Dear “ALL,”

I would appreciate it if you could please include the following information in your e-mails when you response to the SEARCHES:

1) your name
2) city/state/country where you reside
3) whether you are a Survivor, a 2g or 3g, etc.
4) a COPY of just the inquiry to which you are responding (not a copy of the whole e-mail).
Thank you very much, Serena Woolrich

FRANCE

From George Brandstatter, a Survivor in Tel-Aviv, Israel:

Family Jean Besson looking for brothers and sister Armand, André and Rosa Majteles. Hidden Children in France during the Second World War.Armand lived in Givatayim, Kaplinski 5 Israel, during the 1980’s.

HUNGARY

From Rosa Karpati, a Survivor in Skokie, Illinois:

I am looking for the following people: 1956 After the revolution in Hungary I lost track 2 of my friends, both of them from Budapest.

They are: Vider Katalin(in English Cathy Vider), but this is her maiden
name! As far as I know she lives in Australia/Melbourne.

Szecsi Ervin (in English Ervin Szecsi); As far as I know he lives in England.

I am also looking for a school friend of mine named Judith Gimes;
Budapest Alngol Kisasszonyok 2 class of polgari iskola.

Also searching for people whom I was together with in Budapest, Hungary;
Kobanya in the Dorogi and Tushak Rubber Factory. We lived there in ghetto
style from April 1944 to November 1944.

I remember the following names: Klara Tushak, Piroska Laszlo, Vera Pilish, Laszlo Kerekes, Dery Tibor, Ms. Markovics and her son.

In addition, I am looking for people who were together with me in my hiding place in the Convent of Jopasztor in Obuda, Budapest Szolo-utca 60.

Names I recall: Szilasy Monika and her sister and mother Cecilia; a girl
with the name, Gabriel Rothhauser and anybody else who was
hiding there in 1944.

ITALY

From Rod Hartman, a 2g in Melbourne, Australia:

I am looking to meet anyone who was in the Barletta DP camp or someone who may have any have some information about it. In fact in May next year my wife and I are traveling to Barletta as that also was the place she was born after the Holocaust. I have some photocopied photos from Camp Barletta. I hope you can help me.

POLAND

From Sara Barnea, a Survivor in Ramat Hasharon, Israel:

My name is Sara Barnea and I survived the war in Russia with my parents. I was born Sara Frydman in Tomasozw Lublelski, Poland. My mother was Mirla Gorzyczanski Fryman, daughter of Fiszel and Mindle Gorzyczanski from Tomaszow Lublelski and my father was Szmuel Frydman, son of Froim and Mala Frydman from Lublin, Poland.

I am looking for surviving family with the name of Gorzyczanski. I had many cousins who disappeared during the Holocaust. I know that there were Gorzyczanski family members in the United States before the war.

My late husband, also a survivor, tried for years to find surviving
family but was unsuccessful. His name was Itzhak Berencwajg born in Siedlec, Poland to Hersz and Chaia. The Berencwajg family also had relatives in the United States from before the war.

I would love to find family.

Please contact me.

POLAND

From Irene Frisch, a Survivor in Fort Lee, New Jersey:

I am looking for a high school friend, whose name at the time was Fela
Weinreb. Fela was born in Lwow , Poland or Ukraine. Her wartime name was Ziuta. She was a very pretty blond girl. We finished high school in Legnica, Poland, in 1949. I know that she lives in Israel. She was very active in Gordonia. Would like to keep in touch. My name at the time was Irena Bienstock (now Frisch).
Fela, if you read this please contact me.

POLAND

From Esther Frucht Kisnera, a Survivor in Boca Raton, Florida
(submitted on her behalf by Halina Gartenberg):

My friend, Esther Frucht Kisnera, a survivor in Boca Raton, Florida
is looking for her friend, Zygmunt Heller, born in Krakow, Poland in
1929. His last known address was: 48 Clapton Common, London E5. He lived
there with Roman Lax. In his last letter he mentioned plans to emigrate to Israel or the USA. If anybody knows him please contact me and I will contact Esther since she does not have a computer.

Thanks.

POLAND

From Channah Magori, a 2g in Montreal, Canada:

My name is Channah Magori, nee Landgarten. Both my parents were Holocaust survivors. They came from Dzialoszyce, Poland. My mother’s maiden name was Sala Zylberberg (or burg) and her brother was Levi Yitzchak Zylberberg, whose whereabouts or death was never confirmed.

He was lost in the last action in Lodz in 1944 when they inhabited the Lodz ghetto. Can you help me in my search for him?

POLAND/HUNGARY

From Florence Marmor in Brooklyn, New York:

My family owned property in Poland, the Ukraine and Hungary. I would be extremely interested in any information available on them. My Ringelheim, Weisenfeld and Scherz families lived in various towns
surround Kanczuga and Rzeszow in the southeastern corner of Poland.
My Krauthamer-Spanier family lived in Kolomeya and the surrounding
area in the Ukraine and Roumania. My Lissauer, Bogar and Jonap families lived in various areas of Hungary.

Thank you very much

POLAND

From Israel Unger, a Survivor in Fredericton, New Brunswick,
Canada:

My name is Israel Unger. I was born in Tanow, Poland in March 1938.

My nuclear family, Father, Mother, older brother and I along with 5
other Jews survived the Holocaust in Tarnow in hiding. Our hiding
place was behind a false wall in the attic of Dagnan’s flour mill.

Besides my family there was a Mrs. Bochner, a young married couple
whose name may have been Alexandrovitch, and 2 sisters aged about
14 and 17. I would very much appreciate hearing from anyone who has
any information about any of the individuals who were with us in the
hiding place.

Also, my brother and I left Poland with the Rescued Children’s
Organization. We left from Krakow and ended up in Aix Les Bains in France. I would very much like to hear from anyone who was part of that group.

My father came from Ryglice, a small village near Tarnow. My grandfather’s name was Josef Pincus Unger and my grandmother’s name was Hana Leia (nee Leser) Unger.

My brother had 7 brothers and sisters. One brother, Abraham, moved to England prior to the war. The other six siblings, along with my grandparents, were all murdered by the Nazis. I do not know the names of my uncles and aunts, my father’s sisters and brothers.

If anyone knows their names and what happened to them please let me know.

POLAND

From Felicia (Fela) Zieff, a 2g in Chicago, Illinois:

When I visited the Holocaust museum, I found a video testimony given by my uncle who recently died in Gdansk, Poland. He mentioned that we had
relatives named Skarzynski from the town of Skarzyn, Poland. I’m looking for anyone who is or knows of any survivors or descendants named Skarzynski ?

ROMANIA

From Sleman Khoury, a 2g in Detroit, Michigan:

I wonder if you can help me corroborate the information from a Yad Vashem Testimony about my maternal uncle, Wolf (Wili)Tenintap (Tenintzap), who was born in the town of Buhusi or the town of Roman, in Romania, circa 1920. From the Yad Vashem testimony, I understand that he perished in the camp of Vapniarka (Wapniarka) in 1943. I was not able to find a birth or a death certificate for him.

I would appreciate any help in closure.

RUSSIA

From Jack Shapiro:

The family home in Belarus was Berestechko. My mother’s maiden name was Kairys and she came from Radziviloff. My grandmother, an uncle and two aunts and their families disappeared. My wife’s family name is Grabowska andtheir home town was Wlotzlavek. I would be grateful for news of any family members.

Allgenerations, Inc., is a 501 c(3) corporation located in Washington, D.C. , which was formed to disseminate information about the Holocaust and Israel, to Holocaust Survivors, their Descendants, Holocaust related museums and organizations, historians,educators, students, authors, filmmakers and other interested and concerned individuals worldwide.

allgenerations@aol.com
www.allgenerations.org

November 9, Germany’s Friday the 13th:

What Should We Remember?
by Dr. John G. Rodden

November 9 marks a number of important events in German history. In addition to being the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass that marked the official beginning of the Holocaust, the date also marks the nineteenth anniversary of an event that numerous scholars consider the most significant occurrence in modern world history: the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Many historians say that it rivals the French Revolution in importance. The crumbling of the Wall in November 1989 led to the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe and to the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union just two years later. Erected in August 1961, the Wall stood for 28 years before it was toppled by the mass protests of East Germans in their “unbloody revolution.”

Such an anniversary would normally furnish grounds for joyous celebration, but modern German history is not so simple. For there are other November 9ths too—Kristallnacht is just one—and for millions of people these other anniversaries form an umbra that envelopes the later date. The dilemma for Germans is agonizing: How can a society celebrate one group without offending another if the event celebrated inescapably recalls the suffering of the latter? Can such a celebration reflect a culture’s enlarged understanding of suffering and thereby express a deepened resulting compassion? These questions resound especially loudly on this 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht.

While the Berlin Wall remains, for younger Germans, an unforgettable symbol of the Cold War and of East-West tensions, the image of shattered glass littering Nazi Germany’s streets bleed in the memory of elder Germans, especially those German Jews who survived. On that night, the German government condoned the looting and pillaging of thousands of Jewish shops and synagogues–191 synagogues were set afire (most of them burned to the ground), almost 7,500 Jewish-owned shops were ransacked, 20,000 Jewish citizens were taken into custody, and 36 Jews were murdered. The pretext was the previous day’s assassination in Paris of a German diplomat by a 17-year old Jewish boy whose parents had been dumped with thousands of other Jews on the Polish border and were left there to starve.

**Do you believe in astrology? The Germans refer to November 9 as a Schickssalstag—a star-crossed day, a “Day X.” a day Americans would call a “day of infamy.” Germany’s November 9 possesses a reputation like that of our Pearl Harbor Day, and has also accreted associations evocative of September 11, July 4, and even Thanksgiving Day and M.L.K. Day. It is all of these and more rolled into one—as if it were a grand, bizarre, multicolored national Friday the 13th.

The happenchance convergence of the events of 1989 with those of 1938 explains why November 9 was rejected by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1989-90 as reunified Germany’s national holiday: the joyous scenes atop the Wall evoked the horrific spectacle of Kristallnacht. In the shadow of the Wall knelt the ghostly presence of the Holocaust. The terror haunted the triumph, the agony enveloped the ecstasy. Yes, the relief—that the Cold War was over and a New World Order was at hand—was freighted with the burden of the German past. The writer and human rights advocate Friedrich Schorlemmer has called the date “a joke played by history.”

The years 1989 and 1938 are only two of the German November 9 “days of infamy.” But few Germans laugh when they think of the coincidences—or the unforeseen, often unintended consequences.

November 9, 1918. On that date Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne in the face of an armed uprising from the populace. This ended the Hohenzollern dynasty and inaugurated Germany’s experiment with democracy, leading to the formation of the Weimar Republic. In 1923, on that same date, a little known right-wing radical in Munich—Adolf Hitler, a histrionic Austrian interloper —led the “Beer Hall Putsch,” a sparsely supported, pathetic little march easily broken up by the city police. Yet the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of the leader of these insurrectionists had grave, unexpected consequences: his months in prison granted Hitler the solitude to compose Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and ultimately assisted his populist message to far right-wing opponents of the Weimar Republic. Fifteen years later on November 9, Hitler exploited the date’s associations sponsor Kristallnacht, which launched his Final Solution.

So can Germans celebrate the day the Berlin Wall collapsed? If they do, it is uneasily at best. For one November 9 recalls another. If 1918 led to democracy, 1923 represented Hitler’s first attempt at a power grab—and 1938 witnessed the Nazi regime’s first organized nationwide pogrom against the Jews.Yet in 1989—44 years after Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II—liberation really occurred marking the end of the postwar era in Germany and, soon thereafter, throughout Europe.

During the last decade, there has been a call to make November 9 a “Day of Unity.” Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer declared: “…Why does this republic not possess the courage to declare November 9 our national holiday? Why does the Federal Republic not have the courage to say: This is our history? November 9 …possesses a special emotional quality,” adding that Germans could express “deepest sadness and remorse” about the events of 1938 and the treatment of German Jews, while acknowledging that “November 9 was also the night when the Wall fell and people danced in the streets.

Ultimately, if there is a single day in modern German history—and perhaps even in world history—that warrants reflection, it is November 9. The German government promoted a slogan in the late 1990s that it hoped would help Germans commemorate without unduly celebrating November 9: “Remembrance Is the Key to Redemption.”

People are reluctant to accept Fischer’s proposal. Different Germans remember differently. For East Germans, November 9 means reunification with their families in West Germany; indeed it symbolizes new freedoms to speak out, to travel to places beyond the Wall. For German Jews and Jews around the globe, November 9 still means terror in the streets, broken synagogue windows, and shattered storefront glass.

History must not repeat, Holocaust survivors say
The Gazette
Published: Tuesday, November 11

MONTREAL- Willie Glaser remembers the night 70 years ago when he took the train from Munich to his hometown nearby in Germany’s Bavaria region and saw synagogues burning all the way back.

One of those synagogues was on display in a black and white photograph last night as part of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht at the Beth Israel Beth Aaron synagogue in Côte St. Luc. The Night of Broken Glass was a night of state-sponsored terror against Jewish businesses and synagogues in Germany and Austria. About 1,400 synagogues were burned, while 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 others were sent to concentration camps.

MORE.

By Russ Cooper

The Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling’s Montreal Life Stories has linked up with the National Film Board’s interactive online CitizenShift initiative to help bring the stories of human rights violation survivors out of the shadows and into the light.

“This project has always been about telling the stories that reach beyond the victimization and the atrocities, and into the stories of survival and humanity,” says Life Stories Project Coordinator Lucho van Isschot, “but it’s the way we’re getting those stories out there that’s unique.”

The collaboration between Life Stories and CitizenShift brings the stories of survivors of war, genocide and other human rights violations told through a range of media, including short videos, photographs, written texts and podcasts available on their websites, www.lifestoriesmontreal.ca/ and citizen.nfb.ca/

more.

Survivors share tale of love and luck
In East Brunswick, couple urges support for matching grant

Ina Polak, a Dutch Holocaust survivor, sitting with her husband, Jack, holds up the death certificate sent to her parents telling them that her brother Benno had been stoned to death at Mauthausen concentration camp.

* ‘Dignity’ for survivors

by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

November 18, 2008

Despite his internment in two concentration camps and the loss of his parents in another, Jack Polak, 95, believes he is a lucky man.

“We are able to call ourselves happy Holocaust survivors,” he said, including his wife of 62 years. “We are lucky. We are very healthy and at 95 I do everything. But the most important thing I try to do is with the Anne Frank Center, where I have been able to tell thousands of children my story.”

A longtime leader of the American branch of the center, which is located in lower Manhattan, Polak has served as its director, president, and chair and has been chair emeritus for more than 20 years. The center in Amsterdam perpetuates the memory of the young girl who wrote her world-famous diary while her family was in hiding in the building in which it is housed.

more.