai B'rith World Center-Jerusalem's joint project with the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust (JNJ), in a piece about recognizing the number of Jews hailed for their heroism during the Shoah. Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), the Jewish children’s welfare organization, was founded in Russia in 1912 by a group of young doctors committed to offering sanitary protection and health benefits to poor Jews. The organization moved in 1917 to Berlin where Albert Einstein was its honorary president. In 1933, it moved to Paris, and in 1940, once again to escape the Nazis, it moved to Montpellier in the non-occupied south of France.
With its 280 official employees, OSE became the principal Jewish organization concerned with the welfare of foreign Jews in French internment camps. In November 1941, there were more than 28,000 internees in these camps, roughly 5,000 of whom were children under the age of 18. The camps were entirely run and staffed by the French. With help from non-Jewish organizations, such as the Quakers and the Red Cross, OSE social workers fed, clothed, and raised the morale of these detainees, 3,000 of whom would die of malnutrition and disease over the course of the war. As of August 1942, when children were being deported even from the non-occupied zone, the primary goal of OSE became to illegally evacuate the children from the camps and, with the help of their Christian allies, to place them in non-Jewish homes, farms, and institutions, or smuggle them out of the country. To accomplish this work, a 33-year-old engineer named Georges Garel (né Grigori Garfinkel) left his role in the Resistance to form the Garel Network, the first entirely clandestine network for rescuing Jewish children in the still-unoccupied zone. With headquarters in Lyon, over the next 12 months, thanks to about three dozen workers—most of whom were Jewish women employed by the OSE—the Garel Network would hide over 1,600 Jewish children in various parts of France. What happened in France took place in every occupied country. Thousands of Jews, many of them very young, labored individually and in Jewish and non-Jewish organizations to save their endangered brethren. Many could have fled but chose to remain in order to rescue others. With great heroism, they employed subterfuge, forgery of documents, smuggling, concealment, and escape into foreign countries such as Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, and Turkey. Together with their non-Jewish companions, these courageous persons rescued between 150,000 and 300,000 persons who might otherwise have perished. Yet only the non-Jews who did these things have been formally acknowledged as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem. Since 1963, 27,362 non-Jewish rescuers from 51 different countries have been recognized. They remain beacons of hope 75 years later. Their Jewish counterparts, who often worked alongside them in rescue efforts, deserve the same public recognition. Doing so would give significant emphasis to rescue as a legitimate and successful form of resistance that would serve to discredit further the continuing myth that Jews went to the slaughter like sheep. It would also underscore the basic moral teaching that “righteousness” should be conferred on people for having donesomething, not for being or not being a member of a specific religion. One OSE fieldworker named Madeleine Dreyfus brought Jewish children to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Born Madeleine Kahn in 1909, the future Madeleine Dreyfus received her baccalaureate degree in Paris in 1927. She married Raymond Dreyfus in March 1933 on the day Hitler came to power. Her sons, Michel and Jacques, were born in 1934 and 1937, respectively, during the period when she began studying psychology intensely with Sophie Lazarfeld, a student and disciple of Alfred Adler. In October 1941, when her husband lost his job in Paris because of the recently invoked anti-Semitic laws, the family passed into the unoccupied zone and settled in Lyon. Madeleine began working for OSE as a psychologist in late 1941, giving educational and psychological consultations to troubled Parisian students whose families had taken refuge in Lyon. As of August 1942, under the constant menace of the enthusiastically collaborationist Vichy police force, and, especially after November 1942, when the Germans officially occupied all of France, Madeleine assumed responsibility for the Lyon/Le Chambon-sur-Lignon area link in the Garel Network and sought places of refuge in this mostly Protestant countryside for Jewish children. Several times a month, accompanied by a small group of children (aged anywhere from 18 months to 16 years), Madeleine would take the train from Lyon to Saint-Etienne, where she would transfer to the local steam engine to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Sometimes these children had been given to her by their parents. Just as often, they had managed to escape or hide at the time of their parents’ arrest and were then rescued by the network. These trips to the countryside were extremely dangerous ventures in which Madeleine continuously risked her life. Although in almost all cases the children had false Aryan identity papers, Madeleine, who carried the most readily identifiable Jewish last name in France, did not. Madeline Dreyfus had to take control of these mostly foreign children to get them through police inspections in the train stations and on the trains. She had to keep them from speaking Polish, German, or Yiddish, and make sure that they called their friends by their French names. From September or October 1942 to November 1943, Madeleine made these trips, finding shelter for well over one hundred Jewish children. She would return often to visit the children she had placed, to bring them clothing, medicine, food tickets, and whenever possible, letters from their parents—who, for safety reasons, never knew where their children were hidden. As of November 1942, Madeleine was already pregnant with her third child, Annette. Being pregnant may have slowed her down, but it didn’t stop her. Annette was born in Lyon on Aug. 29, 1943. “Very shortly thereafter,” writes Raymond, “my wife resumed her trips back and forth between Lyon and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.” Only a few weeks later, after his sister-in-law and two of her children were arrested and deported, Raymond begged Madeleine to stop her illegal work, “now that she was responsible for three small children, two months, six, and nine years of age, all without false papers.” Madeleine asked Raymond to wait a bit longer, since there was no one to replace her. On Nov. 23, Madeleine received a phone call from the father of a child she had hidden at the School for Deaf-Mutes at Villeurbanne, who was distraught because he had heard there was going to be a Gestapo raid at the institute. Madeleine called there and the woman on the other end of the line encouraged her to come to the school right away. It was impossible for Madeleine to know that her respondent was being held at gunpoint and was being instructed to answer in that manner by her Gestapo captors. Despite walking into a trap, Madeline managed to immediately warn both her family and the OSE. She was sent to Fort Monluc in Lyon where she spent over two months in the Jewish women’s dormitory, from whose window she witnessed the execution of many resisters, Jews and Christians alike. At the end of January 1944, she was transferred to Drancy. In May, she was deported to Bergen-Belsen in northwest Germany, where about 40,000 inmates would die of starvation and disease. Even in Bergen-Belsen where she would spend 11 months, Madeleine was concerned with the well-being of others. She constantly tried to raise the morale of her companions and organized daily delousing sessions to help stem the typhus in the camp. She and her companions received between 600 and 700 calories a day. Survival was contingent, she reported later, upon selective camaraderie. Small groups of three or four women would stay together and help one another maintain morale and reestablish their humanity: sharing food, assuming social roles, making an effort to speak about art and literature, and reassuring one another that they were still human beings. After 18 months of incarceration in prison and Nazi concentration camps, Madeleine was liberated and repatriated on May 18, 1945. She continued her practice as an Adlerian psychologist and was particularly gifted with children, teaching, and family situations, until her death in 1987. Madeleine Dreyfus was only one of dozens of Jewish OSE workers who risked their lives to save other Jews in France. In Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, André Chouraqui, the future assistant mayor of Jerusalem, immediately replaced Madeleine at OSE in Lyon and in the Garel Network. Jews not affiliated with OSE, such as Oskar Rosowsky, risked their lives by fabricating false papers for Jews hiding in the area. Nor were they alone during the occupation years. Jews were involved in the rescue of other Jews all over France. Moussa Abadi and his partner, Odette Rosenstock, working with the bishop of Nice, Paul Rémond (who would later deservedly be named “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem), managed to save 527 Jewish children; Odette, like Madeleine, survived Bergen-Belsen. On the Swiss border, three Jewish groups—OSE, EIF (Eclaireurs israélites de France, or French Jewish Scouts), and MJS (Mouvement de la jeunesse sioniste, or Youth Zionist Movement)—worked together to smuggle hundreds of Jewish children into Switzerland. Let us remember in particular two young Jewish heroines who gave their lives in these endeavors: Mila Racine, who was caught smuggling Jewish children into Switzerland in October 1943, was deported to Mauthausen, and died during an Allied bombing mission at the age of 23. She was replaced by Marianne Cohn, who was arrested for smuggling Jewish children across the border in May 1944, then beaten, tortured, and murdered by the Gestapo in July 1944. She was 21 years old when she died. During the occupation of France, OSE saved the lives of roughly 6,000 Jewish children in France; yet 32 OSE staff members lost their lives and 90 OSE children did not survive. Among the 76,000 Jews deported from France were 11,600 children whom the Nazis never asked for. Prudence dictated that Christians and Jews lie low, out of risk’s path. Nor was there any shortage of active collaborators with the Nazi edicts from the highest levels of French government and society to the lowest. All those who chose to rise up against this evil deserve recognition. To celebrate Jews and non-Jews, who risked their lives together to rescue persecuted people, would offer a superb example of human solidarity in a world of rapidly increasing anti-Semitism and group hatreds. Finally, to insist on the differences between Christian and Jewish rescuers violates the spirit of the overwhelming majority of Jews and Christians alike who did not think in terms of religious affiliations or differences when they put their own lives at risk to save others. In Lisa Gossel’s award-winning documentary The Children of Chabannes, Félix Chevrier, the gentile leader of a rescue mission that sheltered 400 Jewish children, is described as having been anguished throughout the entire rescue period “because he didn’t want to save the children because they were Jewish. He wanted to save them because they were children.” The great Jewish humanitarian, pediatrician, teacher, and radio personality Janusz Korczak, who ran an orphanage in Warsaw and later inside the Warsaw Ghetto did his work in a similar spirit. When asked what he would do after the war were he to survive, he responded: “Take care of German orphans.” We defile the memory of these rescuers when we confine them to categories that their magnanimous souls obviously transcended. In the absence of a program at Yad Vashem that recognizes “Jewish Holocaust Rescuers,” a group of Holocaust survivors from Holland, France, Germany, and other countries, who were themselves saved by the efforts of Jews, came together in 2000 with a number of Jewish rescuers and representatives of international Jewish organizations and founded the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust (JRJ). Focusing on the ideas of “self-rescue” and “rescue as resistance,” this group has been engaged in numerous initiatives aimed at bringing this neglected chapter of Holocaust history to public attention. The goals of the JRJ are to collect testimonies, set up a database for research, and incorporate their findings into the curriculum of Holocaust studies in Israel and throughout the world. Haim Roet, the founder and chair of the JRJ, was 11 years old in 1943 when he was rescued and hidden in the village of Nieuwlande, one of only two “places,” along with Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, to be declared “righteous” by Yad Vashem. Three rescuers led this operation, which saved 200 children: Johannes Post, Arnold Douwes, and Max “Nico” Leons. Jan Post was caught by the Germans and executed; Arnold Douwes lived into old age. Max Leons died in 2019 at the age of 97. Post and Douwes were both named “Righteous Among the Nations.” In 2011, the Jewish Rescuers Citation was created. It is a joint project of the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust (JRJ) and the B'nai B'rith World Center-Jerusalem. So many people participated in the rescue mission in Nieuwlande that a monument was constructed at Yad Vashem to honor the entire village. It contains more than 100 names of rescuers chiseled in stone. Max “Nico” Leon’s name is not on the stone for the same reason he was never cited by Yad Vashem as a rescuer of Jews: He was Jewish. In Amsterdam on Nov. 24, 2011, at his surprise 90th birthday party, Roet presented Leon with the Jewish Rescuers Citation, a well-deserved honor intended to redress what increasingly appears, with the benefit of hindsight, to be a historical and moral injustice that only perpetuates the kinds of divisions between human beings that rescuers of all faiths heroically refused to recognize. The Jewish Post & News covered the B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust's virtual Yom Hashoah event in April, choosing to highlight Joseph and Rebecca Bau. When Hadasa Bau and Clila Bau Cohen received notice earlier this year that their parents, Josef and Rebecca Bau, were to going to be honoured, along with some other Holocaust survivors, at a ceremony in Jerusalem in April, they burst out in tears.
It was an emotional moment. “We were very moved,” said the two sisters, who have both lived in Winnipeg at different times over the years, in an email in early July to this reporter from their home in Tel Aviv. “Our parents deserve it so much.” The B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust held a Zoom meeting on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah, Tuesday, April 21, 2020) to extol the heroism of some 20 Jews who endangered themselves during the Holocaust to rescue fellow Jews, said information on the B’nai B’rith International website. Relatives and representatives of the now-deceased rescuers addressed the meeting, and the – a joint project of the World Center and the Committee – was conferred virtually on them. The event was carried live on B’nai Brith’s Facebook page and was primarily be in Hebrew, with some English. There were a total of 16 rescuers honoured on that day. A brief biography of each person is included on the website: Joseph Bau (June 13, 1920-May 24, 2002), a graphic artist who forged documents for the Jewish underground in Krakow, Poland, and later in Oscar Schindler’s factory camp in Brněnec in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; Rebecca (Tennenbaum) Bau (1918-1997) was a nurse who served as the manicurist of Amon Goeth, the ruthless Nazi who ruled over the Plaszow concentration camp. She shared secrets she overheard that helped many inmates survive, while also providing them with moral and physical support. “The Zoom meeting represented a break from the traditional annual ceremony held by the World Center and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL-JNF) for the past 17 consecutive years in the B’nai Brith Martyrs Forest,” said the BBI website. “It is the only event dedicated annually to commemorating the heroism of Jews who rescued fellow Jews during the Holocaust. “Since the establishment of the Jewish Rescuers Citation in 2011, 314 heroes have been honored for rescue activities in Germany, France, Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy, Holland and Belgium. One of the most recent recipients of the Jewish Rescuers Citation, Frida Wattenberg, a member of the Jewish underground in Grenoble, France, during the Holocaust, contracted the coronavirus and died in Paris on April 3, just three weeks shy of her 96th birthday. The citation was conferred on Sept. 23, 2019, at the Foundation de Rothschild seniors’ home where she resided. Tsilla Hershco, the author of the most authoritative book to date on the Jewish underground movement in France and a member of the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust, conferred the citation.” In their email, Hadasa Bau and Clila Bau Cohen said their parents only thought about how to help others, and in the Holocaust they risked their lives in order to save other people. The sisters participated in the Zoom meeting on April 21 by providing more details about their parents. “They never thought about themselves,” the sisters said. “Our father, Joseph Bau, managed to finish one year of art school in Krakow before the war broke out. At the end of that year, he was taught Gothic letters. When he and his family were sent to the Ghetto, the Germans looked for someone who knew those letters, so that saved his life. He worked for the German police, the Jewish police and the Jewish underground. He forged documents for the underground, thus saving hundreds of Jews that managed to escape. He was also a spy that conveyed information from the German police to the underground. “When the underground people told him, ‘Forge a document for yourself and escape...’, he answered, ‘...but if I escape who will save the rest?’ “So, he risked his life and stayed till the end of the war. Our father was very modest and never told us how he saved many lives, even though our parents spoke about the Holocaust daily. During the Holocaust, he led a secret life and this continued in Israel. “He told his memoirs of the Holocaust in a book he wrote named ‘Shnot Tarzach – Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry?’ that was translated into many languages.” In 1950 Josef and Rebecca and their three year old daughter, Hadasa, immigrated to Israel. “After his death, we discovered that he worked for the Mossad and forged documents for spies such as Eli Cohen, also for the team that captured Eichmann and Eichmann himself,” said the sisters. “We turned the studio that he used as a cover for his activities into the Joseph Bau House Museum. He was a pioneer of animation and one of the first graphic artists. He designed titles for many Israeli movies.” Rebecca Bau was in the Krakow ghetto, also Plaszow, Auschwitz and Lichtewerden concentration camps. “She was a fearless woman. All her life she encouraged people and always laughed,” the sisters wrote. “Rebecca was a nurse and cosmetician who worked in the ghetto hospital until all the patients were murdered. While in the ghetto, she saved many by helping them avoid the transports – among whom were 11 members of the Gietzhalz family. “She was then transferred from the ghetto to the Plaszow concentration camp and there she saved many by giving them pedicures, because the Germans murdered those who limped.” “In the concentration camp, she met her husband Joseph. He snuck into her barracks in the woman’s camp dressed as a woman and they secretly got married.” Their wedding is depicted in the movie “Schindler’s List” directed by Steven Spielberg. The sisters also noted that their mother replaced her name, which was on Schindler’s list, with that of her husband, “our father,” and she herself was sent to Auschwitz. “The reason she was on the list was because she had saved the life of Pemper’s mother and he was one of the people making the list,” the sisters wrote in their email. “In Auschwitz, she saved some girls - even during Mengele’s selection process. All the time we hear more and more things from people who knew our parents, who come to the museum and tell us. This is unbelievable. We are surprised every time anew. They were very different and special people.” In this article for Radio Jai, author and B'nai B'rith International Director of Latin American Affairs Eduardo Kohn discusses Yom HaShoah. Referencing other terrorist attacks against Christians in Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso, the article explains that when extremists believe that a group of people should cease to exist, it gives way to pivotal crossroads for civilizations. JAI - Iom Hashoá es un día de memoria y reflexión. Pero cuando se trata de Shoa, todos los días la memoria nos va marcando pautas para enfrentar realidades brutales que nos hacen recordar la tragedia que sufrimos por el nazismo y sus innumerables cómplices ,y que hoy, el odio antisemita desplegado en casi todos los continentes no permite flaquear con un mínimo olvido ni por un instante.
Escribió Saul Friedlander que hay algo que ningún otro régimen que no fuera el nazi intentó hacer, sin importar lo criminal que fuera. Se pueden considerar incluso mayor número de víctimas y medios de destrucción tecnológicamente más eficaces; pero cuando un régimen, con base en sus propios criterios, decide que hay pueblos que no tienen derecho a vivir sobre la tierra, así como el lugar y el plazo de su exterminio, entonces se ha alcanzado ya el umbral extremo. Desde mi punto de vista, señala Friedlander, este límite se ha alcanzado una sola vez en la historia moderna: por los nazis en la Shoá. El historiador Enzo Traverso es categórico.”Auschwitz supuso una ruptura de civilización. Exterminar a los judíos significaba socavar las bases de nuestra civilización, intentar amputarle uno de sus principales fundamentos porque el judaísmo es una de las fuentes del mundo occidental cuyo recorrido ha acompañado por milenios. Con los campos de exterminio se cuestionó radicalmente el fundamento mismo de la existencia humana, y en particular el reconocimiento de la humanidad del otro. A diferencia de las masacres del pasado, la destrucción nazi pretendía ser total”. Cuando a Primo Levi, en una visita que hizo a Auschwitz donde había padecido la Shoá, le preguntaron si pensaba que era posible lograr el aniquilamiento de la humanidad, contestó: “¡Desde luego que sí! ¡Y de qué manera! Me atrevería incluso a decir que lo característico del Lager nazi , es la reducción a la nada de la personalidad del hombre, tanto interiormente como exteriormente. Pienso que son pocos los que tuvieron la suerte de no perder su conciencia durante la reclusión; algunos tomaron conciencia de su experiencia a posteriori, pero mientras la vivían no eran conscientes. Todos sufrían substancialmente una profunda modificación de su personalidad, sobre todo una atenuación de la sensibilidad en lo relacionado con los recuerdos del hogar, la memoria familiar; todo eso pasaba a un segundo plano ante las necesidades imperiosas, el hambre, la necesidad de defenderse del frío, defenderse de los golpes, resistir a la fatiga. Todo ello propiciaba condiciones que pueden calificarse de animales, como las de bestias de carga. En alemán hay dos verbos para “comer”: el primero es “essen”, que designa el acto de comer en el hombre, y está “fressen”, que designa el acto en el animal. En el Lager, sin que nadie lo decidiera, el verbo para comer era “fressen” y no “essen”, como si la percepción de una regresión a la condición de animal se hubiera extendido entre todos nosotros.” Estas reflexiones de Friedlander, Traverso, Primo Levi nos marcan la memoria y la reflexión hoy, Iom Hashoá. Pero el presente nos marca también a sangre, fuego y odio;el odio que se retroalimenta y parece no terminar nunca. Casi simultáneamernte el fin de semana pasado sucedieron dos hechos brutales de antisemitismo. Terminando Pesaj y a pocos días de Iom Hashoá. En una sinagoga en San Diego, California, como todos ya sabemos,fue asesinada una señora que salvó a su Rabino y cayó bajo las balas del asesino que además dejó varios heridos. Un asesino de 19 años, alimentado por redes sociales quizás, para decirlo con modernidad siglo XXI, pero en realidad alimentado por lo que Traverso señala como el objetivo de los portadores del odio: terminar con la existencia humana. El mismo día que la sinagoga de San Diego era atacada, el New York Times publicaba una caricatura que emulaba Der Sturmer y hacía renacer a Goebbels. Mucho se ha comentado sobre esa caricatura en estos días, en la cual se agravia al Primer Ministro de Israel y al Presidente de Estados Unidos. Nadie que conozca cómo funciona uno de los diarios más grandes del mundo puede imaginar negligencia. No hay forma. Las noticias señalaron poco después que se disculparon. No es cierto. Reconocieron con insoportable levedad que se habrían equivocado pero no hay disculpas formales, y a esta altura, queda claro la intencionalidad de la incitación al odio y la violencia. ¿Por qué un diario de tamaño prestigio llega a este extremo? Por lo que señaló en su momento Primo Levi. Se puede perder el sentido de humanidad y no sólo en el infierno concentracionario. Pero esta semana hubo más. El lunes, el Consejo de Seguridad hizo un minuto de silencio por las víctimas de la sinagoga de San Diego el sábado y el Secretario General de la ONU amplió el sentir de ese minuto hacia las víctimas católicas masacradas el domingo en una iglesia de Burkina Faso, y todas las que han caído bajo las balas del odio este pasado fin de semana y hace poco en Sri Lanka y Nueva Zelanda. Pero la realidad va mucho más que el pobre simbolismo de ese minuto de silencio. En ese mismo ámbito hablan los incitadores y los perpetradores y nadie les dice aunque sea en un minuto que ese doble discurso y ese permiso para mentir en Nueva York y crear barbarie en todo el mundo no le da distinción alguna al homenaje que algunos sin duda, lo habrán hecho desde sus valores, pero otros desde su hipocresía. Hoy, las víctimas de San Diego, Sri Lanka, Nueva Zelanda y Burkina Faso, no descansan en paz. No con un minuto de silencio por parte de quienes tienen responsabilidades incumplidas que no se enfrentan ni con retórica ni con homenajes con algunos de los perpetradores invitados. Por eso, vuelvo a Friedlander y al principio de esta columna de hoy: cuando hay quienes creen que el otro no tiene derecho a existir, llegamos al cruce de caminos entre civilización y barbarie. Hoy, recordamos la barbarie, y nos volvemos a comprometer a seguir luchando por la civilización. JAI - Iom Hashoá es un día de memoria y reflexión. Pero cuando se trata de Shoa, todos los días la memoria nos va marcando pautas para enfrentar realidades brutales que nos hacen recordar la tragedia que sufrimos por el nazismo y sus innumerables cómplices ,y que hoy, el odio antisemita desplegado en casi todos los continentes no permite flaquear con un mínimo olvido ni por un instante. Escribió Saul Friedlander que hay algo que ningún otro régimen que no fuera el nazi intentó hacer, sin importar lo criminal que fuera. Se pueden considerar incluso mayor número de víctimas y medios de destrucción tecnológicamente más eficaces; pero cuando un régimen, con base en sus propios criterios, decide que hay pueblos que no tienen derecho a vivir sobre la tierra, así como el lugar y el plazo de su exterminio, entonces se ha alcanzado ya el umbral extremo. Desde mi punto de vista, señala Friedlander, este límite se ha alcanzado una sola vez en la historia moderna: por los nazis en la Shoá. El historiador Enzo Traverso es categórico.”Auschwitz supuso una ruptura de civilización. Exterminar a los judíos significaba socavar las bases de nuestra civilización, intentar amputarle uno de sus principales fundamentos porque el judaísmo es una de las fuentes del mundo occidental cuyo recorrido ha acompañado por milenios. Con los campos de exterminio se cuestionó radicalmente el fundamento mismo de la existencia humana, y en particular el reconocimiento de la humanidad del otro. A diferencia de las masacres del pasado, la destrucción nazi pretendía ser total”. Cuando a Primo Levi, en una visita que hizo a Auschwitz donde había padecido la Shoá, le preguntaron si pensaba que era posible lograr el aniquilamiento de la humanidad, contestó: “¡Desde luego que sí! ¡Y de qué manera! Me atrevería incluso a decir que lo característico del Lager nazi , es la reducción a la nada de la personalidad del hombre, tanto interiormente como exteriormente. Pienso que son pocos los que tuvieron la suerte de no perder su conciencia durante la reclusión; algunos tomaron conciencia de su experiencia a posteriori, pero mientras la vivían no eran conscientes. Todos sufrían substancialmente una profunda modificación de su personalidad, sobre todo una atenuación de la sensibilidad en lo relacionado con los recuerdos del hogar, la memoria familiar; todo eso pasaba a un segundo plano ante las necesidades imperiosas, el hambre, la necesidad de defenderse del frío, defenderse de los golpes, resistir a la fatiga. Todo ello propiciaba condiciones que pueden calificarse de animales, como las de bestias de carga. En alemán hay dos verbos para “comer”: el primero es “essen”, que designa el acto de comer en el hombre, y está “fressen”, que designa el acto en el animal. En el Lager, sin que nadie lo decidiera, el verbo para comer era “fressen” y no “essen”, como si la percepción de una regresión a la condición de animal se hubiera extendido entre todos nosotros.” Estas reflexiones de Friedlander, Traverso, Primo Levi nos marcan la memoria y la reflexión hoy, Iom Hashoá. Pero el presente nos marca también a sangre, fuego y odio;el odio que se retroalimenta y parece no terminar nunca. Casi simultáneamernte el fin de semana pasado sucedieron dos hechos brutales de antisemitismo. Terminando Pesaj y a pocos días de Iom Hashoá. En una sinagoga en San Diego, California, como todos ya sabemos,fue asesinada una señora que salvó a su Rabino y cayó bajo las balas del asesino que además dejó varios heridos. Un asesino de 19 años, alimentado por redes sociales quizás, para decirlo con modernidad siglo XXI, pero en realidad alimentado por lo que Traverso señala como el objetivo de los portadores del odio: terminar con la existencia humana. El mismo día que la sinagoga de San Diego era atacada, el New York Times publicaba una caricatura que emulaba Der Sturmer y hacía renacer a Goebbels. Mucho se ha comentado sobre esa caricatura en estos días, en la cual se agravia al Primer Ministro de Israel y al Presidente de Estados Unidos. Nadie que conozca cómo funciona uno de los diarios más grandes del mundo puede imaginar negligencia. No hay forma. Las noticias señalaron poco después que se disculparon. No es cierto. Reconocieron con insoportable levedad que se habrían equivocado pero no hay disculpas formales, y a esta altura, queda claro la intencionalidad de la incitación al odio y la violencia. ¿Por qué un diario de tamaño prestigio llega a este extremo? Por lo que señaló en su momento Primo Levi. Se puede perder el sentido de humanidad y no sólo en el infierno concentracionario. Pero esta semana hubo más. El lunes, el Consejo de Seguridad hizo un minuto de silencio por las víctimas de la sinagoga de San Diego el sábado y el Secretario General de la ONU amplió el sentir de ese minuto hacia las víctimas católicas masacradas el domingo en una iglesia de Burkina Faso, y todas las que han caído bajo las balas del odio este pasado fin de semana y hace poco en Sri Lanka y Nueva Zelanda. Pero la realidad va mucho más que el pobre simbolismo de ese minuto de silencio. En ese mismo ámbito hablan los incitadores y los perpetradores y nadie les dice aunque sea en un minuto que ese doble discurso y ese permiso para mentir en Nueva York y crear barbarie en todo el mundo no le da distinción alguna al homenaje que algunos sin duda, lo habrán hecho desde sus valores, pero otros desde su hipocresía. Hoy, las víctimas de San Diego, Sri Lanka, Nueva Zelanda y Burkina Faso, no descansan en paz. No con un minuto de silencio por parte de quienes tienen responsabilidades incumplidas que no se enfrentan ni con retórica ni con homenajes con algunos de los perpetradores invitados. Por eso, vuelvo a Friedlander y al principio de esta columna de hoy: cuando hay quienes creen que el otro no tiene derecho a existir, llegamos al cruce de caminos entre civilización y barbarie. Hoy, recordamos la barbarie, y nos volvemos a comprometer a seguir luchando por la civilización. JAI - Iom Hashoá es un día de memoria y reflexión. Pero cuando se trata de Shoa, todos los días la memoria nos va marcando pautas para enfrentar realidades brutales que nos hacen recordar la tragedia que sufrimos por el nazismo y sus innumerables cómplices ,y que hoy, el odio antisemita desplegado en casi todos los continentes no permite flaquear con un mínimo olvido ni por un instante. Escribió Saul Friedlander que hay algo que ningún otro régimen que no fuera el nazi intentó hacer, sin importar lo criminal que fuera. Se pueden considerar incluso mayor número de víctimas y medios de destrucción tecnológicamente más eficaces; pero cuando un régimen, con base en sus propios criterios, decide que hay pueblos que no tienen derecho a vivir sobre la tierra, así como el lugar y el plazo de su exterminio, entonces se ha alcanzado ya el umbral extremo. Desde mi punto de vista, señala Friedlander, este límite se ha alcanzado una sola vez en la historia moderna: por los nazis en la Shoá. El historiador Enzo Traverso es categórico.”Auschwitz supuso una ruptura de civilización. Exterminar a los judíos significaba socavar las bases de nuestra civilización, intentar amputarle uno de sus principales fundamentos porque el judaísmo es una de las fuentes del mundo occidental cuyo recorrido ha acompañado por milenios. Con los campos de exterminio se cuestionó radicalmente el fundamento mismo de la existencia humana, y en particular el reconocimiento de la humanidad del otro. A diferencia de las masacres del pasado, la destrucción nazi pretendía ser total”. Cuando a Primo Levi, en una visita que hizo a Auschwitz donde había padecido la Shoá, le preguntaron si pensaba que era posible lograr el aniquilamiento de la humanidad, contestó: “¡Desde luego que sí! ¡Y de qué manera! Me atrevería incluso a decir que lo característico del Lager nazi , es la reducción a la nada de la personalidad del hombre, tanto interiormente como exteriormente. Pienso que son pocos los que tuvieron la suerte de no perder su conciencia durante la reclusión; algunos tomaron conciencia de su experiencia a posteriori, pero mientras la vivían no eran conscientes. Todos sufrían substancialmente una profunda modificación de su personalidad, sobre todo una atenuación de la sensibilidad en lo relacionado con los recuerdos del hogar, la memoria familiar; todo eso pasaba a un segundo plano ante las necesidades imperiosas, el hambre, la necesidad de defenderse del frío, defenderse de los golpes, resistir a la fatiga. Todo ello propiciaba condiciones que pueden calificarse de animales, como las de bestias de carga. En alemán hay dos verbos para “comer”: el primero es “essen”, que designa el acto de comer en el hombre, y está “fressen”, que designa el acto en el animal. En el Lager, sin que nadie lo decidiera, el verbo para comer era “fressen” y no “essen”, como si la percepción de una regresión a la condición de animal se hubiera extendido entre todos nosotros.” Estas reflexiones de Friedlander, Traverso, Primo Levi nos marcan la memoria y la reflexión hoy, Iom Hashoá. Pero el presente nos marca también a sangre, fuego y odio;el odio que se retroalimenta y parece no terminar nunca. Casi simultáneamernte el fin de semana pasado sucedieron dos hechos brutales de antisemitismo. Terminando Pesaj y a pocos días de Iom Hashoá. En una sinagoga en San Diego, California, como todos ya sabemos,fue asesinada una señora que salvó a su Rabino y cayó bajo las balas del asesino que además dejó varios heridos. Un asesino de 19 años, alimentado por redes sociales quizás, para decirlo con modernidad siglo XXI, pero en realidad alimentado por lo que Traverso señala como el objetivo de los portadores del odio: terminar con la existencia humana. El mismo día que la sinagoga de San Diego era atacada, el New York Times publicaba una caricatura que emulaba Der Sturmer y hacía renacer a Goebbels. Mucho se ha comentado sobre esa caricatura en estos días, en la cual se agravia al Primer Ministro de Israel y al Presidente de Estados Unidos. Nadie que conozca cómo funciona uno de los diarios más grandes del mundo puede imaginar negligencia. No hay forma. Las noticias señalaron poco después que se disculparon. No es cierto. Reconocieron con insoportable levedad que se habrían equivocado pero no hay disculpas formales, y a esta altura, queda claro la intencionalidad de la incitación al odio y la violencia. ¿Por qué un diario de tamaño prestigio llega a este extremo? Por lo que señaló en su momento Primo Levi. Se puede perder el sentido de humanidad y no sólo en el infierno concentracionario. Pero esta semana hubo más. El lunes, el Consejo de Seguridad hizo un minuto de silencio por las víctimas de la sinagoga de San Diego el sábado y el Secretario General de la ONU amplió el sentir de ese minuto hacia las víctimas católicas masacradas el domingo en una iglesia de Burkina Faso, y todas las que han caído bajo las balas del odio este pasado fin de semana y hace poco en Sri Lanka y Nueva Zelanda. Pero la realidad va mucho más que el pobre simbolismo de ese minuto de silencio. En ese mismo ámbito hablan los incitadores y los perpetradores y nadie les dice aunque sea en un minuto que ese doble discurso y ese permiso para mentir en Nueva York y crear barbarie en todo el mundo no le da distinción alguna al homenaje que algunos sin duda, lo habrán hecho desde sus valores, pero otros desde su hipocresía. Hoy, las víctimas de San Diego, Sri Lanka, Nueva Zelanda y Burkina Faso, no descansan en paz. No con un minuto de silencio por parte de quienes tienen responsabilidades incumplidas que no se enfrentan ni con retórica ni con homenajes con algunos de los perpetradores invitados. Por eso, vuelvo a Friedlander y al principio de esta columna de hoy: cuando hay quienes creen que el otro no tiene derecho a existir, llegamos al cruce de caminos entre civilización y barbarie. Hoy, recordamos la barbarie, y nos volvemos a comprometer a seguir luchando por la civilización. In this article for Israel Internacional, author and B'nai B'rith International Director of Latin American Affairs Eduardo Kohn explains that the Holocaust cannot be forgiven, and that the President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro should not have said that it could be. Hace más de 40 años, Simón Wiesenthal escribió un relato (El girasol) que convirtió en un simposio escrito, ya que de su narración, se abrieron opiniones de prominentes personalidades sobre los límites del perdón, que así se llama el libro, editado y reeditado varias veces.
En El Girasol, Simón Wiesenthal es un hombre judío que está en un campo de concentración nazi, y cuenta cómo se vive y las situaciones a las que estaba sometido junto a los demás judíos. Un día lo mandaron a trabajar al Instituto Tecnológico, que se había convertido en un hospital para los soldados heridos. Allí una enfermera lo llamó y lo llevó dentro del edificio. Lo condujo a una sala donde se encontraba un hombre tumbado en una cama, con el cuerpo lleno de vendajes, era un soldado de la SS y estaba a punto de morir. La enfermera lo había llevado hasta allí, porque el soldado le había pedido que le trajese a un judío. El soldado necesitaba contarle los crímenes que había cometido a un judío para que lo perdonase y así poder morir en paz. Cuando terminó de contarle todos los crímenes, el soldado le pidió si lo perdonaba, pero él no dijo nada y se fue de la habitación sin responderle. Cuando llegó al campo de concentración estuvo mucho tiempo dándole vueltas a ese tema, se preguntaba si debía o no debía perdonar a un criminal nazi. Cuando le contó la extraña experiencia a sus amigos, estos se quedaron muy sorprendidos y todos le dijeron que había hecho bien en no responderle. Poco después de su liberación del campo de concentración, se alistó en una comisión que investigaba los crímenes nazis. Un día se acordó del soldado de la SS y sintió que tenía que ir a ver a su madre para conocerlo mejor y así poder tomar una decisión. Cuando se encontró con su madre, solo le contó que había sido muy buen pero desde que se unió a la SS ya no fue el mismo. Simón Wiesenthal siguió con la misma duda. Al final del libro pregunta que hubiéramos hecho en su lugar. Uno de los muchos que abordaron la pregunta, el filósofo e historiador Tzvetan Todorov fue uno de los que contestó. Su opinión fue que Wiesenthal no tendría que haber perdonado nada, ni en nombre de nadie, ya que no sufrió el daño por parte del soldado, y los que tendrían que perdonarlo ya no estaban para poder hacerlo. Todorov pensó que el soldado quizás merecía un trato distinto a los demás criminales nazis por haberse arrepentido, cosa que no hicieron los demás, pero no merecía el perdón. Creemos que Todorov tiene razón, ya que Wiesenthal no podría haber perdonado en lugar de otras personas. El perdón es un acto individual. ¿Perdonar en nombre de los seis millones de asesinados? ¿Perdonar en nombre de los que fueron masacrados por ese soldado? Si no hubiese estado al borde de la muerte, ¿estaría arrepentido?. Todas las pruebas públicas dicen lo contrario: ningún nazi se arrepintió en Nuremberg (el seudo arrepentimiento retórico de Albert Speer no es ni creíble y menos aceptable); ningún asesino se arrepintió en juicios posteriores.¿Eichmann se arrepintió?. Todo lo contrario. Los asesinos mataron con orgullo y pasión. Y ni que hablar que ninguna de las seis millones de víctimas nos legaron el derecho a perdonar. Imposible. Hace tres semanas el Presidente de Israel Reuven Rivlin escribió en twitter:”Lo que Amalek le hizo a nuestro pueblo está profundamente registrado en nuestra memoria, la memoria de un pueblo antiguo. Siempre nos opondremos a aquellos que niegan la verdad o que desean borrarla, sean individuos o grupos, líderes políticos o primeros ministros. Nunca perdonaremos y nunca olvidaremos”. El motivo del tweet del Presidente Rivlin fueron las declaraciones del Presidente de Brasil ante una amplia audiencia de líderes evangélicos, al mencionar que los crímenes del Holocausto pueden ser perdonados, pero no olvidados. Después de esas declaraciones, han habido aclaraciones, comentarios, tweets, opiniones de Iad Vashem, la ya citada opinión del Presidente de Israel que días después la modificó un poco, pero lo escrito, escrito está, y lo dicho, dicho está. Iad Vashem fue escueto:”Estamos en desacuerdo con la declaración del Presidente de Brasil en cuanto que el Holocausto puede ser perdonado. Nadie está en posición de determinar quién y qué crímenes del Holocausto pueden ser perdonados”. En lo que nos concierne, creemos que el Presidente de Brasil está lejos de los negadores de la Shoá y de los países y bandas de seudo intelectuales que están detrás de esa agresión,y ha demostrado reiteradamente su buena relación con Israel. Pero cuando el Presidente de uno de los países más grandes del mundo, el más grande de América Latina, habla en público, siempre está dando un mensaje oficial, que queda filmado, grabado, escrito y registrado. Y aunque después se diga que hay una mala interpretación de los dichos, no es con el Presidente de Israel ni con Iad Vashem ni con el pueblo judío con el que hay que enojarse. Hay que reconocer que se cometió un error, si se cree en ello. Y pedir perdón, ahora sí el perdón, si se ve que se ha lastimado a las víctimas de nada más ni nada menos que los crímenes nazis. En estos días hemos conmemorado el Día de Recordación del Holocausto y el Heroísmo. Donde hay lugar estricto y completo para la memoria. Donde no hay lugar para resbalones. Si alguien se resbala, que se levante y reconozca el tropezón. En este mundo actual que multiplica el odio antisemita en Europa, Estados Unidos y América Latina; en este mundo de asesinatos en sinagogas, profanaciones de cementerios judíos, incitación al odio desde la propias agencias de Naciones Unidas, no sólo vamos a conmemoramos y recordamos, sino que levantamos la voz para que todos –desde la comunidad internacional hasta los incitadores antisemitas instalados en aulas académicas y redes sociales- sepan que no habrá más tolerancia para los silencios, las omisiones, las indiferencias, como hace 80 años. Conmemoramos, recordamos y exigimos, para que, tanto los que gobiernan como los que caminan por las calles, sepan de una buena y definitiva vez que después de la Shoá hay tres cosas que haremos de aquí a la eternidad: no callarnos, no olvidar, no perdonar. The Jewish Broadcasting Service covered the announcement by B'nai B'rith World Center-Jerusalem that it would be awarding its Jewish Rescuers Citation to 18 individuals posthumously. Watch the video below. Richmond Times-Dispatch - Tommy P. Baer Column: Recent Events Recall Evils of 80 Years Ago11/29/2018 Former B'nai B'rith International President Tommy Baer of Richmond, Virginia wrote this column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. To read more first-person accounts of Kristallnacht experiences, including Tommy Baer’s story, click this link. Hannah Arendt called it the banality of evil. Author Martin Gilbert called it the collapse of morality, “an indication of what happens when a society falls victim to its baser instincts.” The name given to it was “Kristallnacht,” the Night of Broken Glass.
Today marks the 80th anniversary of the 24-hour rampage in 1938 Germany and Austria which some say was the beginning of the Holocaust. There was on that night, upon the direct orders of the Third Reich, a violent and systematic attack upon Jews and Jewish institutions perpetrated by German security forces, joined by a frenzied populace given free rein to terrorize and destroy, without interference by police or firefighters. On that night the German nation fell victim to its baser instincts. Hundreds of synagogues were set ablaze and destroyed, Torah scrolls torn to pieces, prayer books desecrated. Thousands of Jewish shops, homes, hospitals, and schools were smashed and looted. Nearly 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 Jewish men, including my mother’s father, were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where they were brutalized. On that night my mother heard the sounds of shattering glass from the window of her hospital room in Berlin where she was being treated for a serious breast infection. I was 3 months old. The events of that night and the next day shattered not only glass, but the hopes of European Jews who believed that they would survive the tyrannical Nazi regime and its diabolical scheme to create a pure Aryan race. It was made clear beyond all doubt that the objective of the Nazis was to rid Germany and Europe of the Jewish people, thus eradicating the 1,000-year history of Jewish life and culture in Germany. The genocide had begun. Never had mankind seen such evil on so grand a scale. The lives, hopes, aspirations, dreams, and contributions of 6 million Jews (1,500,000 children), one-third of world Jewry, were obliterated. Numbers so large and vast that they are difficult for the mind to process. Yet they must be processed if there is any hope that such madness will never again be allowed to occur. Among Jews, and others, the question is often asked: Could it happen here? I always answered in the negative, not in this country. Our institutions are too strong, our law too settled, our sense of decency too great. While I remain optimistic, I am no longer so sanguine about our immunity from the exercise of our baser instincts. A recent poll of millennials disclosed that 66 percent had never heard of Auschwitz. It is troubling that this place, this Nazi death camp where more than 1 million Jews were murdered, this hell on earth, could not be identified by so many of those upon whom the future of our nation depends. Today’s expressions of intolerance and repression of free speech and assembly in public forums, on many college campuses, and in other venues is a worrisome development. The alarming rise of anti-Semitism in our country, along with movements that deligitimize, not merely criticize, the State of Israel, is a cause of increasing concern. Holocaust denial, a form of anti-Semitism and hate speech, is cause for anxiety. The lingering specter of neo-Nazi mobs in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” evoking the Third Reich, and the most recent horrific mass murder of Jews by a crazed anti-Semite at a synagogue service in Pittsburgh while screaming “All Jews must die,” shock the conscience and remind Jews of a former time, causing apprehension and foreboding. We should have learned long ago that words and actions have consequences. All of these, individually and in the aggregate, pose a clear and present danger to those precepts enshrined in our Constitution and regarded by most as inalienable. But perhaps most of all, it is complacency that frightens me. If we cannot or will not identify evil and the purveyors of hatred in order to prevent their insidious spread to toxic levels, we shall be overcome and consumed by it. Though I am comforted by the posthumous message of Sen. John McCain, who reminded us that “We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil,” we have become a nation vulnerable to excesses — in our political discourse, in our civility to one another, and in the breakdown of values we once cherished. The resistance of these negative impulses will require a strong America, one in which our leadership must speak out with moral clarity. So, Kristallnacht must be remembered to prevent the savage beast in man from prevailing. Not here, not anywhere. Into that abyss we must not descend. Memory allows us to assess our history and ourselves, to ensure that we learn its lessons, so that we do not succumb to our baser instincts. The words from a memorial plaque to the murdered Jewish children at the former concentration camp at Neuengamme, Germany, come to mind. They read: “When you stand here, be silent. When you leave here, be not silent.” So let us remember; for if hatred prevails, we are all at risk. To read the original story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, click this link. |
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January 2021
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