Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

As Sam Cooke first sang in 1964, A change is gonna come.

Change indeed is approaching for the two Reform communities Rodef Shalom Congregation and Temple Sinai in Pittsburghs eastern neighborhoods.

Rabbi Sharyn Henry announced plans earlier this month to retire on June 30, 2025, after 26 years of service at Rodef Shalom.

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In an emailed statement to the community, Henry said she is curious about what the future holds for me, and yet, it will surely involve my family, yarn, books and Torah. (And, of course, my dog.)

Henry told the Chronicle that the timing of her retirement was based on the continuing conversations about a possible partnership between Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, which began in December.

I sent the letter when I sent it so people would understand how my retirement fits into the whole conversation between Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, she said. I feel like in a year from June, things will be moving in a particular direction. Theyll know what they need to do about clergy leadership.

Bill Battistone, president of Rodef Shaloms board of trustees, said that when Henry informed the board of her vision it lined up pretty well with what were envisioning for the next two years, as we continue down this path with Temple Sinai.

For the short-term, he said, the congregation is well positioned to handle the communitys lifecycle events and pastoral care needs with both Henry and Cantor Toby Glaser.

In the long-term, in another year or so, or even as we come to the fall and the High Holy Days in 2024, we might have a better sense of where were going with Temple Sinai and can make some decisions, he said.

Battistone said that for now, the board didnt think it was necessary to rush and find another rabbi.

We want to make sure were making financially responsible actions, he said.

Battistone said that Henry has had a wonderful and illustrious career, but that shes ready for the next chapter.

Henrys announcement isnt the only change coming to Rodef Shalom.

The congregation is also searching for a new executive director. Barb Feige, who initially filled the position in March 2022 on an interim basis, is retiring this spring.

Feige, Battistone said, has provided a wonderful service for the congregation, stepping in at a time when it needed help. In June 2022, after months of congregational conflict, Rabbi Aaron Bisno, who served as Rodef Shaloms senior rabbi for 18 years, transitioned out of that role and became the Frances F. and David R. Levin Rabbinic Scholar.

Weve been very open, Battistone said. Were looking for someone for the next two years, at a minimum but then, what that position looks like moving forward, were not sure.

One change that wont be happening is anything related to the congregations cantor.

Hes [Glaser] done a great job in our community already, Battistone said. Its crazy hes only been with us for nine months but hes found a niche here and really enjoys it. Were excited about continuing to work with him.

As for the initiative announced in December to explore a collaborative future for Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai, plans are proceeding.

Shortly after Henrys announcement, Battistone and Temple Sinai President Stephen Jurman sent out a joint statement saying that a steering committee to examine a possible partnership had been formed. The committee includes the congregations respective presidents, a vice president from each congregation and former past presidents.

The congregations also hired an administrative assistant who will help streamline activities like the research, coordination and maintenance of files for Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai.

The next step will be identifying potential professional consultants to assist with the process. The individual or team hired will have no ties to either congregation. While everybody on our steering committee is very talented, I dont think any of us have ever done this before, Jurman said. Its important we have someone who is neutral, who doesnt have any skin in the game.

The committee will study such things as the buildings of both congregation, their cemeteries, their finances and administrative practices, clergy and worship practices, including how services are run, he said.

The most important thing and probably the hardest part, Jurman continued, is finding out from both sides, our congregants, what they need and what they want in a synagogue, in their worship life and how they feel about things, seeing if we can put together a structure that works for everybody.

As for Henrys announcement, Jurman said that Temple Sinai was aware of her decision and that it will be taken into consideration as part of the process that now affects both congregations.

Weve been factoring that into our discussions, he said. PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

I may be biased because we have the same first name, but I think Lior Ashkenazi is one of the finest male Israeli actors alive.

Its in his dashing good looks, sure (I think we can call Ashkenazi a silver fox, at this point), but more than anything, its in the way he absolutely embodies his roles. I experienced serious whiplash as I watched his latest U.S.-released film Karaoke, in which he plays a seductive, egocentric playboy, in proximity to the Holocaust series We Were the Lucky Ones, where he plays Sol, the Kurc family patriarch, a caring father who would do anything to ensure his familys survival.

Ashkenazis talent and versatility are pretty awe-inspiring. Since his breakout role in the 2001 Late Marriage as Georgian Israeli bachelor Zaza, the three-time Ophir prize winner has been in dozens of Israeli TV shows and plays. Hes also starred in critically acclaimed films local like Walking on Water, Footnote and the controversial Foxtrot. Hes charmed moviegoers in fancy historical Hollywood projects like Golda. And hes appeared in countless episodes of Israeli satire shows, most recently singing a parody of Im Just Ken as Israeli politician Benny Gantz in the satire show Eretz Nehederet.

Fans of Israeli TV may remember Ashkenazi from HBOs The Boys and The Valley of Tears, or maybe even from Netflixs Hit & Run, the short-lived project from Fauda creator Lior Raz.

But We Were the Lucky Ones is by far his biggest international TV project yet, a chance for American TV viewers to finally get the treat of sitting with the grandeur of Lior Ashkenazi as he brings both his dramatic range and his warm humor to a deeply relatable family patriarch.

I too got the treat of sitting with Lior Ashkenazi, not literally but in a Zoom interview about the new Hulu series earlier this month. I found him wonderfully menschy and funny and Im feeling prouder than ever to share my name with him.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What drew you to the character of Sol?

Well, first of all, the book. It started there. I read the book first to know what Im going for but in the show they were doing much more than the book with this character. Its more his wife and his daughters that are running things [in the book]. But in the show, Erica [Lipez, the showrunner], Tommy [Kail, the director] and Georgia [Hunter, the author and producer] developed Sols character much more.

The thing is, at first I thought he was very old, but hes 50! My age! And he already had a granddaughter. I guess people then were kind of old in those times.

Our grandparents and great-grandparents generations, they all had babies so young.

Its so strange! I saw a lot of pictures of him, and you can see you can really understand this man, his inner life.

He is a family leader, in a lot of ways. Hes the leader of the seder, of Jewish ritual. Did you connect to that at all?

Well, I can connect to the patriarch thing, but you know, who really runs the family is Nechuma, his wife. She always gives him [direction] like, Yeah, you can say the last world, but it should be that word.

Theres a point later in the show, which I wont spoil, when Nechuma tries to comfort Sol with his own words. After feeling helpless, she tries to bring him back to himself with something that he said to her when she was worried about having more children about how having kids makes you more scared, but also, more strong.

Its questions you ask yourself during those times. You ask yourself, why did you bring kids into this awful world? And to be honest, after October 7, I had the same thoughts in Israel. Theres a reflection to this time.

Because your children are old enough to really be witnessing this moment.

I have an older daughter. Shes 24. Shes already done her [army] service. And my youngest is 11. I used to say to my older one when she was younger:,When you grow up, there wont be any army so everything will be OK. But I cant say that to my youngest now. Thats not a promise that I can make.

Did you also connect with this idea that children make us more scared, and yet stronger?

I guess every parent does. In every parents mind, you put your children in front of everything. Nothing is more important. Nothing goes before them.

Its funny to me that you talked about Sol being so old because we really do see the characters of this show getting visibly older at a fast pace.

I remember a survivor in Israel telling a story about her father. After a night when the Gestapo, the Nazis, humiliated him and tortured him, he came back home in the morning with gray hair. Like overnight, his hair become became gray, white. Its about trauma; they just get older faster.

Can you talk a little bit about the prayers in the show theyre so beautiful and I know you had a consultant on set to make sure the Jewish ritual was right.

Thats right. Im Sephardi, so I know the Sephardi version of the prayers. I know Ladino, its my first language actually, because my parents were Olim Chadashim [immigrants to Israel]. I dont know Yiddish at all.

But I fell in love with this music [of the Ashkenazi prayers]. One day, I was rehearsing by myself and I didnt notice that Erica Lipez was sitting behind me. I looked back and she was crying.

It transported her.

Yeah, it threw her to her fathers house, or her grandfathers house. It was challenging, but I really fell in love with it.

What was Passover like in your house growing up? And what was it like filming the seder scene for the show?

I think in Israel, we celebrate differently. I know that because my wife is from France, and its a totally different thing. My parents are very traditional Jews, but I mean you aim towards the food. So you run through the haggadah. I remember it as a kid we would just read because everybody was hungry. We were doing things just to do it. Not in the traditional way of, lets take our time and now, Ill sing Dayenu, Dayenu! and now, well do that, and now well do that No, it wasnt like that.

We were doing the seder [scene] and the cameras were all around. And Tommy just let us improvise. So we were improvising everything. Though not all of the actors knew how to read Hebrew.

You were lucky in that regard

It was funny because I said, OK, Genek, now its your turn. The wicked son. Come on! Start! And [Henry Lloyd-Hughes] doesnt know how to! So he says, I dont want to be the wicked guy! We improvised a lot. You know, everything you see on episode one in the seder is improvised. Its not scripted. Just the prayers were.

And it feels like Passover! Chaos! family!

Yeah, exactly. Kids running all around!

Lior Zaltzman is the deputy managing editor of Kveller.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

It was Passover 1938, and the Kurc family gathered around the Seder table in Radom, Poland, to celebrate.

By the next year, with the onset of World War II, the family found itself scattered far and wide, trying desperately to survive the Holocaust with almost no knowledge of the fate of their loved ones.

The Kurc familys story is at the center of We Were the Lucky Ones, a new eight-part Hulu miniseries that covers close to a decade of their harrowing journeys. The series follows the family members everywhere from Siberia to Warsaw, Paris, Casablanca, Rio de Janeiro and even a brief stint in wartime Palestine.

Based on a book of the same name by author Georgia Hunter, the tale is a lightly fictionalized version of the true story of Hunters own family, which she discovered only as a teenager following her grandfathers death, and researched diligently for nine years.

The first three episodes will premiere on Hulu on March 28, with the remaining five released weekly. It will be distributed internationally by Disney+ later this year.

Speaking to The Times of Israel via Zoom from Los Angeles, Hunter said that she hopes even those viewers familiar with the Holocaust are maybe surprised by the breadth of the story, and then inspired by the moments in between the darkness, of hope and happiness, courage, perseverance those are the things that kind of got me through my research.

Headlined by Jewish stars Joey King (The Kissing Booth) as Halina Kurc and Logan Lerman (Hunters) as her brother, Addy Kurc, the shows ensemble cast includes a number of prominent Israeli actors, including Lior Ashkenazi as family patriarch Sol, Amit Rahav (Unorthodox) and Hadas Yaron (Shtisel) as siblings Jakob and Mila Kurc, Moran Rosenblatt (Fauda) as daughter-in-law Herta, and Michael Aloni (Shtisel) as son-in-law Selim reuniting in matrimony with his Shtisel wife Yaron.

Hunter told The Times of Israel that it was a very conscious decision to cast so many Jewish actors in the main roles.

That was a choice we made early on in the casting, she said. This is a story about a Jewish family, and it was important to us to cast a Jewish cast, and Im so glad we did People came at it with many different experiences of what it meant to be Jewish, and they all brought a little piece of either their own family histories or their own traditions.

For Yaron, whose character, Mila, is a young mother separated from her husband and trying desperately to keep her young daughter safe, the story felt uniquely personal, as the granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors.

Even though we were telling Georgias family story, it did feel like I was also, in a way, telling my familys story, so that was definitely meaningful, she said via Zoom. I know so much about [the Holocaust] and its basically in my DNA.

Ahead of her interviews with the press, she said, My mom was like, [remember] youre the granddaughter of Masha and Gustav the fact that its so personal is really meaningful.

Hadas Yaron as Mila (left) and Robin Weigert as Nechuma in the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

The story of the Kurc family is so statistically unlikely as to seem impossible if it were not based on a true story. While the shows very title hints at the unlikeliness of their survival, it is still hard to fathom the unthinkable twists of fate that guided them along the way.

When Germany invades, some family members escape to Lvov, which is initially Soviet-occupied. One brother is sent to Siberia, others bounce between Radom, Warsaw and Lvov, confined in ghettos, prisons and hiding out, some fighting for the resistance. Addy, who was in Paris at the wars start, ends up on the infamous Alsina ship, which was bound for Brazil but gets caught up in a 10-month web of bureaucracy and repeatedly denied entries.

We have scenes shot in whats meant to be Dakar and Casablanca and in the mountains of Italy and in Siberia and, of course, in Poland and Brazil, noted Hunter. Were offering this very global perspective, yet told through a really personal lens that I hope will feel a little bit new and different to audiences.

Ashkenazi, who played family patriarch Sol, said the experience taught him many things about the Holocaust era that he was not previously familiar with.

You think you know everything because we grew up in Israel its like in your blood, he said. But it was new, I didnt know about all those things, I didnt know that the Jews, [many] of the men ran away from the country and got into the Soviet Army or the Polish resistance so I was pretty amazed by that.

Jakob played by Amit Rahav and Bella played by Eva Feiler in a scene from the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Close to 90 percent of Polish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. According to Yad Vashem, 30,000 Jews were living in Radom in 1939; only around 300 are believed to have survived the war. Every Jew in Poland who lived did so only by virtue of a series of miracles. The same could be said about every Jew in much of Europe who managed to survive.

As Alonis character asks in one episode, while they contemplate the fate of their estranged loved ones: How many miracles can we get? How many can we hope for?

In a way, it makes sense for these to be the stories that are told. After all, the entire families who were wiped out by the Nazis parents and children, aunts, uncles, cousins have no descendants to research their lives and tell their stories.

And yet We Were the Lucky Ones is not easy viewing. There are scenes of violence, despair, unthinkable cruelty, and the horrors that typified the Holocaust, even when hinted at, are harrowing to witness.

Herta, played by Moran Rosenblatt, and Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), are sent on a grueling train ride in an episode of the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Ashkenazi said there were moments on set that were jarring even or perhaps especially for someone steeped in the history of the era.

I remember the first scene I had, in a shop, and then the Nazis are coming and putting these [arm]bands on [the Jews], with the Star of David, and I froze, I couldnt move, he recounted. There were extras dressed as Nazis, and I was so afraid.

In one particularly chilling scene, Yarons character is rounded up by the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi death squads who drove masses of Jews into the forests, forced them to dig their own graves and shot them dead.

This story is actually kind of crazy because my great grandfather actually was murdered this way, said Yaron. So when I was there, I was just like, I cant believe that this was actually something that happened and somehow, 70, 80 years later, the fact that his daughter survived and escaped and her granddaughter is here telling [this] story life is surreal and crazy.

Hunter said it was moving to see her family and their history come to life on screen, watching the cast embody my relatives.

Its set during World War II and the Holocaust, but they brought these characters to life in such a modern, kind of youthful way that, to me, feels so relatable, she said. Really, at its core, its a family story, its a family that wants to come together again around a dinner table.

Michael Aloni as Selim pictured with baby Felicia in a scene from the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Felicia, the baby born to Mila and Selim in late 1938, was still alive when Hunter began researching her familys history, and was able to recount some of her wartime memories. She died not long before the miniseries was completed.

I wish so badly she could have seen the show, she was so proud of it, said Hunter, noting that nine of the 10 first cousins born to the Kurc children are still alive, and many of the family members are slated to attend an event tied to the show in Washington. The fact that theyre flying from Israel and France and Brazil and California and Miami and all over the world speaks to the support that Ive felt from them from day one.

Aloni, who played Selim, the husband of Yarons character Mila, said the cast all got to know each other well before filming began mostly in Romania and Spain before they largely split off into their own storylines.

Kind of like the same thing that happened to the characters in the story happened to the actors in the show we were together and we were separated, Aloni told The Times of Israel via Zoom. Each had to go through what hes going through, and then to be reunited together was very emotional and very happy.

The cast of the Hulu miniseries We Were the Lucky Ones at a Passover Seder scene set in Radom, Poland. (Vlad Cioplea/Hulu)

Filming wrapped up months before Hamass shocking October 7 onslaught against southern Israel, sparking the ongoing war in Gaza, and turning life upside down for many Israelis, as well as for Jews around the world facing spiking levels of antisemitism.

In the WhatsApp group for the cast, said Yaron, everybody reached out in the days following the attack, and were like, if you need a place to stay people were very, very supportive. I think its hard to explain whats going on in Israel to people that are not there.

Aloni said the timing of the shows premiere, amid the ongoing turmoil, feels particularly apt.

I think its a show that reminds everyone how the face of evil can be and look like and how easily it can rise and how antisemitism can rise its ugly head again, he said. And I think its a very important reminder for people who watch the show, that we were the lucky ones. There were so many people who werent.

The hatred and dehumanization of the Holocaust, he noted, is not so long ago I think its a great time and a great place for the series to come.

Yaron said she watched the first finished episode of the series a couple of months after October 7, which added a layer of complex emotions to the viewing experience.

It was triggering in a way I did not anticipate a year ago when we were filming it, she said.

Its really important to tell this story these days, for sure, added Yaron. Because a year ago, if you asked me if antisemitism existed, I was like, Its probably just a few crazy people, randomly across the world. Theres no way its a thing. Because we are in modern times. But apparently, it is a thing, which is very weird to understand that it actually exists.

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Mild spoilers for We Were the Lucky Ones ahead.

The opening episode of We Were the Lucky Ones, the first three installments of which are now streaming on Hulu, finds the sprawling Kurc family around a boisterous dinner table in Radom, Poland. Joey Kings Halina, entertaining a romance with family friend Adam (Sam Woolf), laughs alongside her brother Addy (Logan Lerman), who has returned home from Paris for Passover. Their parents, Sol (Lior Ashkenazi) and Nechuma (Robin Weigert), press eldest daughter Mila (Hadas Yaron) about the forthcoming arrival of her first child. Their son Jakob (Amit Rahav) relishes in bringing his girlfriend, Bella (Eva Feiler), home to spend the holiday with his family, as does his older brother, Genek (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), who has begun dating Herta (Moran Rosenblatt). What the Kurcs dont know is that their hometown will soon be under Nazi controland this will be their last Passover together for the next decade.

As World War II begins, the Kurcs will be forced out of Radom and displaced across the globe from Siberia and France to West Africa and Brazil. During the Holocaust, each member of the family will faced various atrocities: Mila and her newborn daughter endure harsh factory conditions before she eventually stashes her child in a Warsaw convent. Genek and Herta are condemned to a Soviet labor camp. The series details the familys struggle to survive, and their harrowing attempts at reunification.

By the end of the Holocaust, 90% of Polands three million Jews were annihilated, the series reminds viewers at the outset. But as the shows title implies, all immediate members of the Kurc family are fortunate enough to live through the genocide and remain doggedly devoted to reuniting.

Created by Erica Lipez and directed by Thomas Kail, We Were the Lucky Ones is based on the bestselling 2017 novel by Georgia Hunter, who also serves as co-executive-producer on the project. Hunters debut book was inspired by the actual story of her family. There were over 20 survivors in all, including my grandfather and his siblings, parents, cousins and in-laws, she writes in a blog post on her website. Together, they accounted for nearly 7% of the total number of Jewish survivors in their hometown of Radom (the citys thriving prewar population of 30,000 Jews shrank to fewer than 300 after the Holocaust).

While her familys tale of survival is a staggering one, Hunter was not aware of their plightor even her Jewish heritageuntil age 15. A year after her grandfather Addy died of Parkinsons disease in 1993, Hunter was tasked with interviewing her grandmother for a school English project. I sat with my grandmother Caroline and I will never forget that hour I spent with her, sitting in her home and discovering that my grandfather was from this town called Radom, Poland, that he was one of five siblings, that he was raised in the Jewish faith, and that I came from a family of Holocaust survivors, the author previously told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Addy, a musician and engineer who later changed his name to Eddy, didnt mean to keep his past some big secret, Hunter recalled her grandmother saying, but rather a chapter of his life hed chosen to leave behind. She added that becoming an American, changing his name, and building a successful careerwere his ways of moving on, and of protecting his children.

Survivors guilt may have also factored into her grandfathers decision, said Hunter in another interview. Perhaps the fact that the entire family survived intactthere were 22 in allplayed a part in that, she explained. They were a statistical anomaly, which is unbelievably fortunate but not something theyd have boasted about. More than that, though, it simply wasnt in my grandfathers DNA to dwell on the past. He had this very positive, vibrant, forward-thinking outlook on life.

No matter Addys reasoning, Hunter has said that learning about her familys history at an older age catalyzed her desire to write about it. I wonder often how knowing about my Jewish ancestry as a child might have shaped me as a person, Hunter said. I believe, however, that the shock of making the discovery later in life sparked an intense curiosity, and an insatiable thirst for answers, which she sought to find over the course of a nine-year research process that began in 2008 and spanned seven countries.

Hunter, who grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, would interview Holocaust experts, visit museums and archives, and even go to her ancestors home in Radom, Poland, which gets recreated in the series. We visited the apartment building where my family lived, and I got chills running my fingers along a rusted mezuzah still adhered to the cement arched entranceway, she recounted in a 2017 interview.

In February 2008, Hunter traveled to Paris, where FeliciaMilas daughter, who was an infant at the start of WWII and six years old by V-E Daylived as one of the only remaining members of the Kurc family. To this day, Im still amazed at the lucidity with which Felicia was able to recall the details of her wartime experiences, Hunter writes on her website: the long coat her mother sewed as a part of a scheme to escape the ghettothe thunderous stomp of German boots patrolling just inches from her hiding spot at a uniform factory where her mother workedthe stench of peroxide the nuns at the Catholic convent used to bleach her auburn hair blond, so shed fit in with the other children.

Felicias estrangement from her mother plays out in both Hunters novel and the new Hulu series. Later episodes show Addys brief engagement to a fellow passenger while aboard a ship of European refugees fleeing Europe for South America, and the time Adam, who was living in Warsaw with Halina under false papers, devised a way to shield the fact that he was circumcised from a landlord who accused him of being Jewish.

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'We Were the Lucky Ones': The Real Kurc Family's Holocaust Survival Story - Vanity Fair

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Helma Goldmark, an Austrian-born Jew, turned 12 in 1938, the year it became evident that she was no longer safe in her homeland.

In March, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in an event known as the Anschluss. In November, during the antisemitic rampaging of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, SS officers abducted her father from his bed at their home in Graz. They took him to the local Jewish cemetery and beat him, knocking all the teeth from his mouth, breaking both his legs and leaving him facedown in a creek, the imprint of their boots still visible on his body. He lay there in agony until a passing milkman carried him home on a horse-drawn cart.

Mrs. Goldmark had lost her mother to cancer before the Anschluss, and her only sibling, a sister 19 years her senior, lived in Italy. With her father and then alone, after he was taken to a concentration camp and murdered she set out on a perilous journey that took her to fascist Croatia and Nazi-occupied Rome. As a teenager on her own in the Italian capital, she joined a resistance cell that aided Jews by furnishing them with false documents and ration cards.

Mrs. Goldmark, who moved after World War II to the United States, where she used her prodigious language skills to assist fellow immigrants as a paralegal, died March 15 at an assisted-living center in Bethesda, Md. She was 98. The cause was cerebrovascular disease, said her daughter, Susan Goldmark.

Mrs. Goldmarks Holocaust survival story was documented in the 2010 book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, a memoir by her son-in-law, Kai Bird, who is also the co-author of American Prometheus (2005), the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

She was born Helma Blhweis in Graz, the second-largest city in Austria, on Feb. 8, 1926. Her father, Alois, who was Jewish, ran a tannery, leather factory and leather store. Her mother, the former Hermine Jassniger, a Catholic who converted to Judaism, was an accomplished pianist.

Helma and her parents lived in an elegant apartment above her fathers store and enjoyed the services of a cook, a housekeeper, a nanny and a chauffeur. They attended religious services only on the High Holy Days and felt entirely integrated into Austrian society, Mrs. Goldmark recalled.

But immediately after the Anschluss, her teacher instructed students that instead of saying good morning at the start of class, they would raise their right hand and make the Heil Hitler salute.

She then turned to me and said that I was not allowed to say Heil Hitler and would be barred from attending school starting immediately, Mrs. Goldmark wrote in an account provided to the Austrian Heritage Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. That was the last day I attended regular school in Graz.

Later that year, a member of the Nazi Party claimed ownership of her fathers business, as well as the family home, but permitted Helma and her father to sleep in the kitchen pantry.

Her father resolved to leave Austria but, having been stripped of his livelihood, lacked the funds to cover the exit fee charged by the Nazi regime. He went to the man who had confiscated his home and business and, at gunpoint, signed away all his property in exchange for enough money to cover the cost of leaving, Bird wrote.

In January 1939, Helma and her father left Austria for Yugoslavia, where his brother was publisher of a newspaper in the Croatian city of Zagreb. They made part of the journey by train and part by foot, with Helmas father, still suffering from the injuries he sustained on Kristallnacht, hobbling on crutches over a snowy no mans land at the border.

They enjoyed relative safety until April 1941, when the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia and a Nazi puppet government was established in Croatia under Ante Pavelic, leader of the fascist Ustasha regime.

As conditions deteriorated for Jews, Mrs. Goldmarks father began making plans to flee to Italy and then send for his daughter.

To celebrate her 16th birthday on Feb. 8, 1942, he delayed his departure until the following morning. Two hours before the train left, Bird wrote, the Ustasha arrested him. He was taken to the Jasenovac concentration camp south of Zagreb, where, a survivor later told Mrs. Goldmark, he was bludgeoned to death by Ustasha guards.

Mrs. Goldmark soon left for Italy, where she lived for a period in Bressanone, a town in the German-speaking north, with her sister and brother-in-law, an Italian agricultural inspector who belonged to the fascist party.

Made to feel that her presence was a burden, Bird wrote, and warned by her sister that she was in danger of deportation, she left in August 1943. She began traveling south, at times walking alone through the Italian countryside, and arrived in Rome days before the Germans occupied the city that September.

Finding shelter in Catholic convents and with fellow Jewish refugees, she managed to avoid arrest, even amid the infamous roundup of Roman Jews that took place Oct. 16, 1943.

In early 1944, she met a Jewish man who introduced himself as Giuseppe Levi. Noting her blond hair and blue eyes features that might allow her to pass as an Aryan he recruited her to a resistance operation led by Pierre-Marie Benoit, a French priest who had overseen the printing of thousands of false papers for Jews in France before undertaking similar work in Rome.

I was stupid enough to say yes, Mrs. Goldmark told Bird. I just thought it was an adventure.

Under the alias Elena Bianchi, Mrs. Goldmark, then 17, obtained a job as a clerical worker at a Luftwaffe command post. When a German lieutenant confided in her that he wished to desert, she carried out a trade: civilian clothes and a safe apartment for him in exchange for German letterhead, stamps and seals for the forgery operation.

As the Allies advanced from Southern Italy, she feigned a broken leg to avoid moving north with her Luftwaffe office and remained in Rome until the city was liberated in June 1944.

We couldnt believe that this was the end, Bird quoted her as saying. That evening was the first and last time that I got drunk. We feasted on a bottle of wine.

In 1966, Benoit was recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel, as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor bestowed on Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis.

After the liberation of Rome, Mrs. Goldmark worked for the American military government as a translator and later for the American Joint Distribution Committee.

She immigrated in 1947 to the United States, where she changed her maiden name to Bliss, and where she married Victor Willy Goldmark, a Viennese Holocaust survivor she had met in Rome. Their marriage ended in divorce.

Besides her daughter, of Washington, Manhattan and Miami Beach, survivors include a grandson.

Mrs. Goldmark lived for decades in New York before moving in 1991 to the Washington area. Until late in her life, she worked in legal offices translating documents from German, Serbo-Croatian, Italian, French and Spanish.

Long after she came to the United States, she kept in her closet a suitcase whether packed or simply ready to be packed in the event that she would need to flee. It was, her son-in-law observed, a symbol of her trauma.

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Helma Goldmark, Holocaust refugee who joined resistance, dies at 98 - The Washington Post

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Questions around Jewish life in Germany, the Holocaust and Berlin's relationship withIsraelwill soon form part of Germany's naturalisation test, the country's Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Tuesday.

"Antisemitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humankind preclude naturalisation. There is no tolerance whatsoever," Faeser told the German magazine Der Spiegel.

"Anyone who does not share our values cannot obtain a German passport."

Germany's citizenship test currently comprises 33 questions, and requires at least 17 correct answers for an applicant to pass.

Nine new questions will be added to the revised test, including asking the participant what a Jewish prayer house is called, when Israel was founded and who is allowed to become a member of the German-Jewish sports club Makkabi.

The candidate is also required to know how Holocaust denial is punished in Germany and to list the reasons behind the country's "special relationship" with Israel.

"Anyone who wishes to obtain German citizenship must know what that means and acknowledge Germanys responsibility. This commitment must be 'clear and credible'," Faeser said, adding that the ministry is looking to change the regulation soon.

The additional citizenship questions are part of a larger overhaul of the country's immigration law. In January, the Bundestag, the German parliament, passed a law to facilitate naturalisation by lowering the number of years that a person must have lived in Germany in order to obtain a passport, from eight to five years.

In December last year, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt mandated citizenship applicants to recognise Israel's right to exist in a written statement.

The ruling was followed by discussions in parliament on whether this law should be extended to a federal level.

War on Gaza: While eyes are on Rafah, Israel is cementing control of northern Gaza

The German government, however, refrained from requiring a written statement recognising Israel's right to exist as part of the revised citizenship test, Der Spiegelreported.

The revised questions come at a time of increased crackdown on Palestinian and pro-Palestine voices in Germany following the Hamas-led attack in Israel on 7 October last year and amid Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

The government says it has a special responsibility to tackle increased antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the country.

But rights and cultural groups are objecting to what they say is a disproportionate focus on Arab and Muslim citizens and the conflation of pro-Palestine activism with antisemitism.

In recent months, speeches by Palestinian academics and writers have been cancelled, protests banned and strict policies regarding speech at protests and events have been implemented.

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New German citizenship test to include questions on Holocaust and Israel's founding - Middle East Eye

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Amsterdam has announced that it will repay 100,000 in recognition of the money the city made from tram tickets to take 48,000 Jewish people on towards Nazi death camps during World War II.

Following the release of the film Verdwenen Stad (Lost City) by Emmy-winning film director Willy Lindwer, investigating the role of the city tram service in collaborating with the Nazis, the city has announced a repayment and memorial boards at major stations.

The question was never answered of how is it possible to get 80,000 people out of a city like Amsterdam, in a little over a year, Lindwer told Dutch News. What we discovered is that the Amsterdam tram collaborated in a massive way with the NazisThe first step is to put memorial boards at all of the places. The second is to give back 100,000, and the third is an official apology and damages. But this is a very emotional moment.

In Lindwers film, he and author Guus Luijters ride a tram 8 around key sites, interviewing Holocaust survivors. They highlight the role of night trams in carrying away 48,000 of the 63,000 Jewish Amsterdammers who were murdered. The rest went into hiding, like Lindwers parents, or fled.

Their research highlights new evidence of the tram journey that brought Anne Frank and her family from the Weteringschans prison to Central Station on August 8, 1944 after their secret annex hiding place was discovered. Amsterdam transport company the GVB employed a debt collector for two years to try to reclaim 80 guilders for this journey after the war.

When the documentary came out, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema told the Parool: The collaboration with the occupier fills us with horror and shame. This cold accounting once again confirms how inhumanely our Jewish fellow citizens were treated by officials.

Now, Amsterdam has pledged to pay 100,000 to the Centraal Joods Overleg Jewish organisation, in an initial recognition of the amount equivalent to 61,000 the city charged for the tram tickets. Compensation is expected to follow after an official study on the role of the city in collaborating with the Nazis later this year.

The municipality said in a press release that it has a historic and moral responsibility to account for the cooperation of the municipal tram in deporting Amsterdam Jews and the GVB tram service has expressed heartfelt and sincere regret. Permanent memorials will go up at the Beethovenstraat, the Victoriaplein and the Plantage Middenlaan stop, where there is a new Holocaust museum and memorial site.

The GVB will also include information in its travel app on the appalling events at these stops.

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Memorials and 100,000 repayment for tram role in Holocaust - DutchNews.nl

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

Everything you will hear today is true the events and the stories.

Thats how Andie Weiner, the 2024 Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Scholar, prefaced her presentation at the kick off of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week at Northeastern University.

The presentation, also her capstone project, was a solo biographical performance that told the story of how her grandfather, Jack or Joop Groothuis, escaped the Netherlands as it was under Nazi occupation and fled to the United States.

A fourth-year theater and psychology major at Northeastern, Weiner chronicled how her great-grandmother, Helen Copenhagen Groothuis, hid her grandfather then an infant with a local Christian family following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940.

In 1946, Jack was reunited with his mother and they moved to New York to live with her sister, Marjana (Marian) Schechter, Weiner said.

The Cabral Center at the John D. OBryant African American Institute, where Weiner presented on Monday, became a makeshift exhibit displaying historical photographs and artifacts from the time period.

Ive always been interested in survivor stories as the primary mode of storytelling and education about the Holocaust, Weiner told the audience. Throughout my life, Ive been doing research and learning about this, and this opportunity was presented to me as a way to really connect the family history.

Weiner detailed her grandfathers story in a Northeastern Global News article in advance of Holocaust Remembrance Day in January.

Helen hid Jack in Vught, a town 59 miles southeast of Amsterdam. There, he spent the first two years of his life being raised by Jo and Lanie van de Meerendonk, hidden in plain sight from the Nazis who ran the Herzogenbusch concentration camp out of the town.

Asked about what she makes of the recent wave of antisemitism, she underscored the dangers of staying complacent, pointing to the power of storytelling to conquer hate.

To truly know what people have experienced, to have these verbatim letters nobody can deny these experiences, she said.

Throughout my life, Ive been doing research and learning about this, and this opportunity was presented to me as a way to really connect the family history.

Weiner said she originally planned to write the story as a series of monologues or a play. But rather than attempt to fictionalize the lives of those involved, she decided she wanted to hew as closely to the truth as possible.

It wasnt until I was probably 10 that I truly understood what happened, she said. That was also around the time I started learning about the Holocaust in school. I was very fortunate to grow up in an area with a lot of Jewish people, and a lot of those Jewish people had parents or grandparents who were survivors.

The Holocaust Legacy Foundation Gideon Klein Award helped fund a recent trip that allowed Weiner to conduct more research into her family tree. The $5,000 award named for Gideon Klein, a pianist and composer who was imprisoned in multiple concentration camps until his death in 1945 is given to a student creating an original work, performance or research related to the art of the Holocaust.

We have a very long tradition of Holocaust memorialization and education programming at this university that dates back to 1972, said Simon Rabinovitch, Stotsky Associate Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern.

Lori Lefkovitz, Ruderman Professor of Jewish Studies and director of Northeasterns Jewish Studies Program, praised Weiner for her creativity and innovation.

It has been remarkable year after and year, and often I am surprised that students come up with yet another strategy for teaching about the Holocaust and learning about things we didnt know before, Lefkovitz said.

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Northeastern Performance Shares a Holocaust Survivor's Story - Northeastern University

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

THETFORD Two Upper Valley congregations are joining together to host an event that encourages people of different religions to discuss faith and the Holocaust.

Faith Among the Ashes: Lessons From Holocaust Survivors is scheduled to take place Sunday, April 14 at 1:30 p.m. at the First Congregation Church in Thetford, located at 2596 Route 113. It is being cosponsored by Kol HaEmek, the Upper Valley Jewish Community.

The first part of the event features a staged reading of a play from After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring, written by Rabbi Joseph Polak. The reading will be followed by a discussion led by Polak and other Holocaust survivors to discuss reconciling faith with catastrophe.

Polak who is the chief justice of the Rabbinic Court of Massachusetts, and adjunct associate professor of health law at the Boston University School of Public Health will be attending the event via Zoom. There also is a chance other Holocaust survivors will speak either via Zoom or in-person. Professor Nancy Harrowitz, who is the director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at Boston University, will moderate the discussion.

Charlie Buttrey, a Thetford resident and attorney, decided to organize the event after hearing Polak speak via Zoom during a class at Boston University, where Buttrey is pursuing a masters degree in theological studies.

His story really resonated with me, Buttrey said. How do you reconcile an all loving God with human catastrophe such as the Holocaust?

Polak, who is now in his 80s, survived after being sent to two concentration camps as a toddler during the Holocaust. Polaks memoir also examines life after the Holocaust and the way the memories affect survivors throughout their lives.

One of the things we have to understand is that within 10, 15 years tops there will be no one left on the face of the earth with a present recollection of the Holocaust, Buttrey said. We have to for as long as we can learn from these survivors so we dont forget.

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Buttrey, who described his religious views as progressive Christianity, reached out to Kol HaEmek, the Upper Valley Jewish Community, to see if theyd be interested in co-sponsoring the event.

I think its wonderful to have interfaith events, said Roberta Berner, a West Lebanon resident who is president of the congregation. I think the more we can do to build bridges the better.

After hearing about the event, Rob Greene, a member of Kol HaEmek, read Polaks book.

Its very beautifully written, Greene, of Lebanon, said. Its very haunting.

Two parts in particular stood out to him, the first was Polaks somewhat spotty memories as a toddler.

The second is this idea that the Holocaust didnt end with the liberation, Greene said. Years on, people have memories and actions and reactions to things.

At one point in the book, Polak describes how he gets uncomfortable when he sees a poplar tree. Decades after liberation, Polak returns to the transit camp where he stayed before being sent to a concentration camp.

He realized it was surrounded by poplar trees so that was the origin of this fear he had since he was a toddler, Greene said.

The timing of the event is also important, Greene said, especially with the current rise of antisemitism. According to the Anti-Defamation League, between Oct. 7 when the Israel-Hamas War started and Dec. 7, 2023, there were a reported 2,031 antisemitic incidents, compared to 465 incidents from that same time period in 2022.

Its an opportunity to hear about the Holocaust, to hear from someone with a unique perspective thats thought about it for a long time, especially in the current environment, he said. Unfortunately, Vermont and New Hampshire are not immune.

For more information, contact Buttrey at charliebuttrey@yahoo.com or 802-281-9382. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.

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Out & About: Lessons of the Holocaust focus of Thetford interfaith event - Valley News

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Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

(JTA) Jewish actress and writer Lena Dunham is the latest Hollywood star to discover that her family has ties to the Holocaust on the PBS celebrity genealogy series Finding Your Roots.

Dunham, the sometimes controversial comedian who was born to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother, has previously described herself as very culturally Jewish, and she stars in a forthcoming film, Treasure, that features a family grappling with its Holocaust history. But until taping the Finding Your Roots episode that airs next week, she did not know that she herself had family members who survived the Holocaust and at least one who did not.

Host and Harvard University history professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. shares the story of Dunhams great-great-grandmother Regina, who came to America as a teenager but left behind at least 11 siblings in Europe. One of Reginas brothers, Moses, moved with his family to Hungary around the time that World War II began.

Moses family was separated, and his daughter Ilona was sent to Kamianets-Podilskyi, a city now in western Ukraine that had been under Nazi control. Over the course of two days in August 1941, an estimated 24,000 Jews there were murdered, likely including Ilona. The names of Moses, along with his wife and son, would later appear on a list of living Hungarian Jews compiled by Allied soldiers at the end of the war. But Ilona was not found on that document, nor on any other postwar record.

Its an amazing thing to see those names, and to know that theyre a part of our family, Dunham said. But to also know that they had to spend the rest of their lives with this other person who was so important to them missing, and wondering about her fate, must have made surviving a very complicated thing.

Whats it like to even begin to contemplate that you have a genetic connection now to the Holocaust, of which you werent aware? Gates asks Dunham.

She replies: Its an incredibly painful thing to think about people with whom I share probably not just DNA, but features and emotional responses and an approach to life those people being placed in this situation and having their lives extinguished this way, theres not a way to reckon with it. Its too big and the whole act is too vast, but to see a personal connection to it literalizes it in a way thats very, very powerful.

Dunham is best known for the HBO series Girls, which she created, wrote and starred in, and for which she earned six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes. Dunham is the first woman to win the Directors Guild of Americas comedy directing award, also for Girls. She was included in Time magazines 2013 list of the worlds 100 most influential people.

Dunham appears on Tuesdays episode alongside Jewish actor Michael Douglas, the two-time Oscar winner.

Douglass father Kirk, also a renowned actor, had his own well known Jewish story, but the younger Douglas did not know much about his grandfathers family. Finding Your Roots researchers discovered his great-uncles name on the passenger list of a ship that arrived in New York in April 1911, and Douglas learned that part of his family came to America from the Russian village of Chausy after a run-in with the law.

Gates also shared with Douglas that his team had identified an 18th-century Jewish cemetery in Belarus where some of his ancestors had likely been buried.

I feel more of a spiritual, religious connection to Judaism than I ever had before, Douglas said as he processed his familys newfound story. He also said he wished he could share this new information with his father, who died in 2020 at 103.

The PBS series has previously uncovered the Jewish histories of rock star Alanis Morissette, who also discovered her familys Holocaust history, as well as Pamela Adlon, Dustin Hoffman and others.

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Jewish comedian Lena Dunham discovers her family's Holocaust story on PBS' 'Finding Your Roots' - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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