Oldest Living Pianist Alice Herz-Sommer - 109 yrs old

Music literally saved her life! "The Lady in Number 6" is one of the most inspirational, uplifting stories of the year. 109 year old, Alice Herz Sommer the world's oldest pianist and oldest holocaust survivor in the world shares her views on how to live a long and happy life. She discusses the importance of music, laughter and having an optimistic outlook on life.

Watch Elie Wiesel's Remarks at Holocaust Museum Anniversary Tribute

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum marks its 20th anniversary with a gathering of Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans in Washington, D.C. The program, which features speeches from Elie Wiesel and President Bill Clinton, commemorates the museum's commitment to engage the public on the continuing relevance of the Holocaust.

NYT: He Left a Fortune, to No One

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  Yahoo! Finance/Richard Perry/The New York Times - Mr. Blum's home on Staten Island, where he built and sold hundreds of other houses.

When Roman Blum died last year at age 97, his body lingered in the Staten Island University Hospital morgue for four days, until a rabbi at the hospital was able to track down his lawyer.

Mr. Blum, a Holocaust survivor and real estate developer, left behind no heirs and no surviving family members — his former wife died in 1992 and the couple was childless. His funeral, held graveside at the New Montefiore Jewish Cemetery in West Babylon, N.Y., was attended by a small number of mourners, most of them elderly fellow survivors or children of survivors.

Much about Mr. Blum’s life was shrouded in mystery: He always claimed he was from Warsaw, although many who knew him said he actually came from Chelm, in southeast Poland. Several people close to Mr. Blum said that before World War II, in Poland, he had a wife and child who perished in the Holocaust, though Mr. Blum seems never to have talked of them, and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, has no record of them in its database. Even his birth date is in question. Records here give it as Sept. 16, 1914; identity cards from a German displaced persons camp have it as Sept. 15.

[More from The New York Times: A Nasty, Epic Real Estate Battle With Stakes 102 Stories High]

But perhaps the greatest mystery surrounding Mr. Blum is why a successful developer, who built hundreds of houses around Staten Island and left behind an estate valued at almost $40 million, would die without a will.

Charles Goldgrub, Mr. Blum's godson. (Michael Kirby Smith/NYT)That is no small matter, as his is the largest unclaimed estate in New York State history, according to the state comptroller’s office.

“He was a very smart man but he died like an idiot,” said Paul Skurka, a fellow Holocaust survivor who befriended Mr. Blum after doing carpentry work for him in the 1970s.

Gary D. Gotlin, the public administrator handling the case, sold Mr. Blum’s home on Staten Island, auctioned off his jewelry and his furniture and is putting other properties that he owned on the market. Mr. Gotlin’s office, which is overseen by Surrogate’s Court in Richmond County, is also using Mr. Blum’s estate to pay his taxes, conduct an in-depth search for a will and hire a genealogist to search for relatives. If none are identified, the money will pass into the state’s coffers. That, Mr. Blum’s friends said, would be a tragedy, compounding the one that befell him as a young man in Eastern Europe.

“I spoke to Roman many times before he passed away, and he knew what to do, how to name beneficiaries,” said Mason D. Corn, his accountant and friend for 30 years. “Two weeks before he died, I had finally gotten him to sit down. He saw the end was coming. He was becoming mentally feeble. We agreed. I had to go away, and so he told me, ‘O.K., when you come back I will do it.’ But by then it was too late. We came this close, but we missed the boat.”

Roman Blum was, by all accounts, an emotional man with a large personality. Six feet tall and handsome, he was a ladies’ man, a gambler and a drinker. He was also enterprising and tough in business.

“He had deeds on his desk piled up to the ceiling of properties he owned,” said Vincent Daino, who was Mr. Blum’s neighbor for 25 years and became his unpaid driver when the older man’s eyesight began to fail. “There were royalties from oil rigs in Alaska, money from his stocks — about once a month he would have me drive him to the bank so he could deposit $100,000 checks.”

Much of what is known about his life comes from a circle of fellow Holocaust survivors who met in displaced persons camps after the war.

They said that when war broke out, Mr. Blum was in Poland and, fearing capture, ran alone across the border to Russia, where he was briefly detained and placed in prison. The Russians soon released him along with thousands of other prisoners to fight the Nazis. The fate of his wife and child, if they existed, is unclear.

In the months after the war, Mr. Blum met a family of survivors with two daughters. One of them, Eva, had been in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

He married her, although by all accounts it was not a love match. “It was immediately after the war — he thought she was the last Jewish woman alive, and she thought there were no more men,” said a friend and fellow Holocaust survivor who met Mr. Blum around that time. The friend would speak only anonymously, for fear that he would seem to be trying to make a claim on the Blum estate.

In 1946, Mr. and Mrs. Blum made their way to Zeilsheim, a displaced persons camp on the outskirts of Frankfurt. In the chaos of postwar Germany, Mr. Blum became a smuggler, as many Jews did, Mr. Skurka said: He pirated cigarettes into Belgium while biding his time waiting for a visa to the United States. During that period, Eva remained in Zeilsheim and Mr. Blum preferred the livelier Berlin.

Paul Skurka, a Holocaust survivor who knew Mr. Blum for many years. (Richard Perry/NYT)Mr. Skurka related a story from those days that, he said, Mr. Blum had told him. One day while in Berlin, Mr. Blum walked into a barbershop and asked the proprietor for a shave. When the barber finished, Mr. Blum said he had no money, shrugging his shoulders and smiling as he walked out the door. “He had chutzpah, that’s the kind of man he was,” Mr. Skurka said.

In 1949, the Blums came to New York and settled in Forest Hills, in Queens. There, they joined a tightknit community of survivors, many of whom they knew from the Zeilsheim camp.

“They all lived the same type of lifestyle, going to the bungalow colonies together, the Catskills, everything was done as a group,” said Jack Shnay, a child of survivors who grew up in Forest Hills with the Blums. “Initially, they all lived in apartments in Rego Park; then they starting buying or building private homes.”

“Every weekend was a party,” said Charles Goldgrub, the child of survivors and Mr. Blum’s godson, who also grew up in Queens. “They had survived Hitler so they thought they would live forever.”

On weekends, the survivors would often gather to play high-stakes poker and drink plum brandy. They rarely discussed their wartime experiences, but sometimes, as a group and tipsy, they would grow emotional. Mr. Blum’s favorite tune was the 1968 single by Mary Hopkin, “Those Were The Days,” recalled Michael Pomeranc, a hotelier who grew up in Forest Hills and whose parents, also survivors, were close to the Blums. “He was always singing that song, and especially if he’d had a bit to drink, he’d try to get everyone to join in with the lyrics,” Mr. Pomeranc said.

[More from The New York Times: Loans Borrowed Against Pensions Squeeze Retirees]

Many of the men started businesses together, the majority becoming homebuilders and hotel developers. They referred to themselves as griners, a Yiddish term meaning greenhorn or newcomer. “They were known as the griner builders,” said Robert Fishler, a Staten Island real estate lawyer who represented Mr. Blum for nearly three decades.

The men also had affairs. “There were lots of women on the side,” Mr. Goldgrub said. “It was a way of life, everyone knew — the wives just closed their eyes to it.” By many accounts, Mr. Blum often had female companions other than his wife. “It was really more like growing up in the Italian mob than your typical Jewish upbringing,” Mr. Goldgrub said.

While the people in the group liked having fun, they were not showy, despite their growing wealth. Most drove the same Buicks and Oldsmobiles for years and remained in the same middle-class neighborhood. Their modesty might also have been a desire to keep their wealth under wraps. “They didn’t want anyone to know what they had. They had been so scrutinized they didn’t want to call attention to themselves,” Mr. Goldgrub said.

The Blums struggled to start a family. Mrs. Blum told her friends that she was unable to have children, and the couple spent thousands of dollars on doctors’ visits. According to stories that swirled around the couple, Mrs. Blum had been a subject of the dreaded Dr. Josef Mengele while at Auschwitz, and his experiments had rendered her infertile.

In the 1960s, on a five-week trip to Israel on the Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Blum found a boy, an orphan, whom he wished to adopt. But friends who were with them said Mrs. Blum begged him not to go through with the adoption, convinced that her doctors would ultimately be able to help them conceive. They did not adopt the boy and never had children.

Then, in 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened, linking Brooklyn and Staten Island, and many in the group, including Mr. Blum, began buying land on Staten Island. Prices were low, and Mr. Blum began developing land and building homes in neighborhoods like Eltingville, Huguenot and Manor Heights.

“Everybody knew Roman. He built hundreds of homes over the years,” Bruno Betro, a broker at Volpe Realty, said. “Last time I tried to sell a piece of property for him, I’d give him an offer and he’d tell me he wanted $1 million more.”

By the 1980s, with his business thriving, Mr. Blum decided to relocate to Staten Island. He built a large brick house in the upscale neighborhood of Southeast Annadale, with four bedrooms and five bathrooms, a two-car garage and a pool.

Mrs. Blum did not want to move. “He wanted her to go live with him in his big house with a swimming pool, but she loved the city,” said the friend who wished to be unidentified. “All her friends were there, and with his lifestyle, if she went with him, she knew she would be alone a lot.” Mrs. Blum stayed in Queens and Mr. Blum moved into the new house.

“Fifty years of marriage and he just left,” said Sherri Goldgrub, who married Charles Goldgrub in 1980 and knew the Blums well. “He would sometimes come back and bring her his laundry, but she sat home waiting, thinking he’d be back for dinner.”

The Blums eventually divorced, and Mr. Blum lived the life of a bachelor. There were women and lots of poolside parties. “Every Sunday we would swim in the pool, drink and eat — he’d like to make steaks this thick on the grill,” said his friend, holding his fingers five inches apart.

As for the group back in Queens, the divorce caused a rift and many distanced themselves from Mr. Blum.

“People were offended,” Mr. Goldgrub said. “People took sides, and our family took Eva’s side.” The last time Mr. Goldgrub saw Mr. Blum was at the bar mitzvah of his son in 1995. Mr. Blum was furious that he was not asked to light a candle for the boy, an honor, and told Mr. Goldgrub’s father he was taking his godson out of his will.

But Mr. Blum’s business on Staten Island was growing. Known as shrewd and hard driving, he could often be found early in the morning, cup of coffee in hand, sitting in the garage of one of his model homes, displaying sample materials and giving prospective buyers the hard sell.

As the years went by, Mr. Blum became increasingly stingy and, according to those who knew him, paranoid that people were after his fortune. He hid $40,000 in the ceiling of his bathroom, according to Mr. Daino, and when it went missing, Mr. Blum accused another neighbor of stealing it. “He told him, ‘Give me back $30,000 and I’ll let you keep $10,000,’ ” said Mr. Daino.

Months before he died, Mr. Blum fell down the stairs of his home and broke his leg, lying on the floor for four hours before a cleaning woman found him, according to Mr. Daino. It was Mr. Daino who took him to the hospital and who eventually signed him out.

“He had no one else, I was the only person he had,” Mr. Daino said. The leg never fully healed, and Mr. Blum, who remained at home in a hospital bed with 24-hour care, died in early January 2012.

After the hospital rabbi found his body in the morgue, he notified Mr. Fishler, the lawyer, who then notified Mr. Blum’s old friends from Queens. To the surprise of many, Mr. Blum had bought a cemetery plot next to his former wife’s. He was buried there.

“It is a heartbreaking story, a tragedy,” said Mr. Pomeranc, who was one of the few people who attended Mr. Blum’s funeral. “I spoke with him three days before he died. We were going to get the whole group together and take a ride out to see him that weekend. But it didn’t happen, and then the next week he passed away.”

None of Mr. Blum’s friends know why he never wrote a will. Those close to him say it may have been superstition or, after coming so close to dying during the war, a refusal to contemplate his own mortality. He may also have been unwilling to share the full details of his estate with a lawyer, the desire for secrecy a holdover from his experiences during the war.

Had the Blums had children, the estate would have gone to them, even without a will. While Mrs. Blum, as his former wife, would not have been eligible — only a current spouse or a blood relative can claim an inheritance in the absence of a will — his friends hope that Mr. Blum had siblings back in Poland with whom he was not in contact or that, if he had had a child before the war, some distant relations are still living in Europe.

“It wouldn’t be that uncommon to uncover collateral heirs,” said Burt Neuborne, the civil liberties defender who was the lead counsel in recent Holocaust litigation against Swiss banks. “We often found that someone, like a third cousin twice removed, would come forward.”

Yet despite a worldwide search that included Poland and Israel, Mr. Gotlin said, “to date, there is no evidence of any living relatives.”

Mr. Gotlin continues to work on liquidating Mr. Blum’s estate. According to people familiar with his accounts, Mr. Blum had about $4 million in cash in his checking account. His house was put on the market for $729,000 and is now in contract, and an eight-acre parcel he owned on Forest Avenue, worth about $4.5 million, is also in contract. A safe deposit box had more than 70 $100 bills, coins from Canada and South Africa, and gold jewelry including a watch, a bracelet, cuff links, several necklaces and a ring.

Mr. Blum’s few remaining personal items, including photographs and a book on the Holocaust, have been put in a box in the basement of the public administrator, where they will remain sealed unless claimed by a blood relative.

Once Mr. Gotlin completes liquidating the assets, and if investigators fail to find a will or surviving kin, whatever money is remaining from Mr. Blum’s estate will be passed to the city’s Department of Finance. If, after three years, no one comes forward, the money would go to the state comptroller’s office of unclaimed funds, which has $12 billion in its accounts dating to 1943. That office keeps a portion of the estate and transfers a portion to the state’s general fund. If an heir comes forward, the entire amount is returned.

The last time his old friend from Zeilsheim saw him, the man pushed Mr. Blum to discuss the topic of a will. “I told him, ‘Look, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but’ — and he was already a little bit drunk — I said, ‘You have to do something,’ ” the friend said. “And he told me, he said, ‘I promise you, if anything happens to me, you are going to be proud. You’ll be proud of me.’ ”

The friend still clings to hope. “I believe a will is written,” the friend said. “Somewhere there is a plan: he made arrangements to use the money to build a home for children and to dedicate it to his child from before the war. I am sure of it.”

Holocaust Memorial Day: Death March to Dachau

Sol Teichman survived the Holocaust and came to America as a penniless immigrant not knowing a word of English. In 1951, during the Korean War, Sol was drafted into the United States Army. He served in Germany and then France.

One of my closest friends here in Los Angeles is Mr. Sol Teichman, a prominent citizen, businessman, philanthropist, and a Holocaust survivor.

Born on September 9, 1927, in the Hungarian town of Munkacs, Sol’s family were prominent and prosperous grain, bean and walnut merchants. The family lived in a lovely home in a quiet cul-de-sac and were known in the tight-knit Jewish community for their piety, charity, and close ties to the Belzer and Munkacs Hasidic dynasties.

Of course, the Nazi death grip descended on the Jews of Hungary, and by 1943, the Teichman home and business had been confiscated. The Jews of Munkacs were cruelly herded into a ghetto and then shipped in cattle cars to Auschwitz.

Sol, 17 years old, and his brother Steve, 14, survived the death camp, only to be sent on a death march to Dachau in August 1944.

Here is an excerpt from Sol’s privately printed memoir, The Long Journey Home, in which he describes hell on earth.

The Crimson Lake

It was a death march, and I was terrified at each and every step. My body was convulsed with excruciating muscle spasms. Everywhere was the sharp crack of rifle fire as the Germans picked off one Jew after another. Was I going to be murdered next?  I had no idea where we were going or for how long we were going to march. Would we be on this road for one day, two days, a week, a month, or did the Germans plan on marching us until we were all dead? Not knowing was torture, just as the Germans planned.

If a prisoner tried to step aside to relieve himself, he was shot, bayoneted or beaten to death with the heavy butt of a rifle.

On the first night of the march my brother Steve lost heart.

“I don’t want to go on. I don’t want to live,” he said.

I looked at my brother and I knew in the depths of my soul that there was no choice. And so, though Steve was bigger and heavier than me, I leaned over, draped him over my back and carried my brother.

All I could do was place one foot in front of the other, one breath and then another.

We marched for days and nights without food or water. The heat was unbearable. My bones felt crushed, pulverized. Every breath was torture, my lungs felt as if they were exploding from unbearable pressure. But I knew that if I stopped, if I collapsed, the Germans would shoot us, beat us to death, or let their attack dogs rip us from limb to limb. And so I staggered onward.

One day, in the distance, we spied a lake.  I think it was T’sha B’Av night. Many of the men on the march started running towards the water, desperate to get a drink of water. As I staggered closer to the lake I saw that the water was a strange color.

And then I realized that the lake was red.

The Germans were shooting hundreds of Jews by the shores of the lake—and the water turned to blood.

We stood and stared at the crimson lake. I could not, would not, drink the bloody water.

We lay down, tried to sleep, and then in the middle of the night a tremendous thunderstorm exploded. Rain poured from the sky.

I stood in the middle of the field, opened my mouth and savored the sharp needles of rain dripping down my throat. The thunderstorm was miraculous and provided just enough water to relieve my overwhelming thirst.

Shivering in the rain and mud, I snatched bits of fitful sleep.

In the middle of the night I awoke and watched in dismay as starved prisoners, crazed by empty bellies, shoved tufts of grass—black dirt clinging to the roots—into their mouths, chewed and swallowed.

In the inky darkness, someone whispered that nearby was a meadow filled with wild potatoes. Steve wanted to sneak into the field and eat the raw potatoes, but I wouldn’t let him. I knew that they would make us sick. Taking advantage of the night because the German guards couldn’t see what was going on, some Jews did sneak off and pick the potatoes. They devoured the raw potatoes in quick, starving bites. But soon they doubled over with agonizing cramps and diarrhea, and then, a few hours later, they died. Those who didn’t die, those who were too sick to move, were shot to death by the Germans.

Later, I discovered that, carrying Steve on my back, I had marched for four days and covered approximately seventy miles. But at the time, not knowing how long or how far I traveled, time seemed to vanish and distances seemed endless as I pushed onward, day after day under the oppressive heat, my back bent like a bow. My throat was parched from thirst; the sun beat down and my skin was burned raw. I was dizzy from exhaustion, hunger and fear. Every bone in my body was throbbing. I felt like a marching skeleton. Thousands were murdered along that road. My fellow Jewish prisoners were beaten to death with wooden clubs and iron bars. Some Jews welcomed death for life had become endless torture, unendurable.

Four uncles and several cousins died on this death march.

In a daze, I realized that we had reached a valley. There we camped for the night. The next day we continued a short distance to a railhead and were loaded on cattle cars bound for Dachau.

When we started the march we were about 6,000 Jews, arriving at Dachau there were only about 600 survivors.

Surviving Twin Searches for Brother, Auschwitz Tattoo A-7734 Holocaust survivor Menachem Bodner, born Elijahu Gottesman, is searching for his identical twin brother and asking our readers to help

Holocaust survivor Menachem Bodner, born Elijahu Gottesman, was just four years old when he was liberated in 1945 from the Auschwitz death camp. Now age 72 and living in Israel, he is searching for his identical twin brother and asking our readers to help. 

In May 1944, Menachem and his identical twin brother were transported to the concentration camp two months before their fourth birthday. 

Because they were identical twins, they were “selected” and became the objects of criminal medical experiments by the infamous Dr. Mengele. Both miraculously survived. Last seen at Auschwitz, the two were separated just two days before the liberation.

Menachem was adopted, and given a new name: Menachem Bodner. His brother was also adopted, but was taken to the United States, Bodner says. There the trail ends, with the number tattooed on their arms as their sole remaining link.

For the next 67 years, Bodner has had no knowledge of his family or his twin brother.

But according to records retrieved from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Bodner’s twin brother was still alive two weeks after the liberation, giving him hope that he may still be alive and “out there to be found and reunited” with him.

Bodner has discovered from the records that his number and real name was A-7733 GOTTESMAN, ELIAS. His brother’s number and name was A-7734 GOTTESMAN, JENO.

“We ask that you pass this on to appear in your synagogue newsletter, localnewspaper, and local television stations to ensure the widest dissemination,” wrote organizers trying to help Bodner with his search.

A Facebook page with photos and more information can be found by clicking here. Readers who learn the whereabouts of Jeno Gottesman are asked to pleasecontact Ms. Ayana Kimron at FamilyRoots2000@gmail.com.

"My Deal with G-d" This History of TAG

This was an incredible interview "says Jasse" the producer of the video. I was sent to gather a little history about the beginning of a girls school in Far Rockaway and the beginnings of the Jewish community in the Five Towns and I came back with a Holocaust story about a "Deal with G-d" as Dr. Moshe Katz told me. It knocked me out of my chair. The nerve to make a deal with the creator, then to hear about how "both" kept their deal. After Dr. Katz, a re-known lecturer gave me his book "Nine Out of Ten", .. and I read it..I was stunned. This needs to be a full length documentary. Help us raise the funds! It's an incredible story from an incredible man and his family that needs to be told.

Read the complete story "Nine out of Ten"
At war's end, the piteous, battered remnants of a once proud Hungarian Jewry began making their way back to their hometowns in search of fellow survivors. The Katz family was no different. Or were they? Nine out of ten siblings from one family - an almost unheard of survival rate - escaped death to be reunited. This is their story - and what a story it was! Resourcefulness, courage and amazing acts of heroism, showing kindness to their fellow Jews, at the risk of their own lives; flight, imprisonment, deportation and escape; hope, despair, prayer and faith; these are some of the elements that combine to create a Holocaust saga unlike any you've ever heard before

Holocaust heroes come together for emotional ‘Reunion’New documentary records 2011 gathering of elderly Jewish partisans and their families — a meeting that may be the last of its kind

Last November, a family reunion like no other took place in New York.

None of the attendees were actually related, but that didn’t matter. It was an emotional gathering of 55 brothers and sisters in resistance, Jewish partisans who had, as teenagers and young adults, hidden and survived in the forests of Europe and fought the Nazis by sabotaging German army supply lines. They had parted at the end of World War II, and never thought they would see one another again.

These Holocaust survivors were brought together by the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation (JPEF), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that produces and disseminates educational materials about Jewish WWII partisans to 6,500 educators around the world.

Mitch Braff, JPEF’s founder and executive director, knew that, given the advanced age of the attendees, this reunion was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime event. A filmmaker by training, he instinctively perceived that the occasion should be documented in an artful and meaningful way.

“I see things through a filmmaker’s lens, and I knew this would make a great documentary movie,” Braff said.

With the partisans’ spouses, children and grandchildren accompanying them to the gathering, he knew the film, titled “The Reunion,” was an opportunity to show a different side of his organization. “Our other films are heavily history-based,” he said. “But this film shows the partisans in a different light. It emphasizes their families and relationships, and also the legacy they are bequeathing to their grandchildren, the third generation.”

Surmounting fundraising and logistical challenges, Braff, acting as producer, director and writer, forged ahead and shot the film over the three days the partisans were gathered in New York. Field producer Sam Rider assisted with filming interviews of some of the elderly men and women.

“I went into it thinking that I understood the war and the partisans, but then five minutes into taping, I realized that I was having the honor of interviewing people with lives that were cinematically grander than anything I had ever experienced before,” he said.

The post-production process, which extended through most of this year, included the addition of an original musical score by Ronen Landa, and narration by stage and screen actor Liev Schreiber, who starred in the 2008 Hollywood movie “Defiance,” based on the true story of a Jewish partisan brigade in Belarus led by the legendary Bielski brothers.

The director knew, given the advanced age of the attendees, that this reunion was a once-in-a-lifetime event

“This is an important story that must be told. I was happy to contribute to ‘The Reunion’ in hopes of helping ensure more people learn about what the Jewish partisans went through and the incredible things they accomplished,” the actor wrote by email about his participation in the project.

The 25-minute film will premiere Monday in New York at a JPEF benefit at the Paley Center for Media. Its West Coast premiere will follow at a similar event at the Delancey Street Screening Room in San Francisco on Nov. 13.

In August 2011, JPEF produced a videotaped public service announcement to get the word out about the upcoming reunion and tribute dinner. Schreiber, former CNN host Larry King and Edward Zwick, who directed “Defiance,” appeared in the video.

“If you or your family are aware of any partisans still living, please have them contact jewishpartisans.org. We’d love to have them attend the dinner with us,” Zwick requested.

Of the tens of thousands of Jews who were once partisans fighting the Nazis, Braff expected that perhaps 20 or so would respond to the video and JPEF’s other outreach efforts. To his astonishment, 55 ended up making the trip to New York. Many of the former partisans, nearly all now octogenarians and older, were local, coming from their homes in New York and New Jersey. Others journeyed to the reunion with their families from Montreal, Florida, Texas and California.

Nearly five dozen former resistance fighters — nearly all in their 80s or older — celebrate their reunion in New York City in November 2011. (Photo credit: Ron Glassman Photography)

At the emotional center of the film are two of the attendees: Allen Small, 84, a retired women’s fashion executive from Florida, and Leon Bakst, 87, a retired grocer from Dallas. Small had recognized Bakst’s name on the list of former partisans who had committed to coming, but Bakst had not recognized that of Small, who had been known during and before the war as Avraham Meir Shmulevitch.

Small had known Leon as Leibl, and the two had been friends and schoolmates in Ivye, Poland (about 50 miles from Minsk, now part of Belarus).

Wanting to surprise his old friend, Small insisted that JPEF not notify Bakst that Small would be at the event. The film captures the moment the men met for the first time in 65 years, their first encounter since seeing one another in a displaced-persons camp in Germany.

“My whole life came in front of me,” Bakst told the Times of Israel by phone from his home in Dallas. “It was the excitement of my life. It was painful and joyous together. We lost everybody, so it was so great to see him.”

According to Bakst’s daughter Pepe, 59, her father and mother — who had also been a partisan — had not kept in touch with anyone from the war or the DP camps after arriving in the United States.

“It was hard for them to talk about it,” she said. “My mom, Libby [who died two years ago, at age 84], did not say anything at all. My dad started telling his story to high school classes, and had his testimony taped only once my sister and I were grown up and out of the house.”

Bakst, the second of four children, saw the Soviets take over his town shortly after his bar mitzva. By 1941, the Germans had arrived and set up a ghetto. In 1942, he was forced to dig mass graves in which the Germans dumped hundreds of Jews from the town. Not long after, Bakst and his older brother were sent to a forced labor camp in nearby Lida. He never again saw his parents or younger sisters, who were shot dead by the Germans shortly thereafter.

The reunion was bittersweet, bringing back many difficult memories

Bakst, his brother and a small group of other young Jewish men — all between the ages of 16 and 21 — decided to steal Polish and Soviet rifles and ammunition from cargo they were forced to load onto railcars for the Germans. In the spring of 1943, the group escaped in the middle of the night and walked for two days and two nights to reach the Bielski brothers’ partisan camp. “We had heard that partisans were getting organized in the woods,” Bakst recalled.

“We met the three Bielski brothers and had a chat with them,” he said. “When they learned we knew the area well, they had my brother and me organize a detail to get food for the camp.”

Bakst explained that the partisans neither bought nor stole the food from farmers. “We ‘demanded’ the food. They knew we meant business,” is how he characterized the exchange. Procuring food for the camp, which grew from an initial 100 people to more than 1,200, remained Bakst’s job until the Soviets seized the area from Germany in July 1944.

Small, three years younger than Bakst, went into hiding and then managed to join a brigade of Soviet partisans when he was 14. His entire family was massacred, including his father, whose corpse was dumped into the mass grave that Bakst had been forced to dig and later cover up. Small met up with Bakst again in a DP camp in Munich in 1946, but did not keep in touch after they both departed for new lives in America.

“You have to understand, 65 years is not the same as 65 days,” Small says in the film, before the scene in which he surprises Bakst. For him, too, the reunion was bittersweet, bringing back many difficult memories.

Now, the two men are in touch regularly, speaking by phone at least once a week. They will see one another in person again, as both plan to attend the film’s New York premiere.

“Thank God for that organization,” Small said of JPEF. “Now I have family.”

Auschwitz Sonderkommando Shlomo Venezia dies at 88Greek-born prisoner wrote about his survival transporting corpses from gas chambers to crematorium

ROME (JTA) – Shlomo Venezia, a Holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in an Auschwitz Sonderkommando unit and spent years bearing personal testimony to the Shoah, has died.

Venezia, who was born in Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, died Sept. 30 in Rome at the age of 88.

Deported to Auschwitz in 1944, he was one of the few survivors of the notorious Sonderkommando units – teams of prisoners forced to move and cremate the bodies of those killed in the gas chambers. His mother and two sisters were killed in Auschwitz. He wrote about his experiences in a memoir, “Sonderkommando Auschwitz,” published in 2007.

Venezia was very active speaking about the Holocaust at schools, public events and in the media, and he accompanied Italian student groups on study trips to Auschwitz.

His death “leaves a vacuum and great pain,” said Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno.

Nicola Zingaretti, the president of Rome province, said, “It is difficult today, and it has always been difficult, to find the words to thank Shlomo for all that he has given us and all that he has taught us, and it is difficult, maybe impossible, to comprehend the depth of his suffering, his courage and his generosity.”

The director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, Irina Bokova, also paid tribute. “Shlomo Venezia was an exceptional and tireless witness of this dark period of history,” she said in a statement.

“He dedicated many years of his life telling his story in Italy and throughout Europe to serve as a warning for the future. He influenced a whole generation of young people, teachers and historians, thanks to his deep loyalty to the memory of the deceased. All those who knew him were struck by his modesty and his strength of character,” she said. “His death is a call to intensify efforts for educating and transmitting the history of the Holocaust around the world.”

Grandpa, who helped install the gas chambersLike many before her, Barbel Pfeiffer participated in an emotional visit to Auschwitz and other death camps last week. What was extraordinary is that she and 50 others on the ‘March of Life’ are descendants of Nazis and Nazi collaborators

Like many of the visitors who cry at Auschwitz, Barbel Pfeiffer has a deeply personal connection to the Holocaust. But in Pfeiffer’s case, the relative who spent time at the infamous death camp wasn’t a prisoner. It was her grandfather, and he helped to build it.

“I have been in Auschwitz five times already, but every time I go, it makes me cry again,” says Pfeiffer, whose grandfather was one of those who installed the camp‘s electrical system and gas chambers.

For her latest visit, which took place last week, the 42-year-old German traveled to the camp as part of a 420-member delegation — an international group from countries including Israel, Poland and the United States.

Named the March of Life, the itinerary bore a close resemblance to the similarly titled March of the Living, the long-running program that brings Jews to Holocaust sites in Poland before wrapping up their travels in Israel.

Pfeiffer’s visit shared much in common with the older program, but differed significantly in one way: its inclusion of 50 other descendants of Nazis and Nazi collaborators.

“Our aim is to show the Jewish people that we are standing by their side, and that we will not keep silent when someone threatens to destroy the Jewish people,” says Heinz Reuss, a participant from Tubingen, Germany.

A leader of TOS Ministries, the network of Protestant churches that organized the March, Reuss says the program evolved from discussions among members of TOS‘s Tubingen church, where he and other congregants explored their family histories to learn about their relatives’ roles in World War II.

“Almost all of them found that their ancestors were involved somehow in the Nazi regime,” says Reuss, whose father, an 18-year-old at the end of the war, served in Germany’s air protection services.

“It’s true that there is still anti-Semitism in Germany, but there are also a lot of people who stand against anti-Semitism and support Israel,” Reuss says.

More striking for him, he says, was the behavior of his grandfather, who was too old to fight but cut ties with his Jewish acquaintances. “This is something I don’t want to do. I want to stand with my Jewish friends,” says Reuss, who views the trip as a way to show solidarity with Israel and demonstrate that his own country has changed.

“It’s true that there is still anti-Semitism in Germany, but there are also a lot of people who stand against anti-Semitism and support Israel,” he says. “This is very much what the March of Life is about: We want to break the silence not only about our family histories, but also to speak loud against anti-Semitism.”

Unfolding along a 1,300-mile route, the group’s journey included memorial programs at five death camps — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno and Sobibor — and concluded Thursday with a commemoration service in Warsaw. Members of the German delegation included descendants of Wehrmacht soldiers, SS officers and others involved in the genocide.

Pfeiffer’s grandfather, a German factory worker who avoided military service because of health problems, ended up at Auschwitz on a work project coordinated by his bosses. After the war, he avoided talking about his experiences — family members didn’t press him — and never met his granddaughter, the younger Pfeiffer says.

The granddaughter of an Auschwitz worker, German visitor Barbel Pfeiffer spoke to survivors and other descendants of Nazi collaborators during a visit to the death camp last week. (Photo credit: Heinz Reuss/TOS Ministries)

His connection to Auschwitz “came to light when my parents saw how much I researched my family history, and how badly I wanted to know what happened during that time,” Pfeiffer recalls. “They wanted to help me in every way they could.”

Pfeiffer’s father hadn’t been aware of his own father’s activities during the war, and learned from a relative who was surprised he didn’t know.

With her own children, Barbel Pfeiffer says, that sort of ignorance has come to an end. While she didn’t bring her two sons on this trip — her husband accompanied her instead — she considers it vital to educate them about the past.

“I called my sons from Auschwitz and told them how I felt,” she says. “They asked me, ‘Mother, are you crying?,’ and I said yes. I think it is very important to talk with them about it, and we do.”

“I called my sons from Auschwitz and told them how I felt,” Pfeiffer says. “I think it is very important to talk with them about it, and we do.”

Speaking at the March of Life‘s concluding ceremony in Warsaw, Knesset member Lia Shemtov told listeners that post-war generations needn’t feel guilty about the past, but that descendants of perpetrators nevertheless have a special responsibility toward Jews.

“They say children should not bear the sins of their parents as a mark of Cain,” Shemtov told her audience. “Unfortunately, the memory of the Holocaust haunts you today when you, second and third generations, are exposed to rising anti-Semitism in Europe [and] radical Islam’s hatred.”

For Pfeiffer, it’s a message that resonates powerfully. “We have just come from Auschwitz,” she says. “I told the Holocaust survivors, their children and their grandchildren, they are very precious people for me.”

Children of Nazis and Jewish Survivors March Together Across Poland

270 grandchildren of Nazis as well as Holocaust survivors and their children from German speaking countries, Israel, the U.S., Belarus and Poland, began a week-long march across Poland Monday, passing alongside the Nazi death camps.

The march began at Auschwitz, near Krakow, in southern Poland and will end on Friday at Treblinka, 65 miles north-east of the capital Warsaw.

MK Lia Shemtov, Knesset Deputy Speaker, will be a special guest at the final ceremonies.

Marchers will visit the sites of several death and concentration camps set up in occupied Poland, including Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Chelmno.

The march was conceived by a Protestant church in Tuebingen, southern Germany, in collaboration with Polish groups.

“The idea came in our church in Tuebingen when a lot of people were looking into their family history and they found out their families were involved in Nazi crimes,” Heinz Reuss, an organizer with the church, told AFP on Monday.

“We want to speak up for Israel and against anti-Semitism, but obviously as Germans you can’t do it without looking into your own families because of their involvement,” he added. “Our first march was in 2007 in Tuebingen. There were several concentration camps around it during the war. At the end of the war there were death marches to Dachau.”

“It was our first march with Holocaust survivors.”

“Participants will march in small relay groups between several death and concentration camps installed in Poland by Nazi Germany. In this way they would like to ask for forgiveness for what their grandparents did in order to break a kind of conspiracy of silence on these acts in Germany,” Zbigniew Judasz, a local Polish organizer, told AFP.

The week-long march began with a ceremony at the Birkenau death campnear Auschwitz.

German marcher Bäerbel Pfeiffer asked for forgiveness for her grandfather, an electrician who installed the electrified barbed wire fence at Auschwitz-Birkenau and wired the camp’s gas chambers.

Waving German and Israeli flags, the marchers then began their march to Kielce, 105 miles south of Warsaw.

My Victory Over the Nazis by Joseph Friedenson

For me, a survivor of the Holocaust, the Siyum HaShas, the celebration of the completion of learning the Talmud, at MetLife Stadium and large venues around the world [on August 1, 2012], is above all a day of great victory, a day of historical triumph. For me, a graduate of the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Ohrdruf, and Buchenwald, it is a day that testifies loudly and clearly that we Jews are an eternal people, indestructible and everlasting.

As the winds of war were gathering over Europe, and Hitler’s propaganda machine was spewing vicious hatred against the Jews, I remember as a child and then a teen how a great deal of space in Nazi newspapers and magazines, like the infamous Der Sturmer, was devoted to raving tirades directed against the “Jewish Talmud.”

Their philosophy declared that the Talmud was the source of evil of the world. One publication wrote that the Talmud was “der blutkval des Veltjudentum [the blood-font of world Jewry],” embodying, in the Nazi view, the diabolical Jewish essence that threatens the world. The horrible caricatures of the ugly, hook-nosedTalmud Juden increased hatred of the Jews a thousand-fold in those terrible years preceding World War II.

One incident remains eternally etched in my memory, and none of the terrible suffering that I underwent later could erase it.

It was November 1939, at the beginning of the war and just after the Nazis had occupied Poland. Two Nazi officers burst into our home to loot it. I was home with my mother at the time and she gave them money, hoping that they would leave and let us be.

As they were about to make their arrogant exit, one of the Nazis noticed my father’s tall bookcase full ofseforim, holy Jewish books. His eye fell on the beautifully bound Vilna Shas prominently displayed in our bookcase. Apparently, he had never seen such large volumes, so he asked me what books they were. I innocently replied, “It is the Talmud.”

His Face Contorted in Rage

I will never forget the Nazi’s reaction. As if a cauldron of boiling water had fallen on his bare skin, he jumped up, his face contorted in rage. “The Talmud!” he bellowed as he bounded over to the bookcase and ripped one of the volumes of that Talmud from the shelf. Then, with a diabolical hatred and brutality that I had never before witnessed, both Nazis threw the volumes on the floor and began grinding them with their heavy boots. Those books, however, were well-bound and not easily destroyed. So they began ripping the pages and trashing the beautiful set, volume by volume, eventually throwing them out of the window of our apartment into the street below.

The Nazi Beasts Behaved as if They Had Encountered Satan

I recall watching from a corner of the room in horror, as the Nazi beasts behaved as if they had encountered Satan. It took them time but they did not tire, expending enormous energy to destroy my father’s set of Talmud and other holy books.

That pogrom against my father’s holy books remains eternally seared into my mind. It was my first encounter with the inexplicably demonic, rabid hatred of the Nazi beast.

There was, though, indeed a reason for the Nazis’ extreme reaction when they heard the word “Talmud.” An integral component of the anti-Jewish Nazi philosophy was its hatred of the Talmud. In fact, when the Nazis took over Poland, one of the first decrees their chief office of security instituted was that applications for exit visas by Orthodox Jews - Talmud-Lehrers, as they called them - would not be accepted. “The learners and teachers of Talmud have the power to rebuild the Judaism that we seek to destroy,” they said.

As Long as the Talmud Existed, They Would Not Succeed in Mastering the World

They were right, of course, and they also understood that the Talmud embodied all that is holy in this world, including things like humility, service to others and the importance of fighting temptation. Because their world was built on arrogance, self-indulgence, and hedonism, they perceived that as long as the Talmud existed, they would not succeed in mastering the world.

The Nazis also understood that the secret of the eternal survival of the Jewish nation was its attachment to the Talmud, and they thus sought to annihilate Poland’s Jews, who to them symbolized Jews devoted to the Talmud.

Recalling a Siyum HaShas in a Displaced Persons Camp in 1946

I recall celebrating the third Siyum HaShas in November 1946, in the Displaced Persons camp in Feldafing, Germany. We were a tiny group of broken survivors, remnants of a Polish Jewry that had been all but wiped out. At the time, all we had were two volumes of Talmud - symbolic of the pitiful condition of Jewry at the time. At the previous Siyum in Lublin there had been thousands of volumes, and now we were only a few broken Jews with two books.

As we celebrate the 12^th Siyum HaShas together with more than 150,000 Jews across North America, and with many tens of thousands more around the world, the feeling that wells up within me is difficult to describe on paper.

Yes, the Nazis indeed understood the secret of Jewish survival. They tried to destroy my father’s holy books, the Talmud that has preserved the Jews throughout the ages. But they failed. For the Jews are an eternal people, and the Talmud is eternal.

We may be persecuted, demonized, and murdered, but as long as we hold onto our tradition that has been passed from generation to generation, we cannot be extinguished!

Just look at the miraculous rejuvenation of Torah Judaism not even 70 years after the Holocaust. Back then, no one, including ourselves, ever believed that hundreds of thousands would gather together for no other reason than to celebrate the study of Talmud.

Not Only is the Talmud Still Alive

Not only is the Talmud still alive, but from those two forlorn volumes of Gemara that remained after the conflagration, from the ashes of the greatest tragedy in modern history, the greatest rejuvenation in modern history has happened before our eyes. The day of the Siyum HaShas is my day of victory, the day of victory for all survivors and the day of victory of every “Talmud Jew.”

This article appeared in the Hasiyum book distributed at the 12^th Siyum HaShas and is reprinted here with permission from Agudath Israel of America.