A French appeals court overturned a decision ordering the national railway to compensate two Jews deported by its trains in Nazi-occupied France.
A French appeals court overturned a decision ordering the national railway to compensate two Jews deported by its trains in Nazi-occupied France. Tuesday’s ruling in Bordeaux might affect a larger class-action suit filed against the SNCF system in similar cases.

The appeals court accepted the SNCF argument that the case, first brought to trial in June 2006, was not within the jurisdiction of the Toulouse administrative court, which had ordered SNCF to pay some $81,000 to the family of George Lipietz.

Lipietz, a Polish-born Jew, was 15 when French police arrested him and his brother. The two were taken in a cattle car to the Drancy transit camp on the outskirts of Paris. Lipietz spent three months at the camp before being liberated at the end of the war. Most Jews held at Drancy were sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

Lipietz died after launching the complaint in 2001, but family members, including his son Alain, a Green Party member of the European Parliament, continued the case. They succeeded in establishing shared responsibility of SNCF and the French government for the deportation. That ruling, the first of its kind in France, opened the door to a class-action suit involving up to 1,800 plaintiffs, which is expected to be deliberated in the coming year.

JOURNALIST/HUMANITARIAN RUTH GRUBER DISCUSSES
HER NEW BOOK, WITNESS,

WITH HER NIECE, AUTHOR DAVA SOBEL

On Wednesday, April 25 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

Ruth Gruber is —without a doubt — a force of nature and living history.

In her new book, Witness (Schocken Books, 2007), she illustrates, through haunting and life-affirming photographs taken while on assignment, the cultures, the people, the courage, and the hope she witnessed first-hand during most of the 20th century. Today, at 95, Ruth Gruber is an inspiration. The photographs and stories in Witness chronicle not only the daring adventures of one woman, but provide new insights into some of the most dramatic events of the last century.

She will discuss these momentous photographs and their historical significance with her niece, Dava Sobel, award-winning author of Galileo’s Daughter, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust on Wednesday, April 25 at 7 p.m. Many of the photographs in Witness are included in the Museum’s current exhibition: From the Heart: The Photojournalism of Ruth Gruber, on view through October 8, 2007.

Among the photographs and essays included in Witness are Ms. Gruber’s accounts of:

Her top secret assignment for FDR and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, where she accompanied 1,000 refugees to America — the only Jewish refugees allowed in this country — and brought them to Fort Ontario, Oswego, NY. This chapter of her life was made into a CBS mini-series with Natasha Richardson as Ruth and was the subject of her much lauded book Haven.

The most harrowing story she reported on as a journalist, when she witnessed the American lend lease boat, Exodus 1947, try to deliver 4,500 Jewish refugees — including 600 orphans — to Israel when it was attacked by five British destroyers and a cruiser. Gruber witnessed the Exodus 1947 entering the Haifa harbor and watched the British storm the ship. She writes how the Exodus crew fought back with potatoes, sticks, and cans of kosher meat. Gruber stayed with the Exodus prisoners when the British sent them back to Germany aboard the prison ship Runnymede Park. Her account of those events—Exodus 1947—was published in 1948 and was used by Leon Uris to write his best-selling novel Exodus.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1912, Ms. Gruber graduated from New York University in three years, received her master’s from the University of Wisconsin a year later, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne (magna cum laude) a year after that. At age 19, she was the youngest Ph.D. in the world, and made headlines in the New York Times because of it.

Gruber’s thesis in Germany was the first book ever written on Virginia Woolf; most of Woolf’s work was still to be written and published. Never before published in America, that thesis, Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman, was released in 2006 by Carroll & Graf.

In 1935 at the age of 24, Ms. Gruber was hired by Helen Rogers Reid, publisher and owner of the New York Herald Tribune, to be an international correspondent. In 1998, Gruber received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She is the author of 19 books, including I Went to the Soviet Artic, Destination Palestine, Haven, and Raquela. She lives in New York City.

About the Exhibition

The Talmud says “Saving a single life is like saving an entire world.” By that token, humanitarian, journalist, and activist Ruth Gruber has saved the world a thousand times over. Ruth Gruber’s remarkable career is the subject of the exhibition From the Heart: The Photojournalism of Ruth Gruber, which on view at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust through October 8, 2007.

Ms. Gruber had backstage access to Jewish history: she escorted war refugees from Europe to America; visited Displaced Persons camps; detailed the plight of the Exodus 1947; described the establishment of the State of Israel; and documented the State’s ingathering of refugees from Europe, Iraq, Yemen, and Ethiopia. Emissary for Harold Ickes and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, friend to Eleanor Roosevelt and Golda Meier, Ruth’s life and work are inextricably bound with the rescue and survival of the Jewish people. The exhibition consists of Gruber’s powerful photographs of her experiences in Displaced Persons camps, Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, Cyprus, and early Israel.

From the Heart is made possible through the generosity and admiration of Friends of Ruth Gruber.

WORCESTER, MA—As Holocaust survivors settled in the United States following World War II, American media reported that Jewish refugees found lives filled with opportunity and happiness in America. For most, however, it was a much more complicated story. The gap between public perception and the reality for survivors is the subject of Beth Cohen’s new book, “Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America.” Cohen, a doctoral graduate of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and lecturer at the University of California, Northridge, will present the Asher Family Lecture, beginning at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, in Tilton Hall, Higgins University Center, 950 Main St.

In “Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America,” Cohen provides a view through the eyes of those who lived it, challenging the conventional narrative of postwar easy acculturation and illuminating the complexity of the newcomers’ lives as “New Americans.”

Cohen received her Ph.D. in Holocaust history from Clark in 2003, in the first graduating class from this landmark program. After graduation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies awarded her a “Life Reborn” Fellowship.

This free, public event is supported by the Asher Family Foundation and Clark’s Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies . A reception will follow, and copies of “Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America” will be available for purchase. For more information, call 508-793-8897.

Clark University is a private, co-educational liberal-arts research university with 2,000 undergraduate and 800 graduate students. Since its founding in 1887 as the first all-graduate school in the United States, Clark has challenged convention with innovative programs such as the International Studies Stream and the accelerated BA/MA programs with the fifth year tuition-free for eligible students. The University is featured in Loren Pope’s book, “Colleges That Change Lives.”

Holocaust survivor to speak

By DARRYLE CLOTT | La Crosse
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Due to the overwhelming success of last year’s Perspectives on the Holocaust series at Viterbo University, sponsored by the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics and Leadership, we are again bringing a Holocaust survivor to our community. Survivor Henry Greenbaum from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. will speak at 7 p.m. in Viterbo’s Fine Arts Center Monday, March 26. There is no charge to the public.

Holocaust survivors are leaving us at an alarming rate. Soon, the world will be left to rely on memoirs and videos to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. To meet Holocaust survivors in person is to touch history. No two stories are exactly alike, yet the

struggle to survive, the personal loss and the strength of the individual despite overwhelming odds, always touch the listener.

Henry Greenbaum has an amazing story to share. MORE.

John Carroll seniors pay tribute to 14 visitors with a presentation of words and images
By Cassandra A. Fortin
special to the sun
Originally published March 25, 2007
It is common for Holocaust survivors to visit schools and make presentations to students.

But at John Carroll School recently, about 30 seniors turned the tables, giving a 40-minute presentation that included a video montage and poetry as a tribute to 14 Holocaust survivors who came to the campus.

“Our presentation is our way of giving back to the people who survived the horrible Holocaust,” said John Kline, an 18-year-old Jarrettsville resident. “What I learned this semester about what they went through helped me realize how special life really is. And I think it had a powerful impact on us and the survivors.”

MORE.