To view the memorial for Benjamin Meed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC, click HERE.

Nafla Ateret Rosheynu

The Crown Has Fallen from our Heads

The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants announces with deep regret and sadness the passing of our beloved and devoted, indefatigable founding president, Benjamin Meed–a man who empowered the American Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants and gave them the voice to speak with moral authority to the highest elites of international society–from the ivory tower to the halls of global power. His dedication to our cause was complete. We express our deepest heartfelt condolences to his beloved wife, Vladka, who has worked, like him, tirelessly and devotedly for the cause of Holocaust education and commemoration, and to his children Anna and Steve and their spouses, his sister Genia and his grandchildren.

MORE TO FOLLOW.

The Funeral Service is to be held on Friday, October 27 at 9:30 a.m. at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.

Park East Synagogue
163 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10021
Tel. 212.737.6900

Internment will take place at Cedar Park Cemetary in Paramus, NJ.

Please check www.americangathering.com for any updates.

Benjamin Meed z’l

Michael Berenbaum

Benjamin Meed is no longer. He died on Tuesday October 22nd the second of Mar Heshvan 5767, surrounded by his family, his wife Vladka, his son Steven and daughter-in-law Rita, his daughter Anna, his five grandchildren and his beloved sister Genia who arrived in from Israel that morning, just in time.

I learned the Holocaust from Ben and Vladka Meed – not the facts and the book knowledge, but something deeper and ultimately more important. I learned from them, as did millions of others, the human face and human ethos of the Jewish people who lived through that dark time and came out the other side determined to give over the voices, the sounds, the sighs, the courage, compassion and determination of those who were lost.

Benjamin Meed was born Benjamin Miedzyrzecki in Warsaw Poland to a working class religious family that lived in the old Jewish area of Warsaw. At the age of 16, he joined the Jewish Labor Bund. After the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, he obtained false papers and escaped to the Aryan side where he posed as an Aryan, using the code name Czeslaw. His parents lived in a hut on an old Jewish cemetery. At one point Ben thought of going to the Hotel Polski and its promise of freedom; his brother pleaded with him to take his place. Ben consented and his brother David was never heard from again. It was a memory that was to haunt him his entire life. According to German records Benjamin was dead.

On the outside, he met and married Feyge (Vladka) Peltel, also a member of the Bund. After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943, he worked with the Bund to provide hiding spaces for other Jews. After the Polish Uprising in 1944, he left Warsaw dressed as a woman.

Ben and Vladka immigrated to the United States in 1946, where he became a businessman and importer.

In 1966, he helped form WAGRO, the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance Organization and devoted the remaining years of his life to representing the survivors and organizing their activities.

As President of WAGRO, he organized the annual Yom Hashoah ceremony in New York City, the largest such gathering in the United States that brought US Presidents and Israel Prime Ministers to Temple Emmau El and once even filled Madison Square Garden on the Sunday before Yom Hashoah.

When the survivors wanted to organize their first gathering in Jerusalem in 1981, Ernest Michel, vice president of UJA/Fed NY, an Auschwitz survivor, turned to Meed to assist him and thus was born the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Survivors and their children came to Jerusalem, some 5,000 strong, to proclaim their legacy and to pass it on to the world.

That is when the survivor and second generation movement came of age in the United States and Israel. Then in 1983, the American Gathering, the organization founded as a result of his efforts, held a gathering in Washington, where 20,000 survivors participated. Meed hosted President Ronald Regan and Vice-President George Bush at the Capital Center in Landover, MD. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole who addressed the survivors in front of the Capitol and on the National Mall. Subsequent gatherings were in Philadelphia, New York and Miami and again in Washington to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. His work was imaginative and determined; he elevated the stature of survivors within the United States for Jews and non Jews alike.

Meed pioneered the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Holocaust Survivors, which facilitated reunions between survivors, siblings, relatives and friends long thought lost to the Shoah. In cooperation with the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, the Registry is housed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and contains more than 100,000 original and maiden names and the names of their descendants, as well as current addresses, city of birth, camps of incarceration, cities of post-war habitation.

Meed was instrumental in creating the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum. He served on the Advisory Council of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and later on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council where he chaired the Days of Remembrance Committee and the pivotal Content Committee that assured the presence and participation of Holocaust survivors, most especially after Elie Wiesel resigned as chairman in 1986. Meed’s role became more central as there was fear that without Wiesel the neshama, the soul, the Museum would flounder. Under Meed’s leadership, the Committee brought together scholars and survivors, communal leaders and Council members to assure the intellectual, aesthetic, historical and spiritual content of the Permanent Exhibition.

I had the honor of working with Ben for the last twenty seven years of his life. Therefore some personal reflections.

Only death could have stilled Benjamin Meed. He was a human whirlwind. He was often agitated – in a creative and constructive way.

Anyone who visited with him in his office at 122 West 30th can testify how conversations would be interrupted by urgent phone calls from Senators or Congressmen, officials from Washington or Jerusalem, regarding the Museum or the Gathering. His secretary would come in with letters to be signed or urgent faxes or Fed Ex packages that had just arrived. In the middle of one issue, Ben would think of something that he had left undone or would bring you to the other room to show you a project his staff was working on.

When his staff was small, he would enlist others, recruit others, draft others. So many of us well know it was difficult to say no to Ben. He would work night and day. He knew no boundaries and worked well beyond his endurance.

When attendance at the World Gathering had reached a thousand, he wanted two or three thousand. When the American Gathering reached 5,000 he wanted 10,000, when it reached 10,000 he wanted twenty and when it reached twenty—and only when it reached twenty—did he begin to ask the question where are we to put these people; no auditorium was large enough, no facility big enough, the new Convention Center was filled to capacity… beyond capacity.

This was true of events large and small. Attendance at Los Angeles exceeded the capacity of even the Century Plaza Hotel; in Miami he outgrew the vaunted Fountainbleu; the Registry reached 10,000 names, 20,000, 50,000 and now holds more than 180,000 records.

I am mindful – deeply mindful – that I began working with Ben only when he had reached the age that I am today, a time that for others would be the end of a career, the twilight of a life. In his late 50s and early 60s, he opened what became the most important chapter in a life of significance; it was the moment he made his greatest of contributions to the Jewish people, to the memory of the Holocaust.

He looked to the future and he shaped the future precisely by remembering the past.

Ben gave his heart and soul, every ounce of energy, every fiber of his being to the survivors’ movement. He was a leader, but unlike many leaders in the Jewish community, he had followers, colleagues, compatriots—he had what in politics they call troops.

Survivors trusted him and he truly felt most comfortable among then. He liked to sit in the center of the room and not on the dais. He lived in the Bronx long after he had the resources to move to Manhattan and well after his long hours and hectic schedule made the commute burdensome, for he wanted to live among his people.

When Ernest Michel turned to him to help realize the dream of the World Gathering, Ben responded fully, completely, totally. When the World Gathering ended he had experienced a high, an intensity, a purpose so deep that he could not let it pass. As a result he took the survivors on journeys they never dreamed possible, empowering them with the voice of moral authority.

Many time I heard him say that he had reached the apex of his achievements, but then he went higher.

He had a vivid, brilliant untrained imagination.

Think of the settings at the Gatherings were convened. The Western Wall at night was the scene for the passing of the Torch of the Legacy of Survivors to the Second Generation and future descendants; Capitol Hill at High Noon was where the keys to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum were handed over to its keepers. Survivors gathered at the Liberty Bell to protest a presidential visit to an SS cemetery and the Statue of Liberty was where they stood up to say thank you to their homeland.

Ben’s sense of largesse rivaled that of the great showmen, the great political stage managers. Sometimes it was over the top. Ben did not peacefully face boundaries or limitations. He could not easily say no. He didn’t want to disappoint so he sometimes said yes too often. In exasperation I once told him, “It is good Ben that you are not a woman for you would always be in a family way.â€? He did not get angry; he howled with laughter.

Ben was integral to what we affectionately called “the Gang of Fiveâ€? the lay leaders who were truly responsible for making the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a reality. Ben was the neshama, the soul of the exhibition; he never forgot it and never let us forget it. Bill Lowenberg, Harvey Meyerhoff and Albert Abramson were developers who could build buildings and make something important rise where nothing had been. Miles Lerman was the fundraiser par excellence, negotiated for the artifacts that gave the Museum the material with which to create an exhibition and built the Museum dollar by dollar, artifact by artifact.

Ben’s greatest contribution came when he made a decision that took great courage and opened him to tremendous criticism, challenging all that he had achieved in life, all that he stood for. It was a moment when the stakes were absolute. When Elie Wiesel resigned as chairman of the Holocaust Commission in 1986, on the eve of his trip to Oslo to accept the Nobel Prize, the Museum was turned over to real estate developers and philanthropists whose reputations were not established because of what they knew about the Holocaust or on their service of memory. No one had Wiesel’s stature. No one could speak with his eloquence; no one could take his place.

With Elie gone, Ben refused to resign or step away. He redoubled his investment of time and energy and chaired the Content Committee composed of survivors and scholars to oversee the professional work of the Museum staff. He accepted “personal responsibilityâ€? to make sure the Museum would faithfully represent the Holocaust, that it would include representations of the non-Jews without diluting the Jewishness of Holocaust memory. And because he stayed with it, and because he was trusted by amcha, because he was true to his word and made good on his commitment, the Museum was able to navigate the narrow ridge where truth is found amidst the abyss of falsification, trivialization, dejudaization and kitsch.

His contributions to the Museum were legion. For a decade and half he chaired the Days of Remembrance Committee that ensured the civic commemoration of the Holocaust in our nation’s capitol and in each of the 50 states. He chaired the annual Yom Hashoah Observance in New York, the largest of its kind in the United States. He gave the Museum the National Registry and gave his fellow survivors and their families a respected presence in the United States and marked their unique and central place in the national memorial to the Holocaust, He built his record survivor by survivor, name by name.

Vladka was his partner, his conscience, his inspiration and his disciplinarian. She led the Teacher’s Program on Holocaust and Resistance to Poland and Israel each summer and built a cadre of teachers and followers throughout the country.

She and Ben met under unusual circumstances; Ben helped Vladka, her nom de guerre – Feyge Peltel was her name at birth – to escape from the ghetto. Vladka alludes to the loneliness and pressure of her double life only in passing: “You can be my friend,â€? she told him, who was “passingâ€? as an Aryan, “because if I don’t come back, I want someone to care that I am missing.â€? Their first marriage ceremony was brief but it confirmed a bond that was to endure for sixty four years. It took place in the hut at that Warsaw cemetery, when his mother Rivka Halberstadt Miedzyrzecki took off her ring and gave it to Ben to give to Vladka and said: “Let it be with mazal.â€?

Ben you can go in peace. You were given many gifts but you gave back more than you were given. You accomplished much, much more than you could have imagined as a young boy in Warsaw, even so much more than you could have imagined in 1979.

Your life’s journey is complete. Your task is not.

It will take a community joining together to carry on the task. None among us is large enough to assume it alone.

PolicyWatch #1158: Special Forum Report

Featuring Robert Satloff, Akbar Ahmed, and Gregg Rickman
October 31, 2006

On October 20, 2006, Robert Satloff, Akbar Ahmed, and Gregg Rickman addressed The Washington Institute’s Special Policy Forum. Dr. Satloff is the Institute’s executive director and author of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands. Dr. Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic studies at American University and former Pakistani high commissioner to Great Britain. Dr. Rickman is special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism with the State Department. The following is a rapporteur’s summary of their remarks.

Watch streaming video of this event, including a presentation of images and documents from Among the Righteous.

ROBERT SATLOFF

Of all the forms of anti-Semitism in Arab societies, Holocaust denial is one of the most pernicious and widespread. Generally it takes one of three forms: outright denial, Holocaust glorification, and Holocaust minimization or trivialization. One does no favor to Arabs by exempting them from this history, whatever its connection to their political dispute with Israel. And because jihadists’ conspiracy theories target a coalition of “Crusaders and Jews,â€? exempting Arabs from Holocaust history certainly does America no favor either.

While extremists are not likely to change their minds, millions of Arabs still have unformed views and are receptive to the lessons of history. The question is how to approach them. If one really wants to alter Arab perceptions of the Holocaust, then it is useful to frame it as an Arab story—preferably a hopeful, constructive, and positive story. So began the search for an Arab who saved a Jew during the Holocaust.

The Holocaust, although overwhelmingly a European story, is an Arab story too. The Germans and their allies only briefly controlled North Africa, home to more than half a million Jews; but during this period of control—June 1940 to May 1943—the Nazis, Vichy French collaborators, and their Italian fascist allies applied many of the precursors to the Final Solution. These included not only laws depriving Jews of property, education, livelihood, residence, and free movement, but also torture, slave labor, deportations, and executions. There were no death camps, but many thousands of Jews were consigned to more than 100 brutal labor camps, many of which were solely for Jews.

Only about 1 percent of Jews in North Africa—between 4,000 and 5,000—perished under Axis control in Arab lands, compared with more than half the Jews of Europe. But had U.S. and British troops not pushed Axis forces from the African continent by May 1943, the Jews of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and perhaps even Egypt and Palestine almost certainly would have met the same fate as the European Jewry.

In all of this, Arabs played a central role. Indeed, Arabs’ actions were not too different from those of Europeans. With war waging around them, most were indifferent. A percentage collaborated, including Arab officials in royal courts, Arab guards in labor camps, and those who went house to house pointing out where Jews lived. Without the help of local Arabs, at all levels, the persecution of Jews would have been virtually impossible. However, there were also those Arabs who risked everything to help Jews.

Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews’ valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations, and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, Muslim preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. Not one Arab broke ranks.

There were also remarkable stories of rescue. These include the story of Si Ali Sakkat, who opened his farm to sixty Jewish escapees from an Axis labor camp and hid them until liberation by the Allies. There was also Khaled Abdelwahhab, who scooped up several families in the middle of the night and took them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.

There is also strong evidence that the most influential Arab in Europe—Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris—saved up to one hundred Jews by having the mosque’s administrative personnel give them certificates of Muslim identity, with which they could evade arrest and deportation. These men, and others, were true heroes.

One question worth addressing is why there is a hesitancy to acknowledge these heroes. One reason for this is the conflict with Israel over the past fifty years, but it is not Israel alone that has fueled Arab anti-Semitism. After all, if Arabs made such a clear distinction between Jews and Zionists, then why were 99 percent of Jews in Arab lands compelled to leave in the years after Israel’s founding? It is important to note that those small remnant communities of Jews still left in Arab lands are themselves among the least likely to talk about what happened during World War II for fear of stirring additional animosity.

These stories—both those of Arab heroes and of villains—are extremely important. Arabs need to hear them. They especially need to hear them from their own teachers, preachers, and leaders. Americans also have a responsibility to help open Arab minds to this forgotten chapter of their history. In the post–September 11 era, investing in tolerance—both at home and abroad—is really a national security issue.

AKBAR AHMED

Among the Righteous is an outstanding achievement and has provided a tremendous service to those looking for new breakthroughs in dialogue. With the help of this book, non-Muslims can see Muslims as human rather than cardboard stereotypes, and Muslims can see themselves also as fully human, acting at times with heroism, with courage, with indifference, even with cruelty.

Holocaust denial is tasteless, ignorant, and unacceptable. Anti-Semitism must be fought wherever and whenever it is found. To fight it effectively requires an understanding of “Islamophobia,â€? which itself feeds Muslim anti-Semitism. A much more concerted effort must be made to build bridges and convert anger and hatred into friendship and reconciliation.

Images so often become the reality. This new book serves as a powerful vehicle to shatter stereotypes. It tells a historical story of societies under siege and on the cusp of change. At the same time it tells the story of Arabs overcoming the challenges of colonialism, offering heroic accounts of individuals risking their lives and making a difference.

GREGG RICKMAN

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has remarked that “anti-Semitism is more than just a historical fact; it is a current event.â€? Today’s anti-Semitism is marked by violence, conspiracy theories, and Holocaust denial. Through the telling of stories of Arabs who risked their lives to save Jews, Among the Righteous seeks to change the way in which Arabs see Jews, themselves, and history.

The trajectory of Muslim-Jewish relations need not spiral into the abyss. That Muslims and Jews can find common understanding is not only possible but has already been accomplished through great bravery and selflessness. New generations need to be inoculated against bigotry through education based in tolerance. In order for freedom and democracy to prevail, anti-Semitism in all its forms must be prevented. Only through open talk about commonalities and differences between faiths can we begin to address tensions and misunderstandings.

Even the horrors of war could not extinguish simple human generosity. Heroic choices made by some Arabs during the Holocaust provide an important lesson. Polish writer Stanislaw Krajewski asked the question, “What behavior is possible in an ’anti’ world, in which ’anti’ values reign supreme?â€? Many of the stories in Among the Righteous provide a resounding answer to this question.

This rapporteur’s summary was prepared by Nathan Hodson.

Conference deals with the trauma passed to next generation

Tim Shufelt, National Post
Published: Monday, October 30, 2006

TORONTO – Growing up in Hungary following the Second World War, Eva Dojc said each Christmas her father would drag a tree into their courtyard apartment, making sure all the neighbours could see. It stood in a corner, undecorated, for a couple of weeks until her father dragged it back out again.

When the family escaped to Canada in the fall of 1956, nine-year-old Eva asked her father whether they would be getting a tree.

“No, we don’t need a tree,” her father said. “We’re Jewish.”

Ms. Dojc’s father, who was forced into a labour camp during the war, lost his parents and one of his sisters in the Holocaust. Her mother survived Auschwitz, but her mother’s parents, two brothers and two sisters were killed. After liberation, with the oppression and massacres fresh in their minds, her parents concealed their ethnicity and religion for fear of further persecution.

Ms. Dojc said she has adopted a similar instinct over time.

“The antenna is up,” said Ms. Dojc, one of the organizers of a conference yesterday in Toronto for adult children of Holocaust survivors. “When you’re vulnerable, why increase your vulnerability?”

Another organizer, Margie Levitt, also a child of Holocaust survivors, said she agrees.

Ms. Levitt said she was prompted to change her behaviour by an incident that took place 21 years ago this month aboard an Italian cruise ship. On Oct. 7, 1985, heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro near Egypt. Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish retiree from New York, was shot and thrown overboard along with his wheelchair.

“Up until then I always wore a little mezuzah that was given to me when I was 12,” Ms. Levitt said. “I took it off that day and never put it back on.”

Paula David, a social worker at the Baycrest Wagman Centre, a long-term care facility in Toronto that houses one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors in North America, said the those sentiments echo those of other survivor families.

“If you have intimately experienced oppression, ranging from personal insults to someone wanting to annihilate you, you are going to be cautious of how you present yourself,” Ms. David said. “You don’t have an automatic sense of trust, and many have experienced anti-Semitism to validate that feeling.”

Yesterday’s event featured speakers and workshops on dealing with trauma passed on from one generation to the next, and challenges in caring for ageing survivors.

On the latter, Ms. Dojc said there are certain triggers that should be avoided in the company of survivors, like references to “showers.” The sight of dogs can also conjure up painful memories for some.

One should also keep a close eye on possible health problems. In many of the camps in Europe, the sick were automatically killed. “So maybe they don’t tell you they’re sick until it’s too late,” Ms. Dojc said.

The conference held a panel discussion on returning to places in Europe where Jews were persecuted and massacred.

Ms. Levitt, for example, said in 2001 she returned to Poland, where her mother spent three years in a slave labour camp that produced munitions.

“In Krakow, I saw beautiful iron works, like the Star of David, and beautiful synagogues…. There was a square with restaurants serving Jewish food. It’s all Jewish. The only thing missing were the Jews,” she said, clutching a tissue. “It was haunting.”

Her father’s two brothers survived the Holocaust, but her mother lost her entire family, Ms. Levitt said, examining the framed pictures in her Forest Hill home. She picked up a framed black-and-white photo of a naked baby sleeping. “That was my mother’s nephew. He was six or seven when he was gassed.”

The conference, held every three years, provides a forum for survivor children to forge bonds, Ms. David said, adding that they share a sense of community that others might find difficult to understand.

“Most of them feel quite privileged and quite lucky to be in this world. The plan in 1945 was that this whole generation would not exist,” she said.

But Ms. Levitt is eager to dispel the stereotype that survivor children are emotionally damaged or dysfunctional.

After she was born, her father’s two younger brothers lived with her until she was six years old.

“So here I was an only child born after the war to four survivors. I was never spoiled materially, but with love and affection,” Ms. Levitt said. “I have always known what’s important in life,” she said.

Ms. Dojc said the literature on the subject, mostly case studies of people in therapy, can be misleading.

“The people that never go for help, they don’t write case studies about,” she said.

tshufelt@nationalpost.com

Auschwitz director: Time for change

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum has a new director.
Piotr Cywinski, appointed in September, replaced Jerzy Wroblewski, who served in the position 16 years.

Fresh from a visit to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the new director, who took over last week, said the Auschwitz museum is in need of a makeover.

“I want to renew the main exhibition, which is about 50 years old. It’s time to speak differently about this history,â€? said Cywinski, 34, a Pole active in Polish-Jewish dialogue who was a member of the Auschwitz International Council before taking the museum job.

The museum is known for its repository of prisoner artifacts, including some 2,000 private photographs that once belonged to prisoners, 8,000 letters and postcards sent by prisoners from the camp and 70,000 death certificates