Yad Vashem

Israel has so much to see

Light projections on the internal walls of the Tower of David, in Jerusalem, part of the Night Spectacular. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Tourism to Israel plummeted after Oct. 7, 2023. For example, January 2024 saw an 80% drop in visitors from a year previous. Those who did travel to Israel were often on solidarity missions or volunteer programs.

In March, I visited for 10 days, speaking with scores of Israelis about the situation, their grief, determination and changed attitudes, among other things. During that period, there was not a single siren in central Israel, though, days after my departure, the ceasefire ended and war in earnest began again.

It may seem frivolous or disrespectful to speak of “tourism” or “sightseeing” in moments such as these. The example of Israelis, however, is, as ever, resilience and getting on with it. Museums are open and, no matter what brings you to Israel, making time for recreation is necessary and, in many cases, adds depth to the understanding of what is happening now. A few of my destinations and choices are a bit odd – not what every visitor might choose – but others, like the Tower of David, should be on your must-see list.

Story of Jerusalem

The Tower of David Museum tells the story of Jerusalem. With a multimillion-dollar investment in new technologies upgrading the experience, the centrality of the city of Jerusalem in multiple traditions is underscored by the imagery of the city as the “navel of the world.”

From 5,000-year-old idols and 3,000-year-old stamps indicating a thriving bureaucracy, to Theodor Herzl and the modern state, the museum tells the story of a place with more history than geography.

A not-to-be-missed component is the immersive, after-dark sound and light show called the Night Spectacular. Perhaps less informative than just, well, spectacular, the 40-minute program projects the epochs of the city’s history (that is, its litany of invasions) onto the interior walls of the imposing citadel. Combo tickets to the museum, permitting evening entry for the show, are available. The effect is all-immersing, more powerful and moving than I could have anticipated. It will captivate visitors of every age.

History of Jewish militias

Like the Haganah Museum in Tel Aviv (see below), the Museum of the Underground Prisoners Jerusalem takes a politically ecumenical approach to the history of Jewish militias fighting the British in pre-state Israel.

Located in the former British Mandate-era jail, the museum tells the story of resistance fighters from the Haganah, the main defence force of the pre-state Jewish community, the Revisionist Irgun (Etzel) and the more radical Lehi (“Stern Gang”).

Jewish prisoners were captured and punished for sabotage against the British, including the smuggling of Holocaust survivors and others into Palestine. Some of the prisoners were executed in the prison yard and these lives are commemorated movingly.

Holocaust remembrance

Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre is always a moving pilgrimage. The primary exhibit space – an A-frame hall with windows at the peak, reminding us that the events took place in full view of the world (and, arguably, God) – provides a chronological history of the Shoah. The slash across the top of the Moshe Safdie-designed building also represents the permanent scar this history has left on humankind.

Like the Tower of David, Yad Vashem has had a huge infusion of money to update the exhibits and add high-tech components.

photo - The eternal flame, at Yad Vashem — The eternal flame, at Yad Vashem. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

A simple, but crucial, aspect of the exhibit is at the start, after visitors traverse the “bridge to a vanished world,” and a short film loops the story of the pre-Shoah Jewish civilization that was destroyed. This contextualizing of what was lost is an irreplaceable part of the experience.

The permanent exhibit, including the emotional Hall of Names, is what the public most often sees and it provides the history of the Holocaust for people of all levels of knowledge. The vast work of the centre remains mostly out of sight, with archives, research, recording and publication being a less visible but no less important component of Yad Vashem’s mandate.

Har Herzl Pathway

For a British Columbian, it is hard to fathom what Israelis call “mountains.” The Mount of Remembrance (home to Yad Vashem) and Mount Herzl (or Har Herzl) are hardly recognizable as distinct geographic places, let alone mountains.

photo - Monument to Israeli victims of terror, part of the many cemeteries on Mount Herzl, final resting place of soldiers, leaders and the fallen — Monument to Israeli victims of terror, part of the many cemeteries on Mount Herzl, final resting place of soldiers, leaders and the fallen. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

In any event, from Yad Vashem, it is a relatively short walk to the Herzl Museum, which is adjacent to the grave in which the founder of political Zionism was reinterred in 1949 from his original resting place in Vienna.

Between these two destinations are the resting places of most of Israel’s leaders, as well as cemetery after cemetery filled with soldiers and civilians killed in Israel’s successive wars and terror attacks.

It was only by happenstance – well, if you are arriving by foot, you can’t miss it, but those arriving by vehicle might – that I discovered a memorial walking path between Yad Vashem and the Herzl Museum, snaking through these sad, chronological rows of graves.

The trail, as a distinct entity, is a bit of a mystery. A post-trip web search indicates there is seemingly not even an agreed-upon name for the path. The information at the entryway says that it was developed by Jewish youth movements but the specific groups go unnamed. The signage is likewise a bit perplexing, without always clear directions or explanations. The larger message, though, does not require plinths: Israel and thousands of Israeli families have paid an enormous price for the country’s existence.

Learning about Herzl

Having meandered through the sombre cemeteries of Israel’s war dead and the resting places of most of the country’s prime ministers, presidents and other historical greats, you arrive at the imposing grave of Theodor Herzl. Nearby, the museum bearing his name tells the story of the man with the crazy dream of a Jewish state.

photo - Replica of Theodor Herzl’s office, including his original desk and other artifacts, at the Herzl Museum, Jerusalem — Replica of Theodor Herzl’s office, including his original desk and other artifacts, at the Herzl Museum, Jerusalem. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

Museum-goers are given a guided tour from room to room, following a cheesy video of a pair of dramatic impresarios didactically directing an actor preparing for the role of Herzl but who has no idea who the man was. The actor (and, not at all subtly, the visitor) is educated on the Dreyfus Affair, which was the polarizing moment when the secular, assimilated Herzl concluded the Jews would never be free without a state of their own. The displays take visitors through his activism, and we eventually join delegates at the First Zionist Congress.

The museum includes the re-creation of Herzl’s home office and many important relics of his life.

Connecting past, present

Gush Katif Museum is an unexpected little museum in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighbourhood, which tells the story of the 17 Jewish settlements that were evacuated during the “disengagement plan” from Gaza in 2005.

The Israeli government withdrew from Gaza two decades ago in hopes of allowing a sort of pilot project in Palestinian self-government. In the process, and amid (yet another) emotional national dialogue, Jewish settlements in the enclave were evacuated.

With a decidedly political agenda, the museum finds relevance today, as many Israelis look at the situation in Gaza and, with 20/20 hindsight (or something like it), question every decision that may have led to today’s realities.

In an interesting thought experiment, a Jewish resident evacuated from Gaza, speaking in the museum’s introductory film, inverts the common perception of Jewish settlements in the area. Rather than the probably prevailing view of Jewish settlements as an imposition on Palestinian land, he makes the case that Israel gave 90% of Gaza to the Arabs and some still wanted to erase the Jewish presence entirely. (Ignoring the ideological point and contesting the details, Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip took up something around 20% of the land in the small area.) It’s a perspective that challenges the idea that, even absent a negotiated two-state solution, the Palestinians deserve 100% of the occupied territories. Presumably, it is just this type of questioning the museum hopes to engender.

The Gush Katif Museum explores more than modern history, of course, going back to the earliest Jewish settlement in the area, and the successive expulsions by the Romans and the Turks.

Origins of the IDF

Moving on to Tel Aviv, the Haganah Museum tells the story of the Jewish militia that morphed, upon statehood, into the Israel Defence Forces.

The museum is located on Rothschild Boulevard, in one of Tel Aviv’s oldest buildings, originally the home of Eliyahu Golomb, a founder and ideological leader of the Haganah.

photo - The home of Eliyahu Golomb, founder and ideological leader of the Haganah. This was the site of many clandestine and pivotal meetings of the underground resistance — The home of Eliyahu Golomb, founder and ideological leader of the Haganah. This was the site of many clandestine and pivotal meetings of the underground resistance. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

While there were other military operatives, the Haganah was the de facto militia of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community. The museum, though, takes a broader view, beginning with the role of “tower and stockade settlements” on the peripheries of the proto-state, through the First World War Zion Mule Corps, the Jewish Legion (which helped the rise to prominence of Revisionist leaders like Ze’ev Jabotinsky), and touches on the roles of Revisionist Etzel (the Irgun) and its breakaway group Lehi (the “Stern Gang”) in taking the fight to the British. In an ideological and military skirmish after independence, these groups would be forcibly unified into the IDF.

The museum includes the crucial role the Haganah played in the Aliyah Bet, the illegal migration of Jews into pre-state Israel during the period of British blockade of Jewish refugees.

At the entry to the building is a relief mural by Israeli sculptor Moshe Ziffer, with figures in traditional kibbutz-style clothing, linking the movement to the pioneering Zionist ethos, as well as fighters shielding and defending Jewish families. There are also ancient symbols in the artwork, implying the Maccabean revolt, and including modern symbols of the transition to statehood, in 1948.

Independence Trail

The Haganah Museum is a central part of the cobbled-together tourist route branded “Independence Trail.” What would ostensibly be the centrepoint of the trail – Independence Hall, the home of Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff, and the place where David Ben-Gurion read aloud Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 – is surrounded by scaffolding amid ongoing renovations without a set date for reopening.

An easy-to-follow map of the ambling tour is available at the tourism kiosk in the pedestrian boulevard between the Haganah Museum and Independence Hall. The tour begins (if you want to do it in un-Israeli orderly fashion) at the city’s first kiosk, a restoration of which still serves refreshments to Tel Avivians and tourists.

photo - The site of the first kiosk in Tel Aviv. The location is still a destination for refreshments — The site of the first kiosk in Tel Aviv. The location is still a destination for refreshments. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

The walk continues past the Nahum Gutman Fountain, which depicts the history of Jaffa and its sister-city-come-lately Tel Aviv, from the setting-off place of Jonah on his way to the fish’s belly, through Egyptian invaders, Crusaders, Napoleonic forces on up to Herzl and to the Declaration of Independence that took place a few steps away.

Other stops on the trail include the site of Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, the world’s first modern Hebrew-language high school; the Palatin Hotel, the resting stop for famous names of the 20th century; Tel Aviv’s Great Synagogue; several buildings that are notable more for being examples of the Bauhaus or International Style of architecture than for historical import; the Tel Aviv Founders Monument; a statue of Dizengoff, astride his horse; and several others. The map and trail provide a quick and easy guide to important sites that you might otherwise overlook in a small area of central Tel Aviv.

Tragic walking tour

An unusual, if not terribly uplifting, activity is the Tragic Tel Aviv Walking Tour, which visits sites in the city centre where terror and even Second World War attacks killed civilians.

photo - Easily missed: A monument to one of Tel Aviv’s many terror attacks — Easily missed: A monument to one of Tel Aviv’s many terror attacks. *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

On Sept. 9, 1940, Italian war planes operating from the island of Rhodes, made sorties over Haifa and Tel Aviv, killing 137 people, with many more injured. The attacks targeted no Allied (that is, British) military infrastructure and shattered what, to then, had been a feeling of relative isolation from the European war among the residents of pre-state Palestine. The monument to the bombing in Mikhoels Square, at the corner of Levinsky and Aliyah streets, is modest and easily overlooked if you are not explicitly seeking it – or even if you are.

Led by former Torontonian Jeffrey Levi, the tour then proceeds through sadly seemingly endless locations of suicide bombings and other terror attacks, many of which took place during the Second Intifada. In some cases, the historical events that left Israelis dead or wounded are not commemorated at all, or are marked by likewise inconspicuous markers.

If there is an uplifting message in this tour, it is in the innocuous manner in which most of these historical tragedies are commemorated (or not). As Levi recounts the devastations of the past, Tel Avivians hustle by, literally and figuratively moving past the past.

Better choice needed

Yad Vashem holds an almost sacred place in the Jewish world. The foremost repository of materials relating to the Holocaust, and Israel’s official memorial to the victims of Nazism, the centre is practically an obligatory destination for visiting diplomats and foreign dignitaries. It is a solemn place dedicated to the terrible past, but with an explicit vision for a future without hatred and genocide.

Yad Vashem is rightly focused on the Jewish particularity of the Shoah. We take for granted the logic of Yad Vashem being located in Jerusalem. The capital of Israel and, spiritually, of the Jewish people seems a logical place to remember this massive cataclysm in Jewish history. But it commemorates a history that took place thousands of kilometres away, in Europe. Its presence in the Jewish state is itself a statement about Jewish particularism. But this does not erase the universal lessons Yad Vashem advances.

Since its founding in 1953, it has been a model for the world in commemorating and educating about the worst chapters in human history. The events of the 20th century that necessitated the invention of the word “genocide” did not end with the Holocaust. Genocides have occurred since 1945 – and before. Educators and others who strive to preserve and transmit these histories and their lessons struggle over the balance between respecting the very specific characteristics of the Holocaust, for example, with the broader messages for all humanity. At a time when antisemitism is experiencing a resurgence, it is essential that the role of Jew-hatred be addressed and confronted, at least in part with the recent past as a warning for the dangers of complacency.

While the struggle between universality and particularism is challenging, all can probably agree that Yad Vashem stands as a monument to human rights and the dignity of all people – and as a lesson to those in societies where those values are compromised. At the same time, the existence and focus of Yad Vashem safeguards the particular and monumental horrors of the genocide against the Jews.

This is why there is rightful concern over the proposed appointment of former brigadier general Effi Eitam as head of Yad Vashem. His proponents – including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who nominated him for the position – contend that Eitam’s career has been spent defending the Jewish state. And among the lessons many people take from the exhibits of Yad Vashem is the necessity of a Jewish state as a bulwark against a world that has yet to cure itself of antisemitism.

But Eitam’s military record is more than troubling, and this is the main reason for concerns about his appointment. During the First Intifada, he brutally instructed his troops to break the bones of a 21-year-old Palestinian prisoner, Ayyad Aqel. The soldiers beat the young man to death. Four of Eitam’s soldiers were court-martialed and the Military Advocate General reprimanded Eitam and recommended he never be promoted. (He was.) In addition to his military career, he served two terms in the Knesset representing various religious parties, and held several cabinet portfolios.

Beyond Eitam’s record of heinous action is a record of deeply concerning and racist ideas. He has referred to Arab Israelis as a “cancer” and promoted ethnic cleansing of West Bank Palestinians: “We’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here and remove Israeli Arabs from political system,” he said in 2006.

Referring to human beings with terms like “cancer” is precisely the sort of dehumanization that can be a precondition to genocide. In any society – including one as open as Israel, where diverse views and expressions are the norm – these statements must preclude someone from a role like head of the world’s foremost research centre about, and memorial to, the Shoah. Eitam’s military service – he was part of the raid on Entebbe, among other things – can be seen as evidence that a strong Israel is the best defence for the Jewish people in a world capable of genocide. But Eitam’s statements cannot be justified from the mouth of one who seeks to advance the lessons, particular or universal, that Yad Vashem is expected to convey.

The nomination is threatening to create yet another schism in the government, as Netanyahu’s coalition partner Benny Gantz opposes Eitam’s appointment. Ideally, a more suitable leader will be found for this important role, one who stands as a defender of the sanctity of the Shoah and its lessons for humanity.

Auschwitz 75 years on

The King David Hotel was partially obscured by a temporary security barrier as part of the preparations that were carried out in Jerusalem for the arrival of leaders from more than 45 countries for in the Fifth World Holocaust Forum, which took place at Yad Vashem this week, and marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. (photo from Ashernet)

Monday marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. That date, Jan. 27, has been set aside annually to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Scores of officials from around the world were to descend on Jerusalem this week to attend a ceremony at Yad Vashem and a forum on the Holocaust. Expected guests include Canada’s Governor-General Julie Payette, Prince Charles, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emanuel Macron, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence and a long list of royalty, heads of government and others from around the world, especially from Europe.

Among the more attention-grabbing guests is Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine. Zelensky is a particularly interesting man in a particular role at an interesting time. He will be in Jerusalem alongside Pence and other world leaders at the very moments when the U.S. president is undergoing an impeachment trial initiated as a result of a phone call with Zelensky, probably the only reason most North Americans know his name. But that is among the least remarkable things about the leader.

A political neophyte (aside from playing the Ukrainian president in a satirical TV series), Zelensky was elected on an anti-corruption platform. In advance of his visit to Israel for the commemoration events this week, he engaged in a lengthy and witty interview with the Times of Israel about his family’s history – some relatives live in Israel and he has visited and performed comedy there many times – and his reflections on Jewishness, Israel and contemporary politics.

It caused some curiosity when Zelensky was elected because he has, in his words, “Jewish blood.” It is a common term, perhaps especially in formerly Soviet societies where religion was officially negated and so identities are defined obliquely, but the phrase “Jewish blood” is unfortunate in the context of Ukrainian history.

Among the considerations facing the country at present is the complicity of its citizens in the Holocaust, including in the massacres at Babi Yar, a ravine in the capital of Kyiv, where an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 individuals were murdered during the Nazi occupation, including more than 33,000 Jews on one day in September 1941.

In 1976, Soviet officials erected a monument marking the site and the cataclysm – ignoring the Jewish particularity of the mass murder and lamenting the deaths of Soviet victims of Nazism. It is undeniably true that victims at Babi Yar also included Roma, communists, Ukrainian nationalists and prisoners of war, all of whom deserve to be commemorated and mourned. But the omission of the Jewish identities of most of the victims at the site has been a point of pain and conflict for decades.

Zelensky’s government is remedying this. Begun by civic officials and Jewish leaders and endorsed by Zelensky’s predecessors, a Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre is being constructed, with anticipated completion in 2023. The government is also undertaking a more transparent assessment of the country’s role and its citizens’ collaboration during the Second World War, outpacing most of their eastern European neighbours in addressing this dark past.

Still, some red flags remain. Zelensky claims that there is no antisemitism in Ukraine, an unequivocal statement that bewilders. It would be careless for any leader to ascribe complete innocence of bigotry to their entire citizenry, more so the leader of a country with a history like Ukraine’s.

He is, in some ways, between a rock and a hard place. While making blanket denials of Ukrainian antisemitism, he is also attempting to move his society away from the glorification of nationalist – meaning, among other things, inevitably antisemitic – historical figures. He points to the fact that he, a novice politician with “Jewish blood,” was elected to the country’s top post as evidence of tolerance in Ukrainian society. It does seem encouraging.

Also encouraging is the extensive list of world leaders arriving at Yad Vashem not only for a commemoration but for an educational forum, titled Remembering the Holocaust: Fighting Antisemitism. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin has said the purpose of the meeting is “to think about how to pass on Holocaust remembrance to generations who will live in a world without survivors, and what steps we must take to ensure the safety and security of Jews, all around the world.”

Seventy-five years after that terrible epoch, the topic remains timely.

Inaugural study project

Chabad Richmond’s Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, far left, was the only Canadian spiritual leader to participate in first-ever rabbinic seminar on Holocaust studies at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, this past July. (photo from Chabad Richmond)

For one week this past July, 15 pulpit rabbis gathered together to take part in the first-ever rabbinic seminar on Holocaust studies at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in Jerusalem.

Yad Vashem is the foremost resource for Shoah educators, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Fourteen rabbis and rebbetzins from North America and one rabbi from Israel, all of whom are engaged in adult education, were invited to participate in the week-long pilot immersion program, which was sponsored by David and Ellie Werber and Martin and Bracha Werber. The diverse group of spiritual leaders spanned the religious spectrum.

Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman, director of Chabad Richmond, was the only Canadian rabbi to participate in the seminar, with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver being a partial sponsor of his travels. He described the week of learning at Yad Vashem as “transformational, uncomfortable, overwhelming, extremely challenging, very enlightening and at times very inspiring. It’s going to take awhile to unpack all this information.”

Entitled Teaching the Shoah and Antisemitism: Opportunities, Challenges and Techniques, the seminar consisted of 65 hours of lectures by scholars and experts, plus testimonials from Holocaust survivors. Covering an array of topics, the point of the program was to help rabbis cultivate the skills necessary to create an educational curriculum and content for Holocaust studies in their schools, adult education classes and congregations at home. Yad Vashem’s challenge was to find unique approaches to teaching people about history, theology, antisemitism and Jewish values relating to the Holocaust, as well as to expand the breadth and scope of emissaries who will ensure the continuity of the stories and pass along the lessons learned from the Shoah.

The Yad Vashem seminar incorporated a multidisciplinary approach to Holocaust education and used various methodologies to help participants comprehend the complexity of the Shoah as a whole, never forgetting the personal stories of individuals. The curriculum included studying prewar Jewish life in Europe; the rise of Nazism; life in the ghettos; concentration camps and the attempted “Final Solution”; liberation from concentration camps; survivors returning to life in the “new world”; the ongoing pursuit of Nazi war criminals; the new antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric; physical and spiritual resistance; the role rabbis played during the Shoah; survivor testimony; and theological responses to the Holocaust.

Speakers included international researchers, professors and historians; a world expert on antisemitism; the head of Holocaust studies at Yad Vashem; a Nazi hunter; and several Holocaust survivors, including former chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, and Rabbi Judge David Frenkel.

As the survivor population gets smaller, others need to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. Yad Vashem understands that rabbis have a special role to play in teaching about the rabbinic, theological and spiritual meanings and implications of the Holocaust. For his part, Baitelman will be looking for ways to collaborate with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre to create a curriculum for Jews and non-Jews alike.

“The challenge is how to talk to teens, 20-somethings, 30-somethings and 40-somethings about the Holocaust,” said Baitelman. “What should the message be?… We’re a people who have always told stories. Even though we are so many generations removed, in a sense, it is still my story, our story. The message is not only about where we come from, but also about where we are going.” He stressed that, with growing global antisemitism, we need to strengthen the Jewish people worldwide – Jewish education, Jewish values and Torah observance.

“Although we might struggle with faith,” said Baitelman, “we still need to look for G-d amidst the rubble and the hatred. It’s imperative that we find inspiration from those who survived the Holocaust, and find ways to teach tolerance, empathy and understanding.”

Baitelman believes it’s essential to address not only the theological question of “Where was G-d?” during the Holocaust, but also, “Where was man in all of this?”

“If, as a result of the Holocaust, one does not believe in G-d, then we have to believe in humanity,” he said. “The question is: ‘Where was the humanity of the people that perpetrated these crimes?’”

For the rabbi, a meaningful Jewish education involves people living Jewishly. “We need highly educated, well-informed Jewish kids living fully engaged Jewish lives,” he said. “We need children who are living proudly Jewish.”

Baitelman has taught several courses on the Holocaust through the Jewish Learning Institute, and has talked to teachers, school classes and new immigrants about antisemitism and the Holocaust. He said education needs also to address the important question of “Now what? What are we here for?”

Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review, and currently writes a bi-weekly column about retirement for the Richmond News. She is a volunteer with Chabad Richmond.

A Nazi who saved Jews

One of the apartment buildings at the HKP complex. (photo from Richard Freund)

Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Shoah ended, we are still learning about aspects of what happened. For example, the documentary The Good Nazi tells the little-known story of a Nazi from Vilna who tried to rescue more than 1,200 Jews. It airs on VisionTV Jan. 21, and again April 29.

In 2005, Dr. Michael Good sought out Prof. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford to tell him about Maj. Karl Plagge, a Nazi who oversaw a military vehicle repair complex that was used as cover for 1,257 Jews in Vilnius (Vilna). Good described how his father, mother and grandfather were saved within this complex, and later wrote about it at length in his 2006 book The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews (Fordham University Press).

While interesting to Freund, who works within a department known for its Holocaust studies, nothing further came of that meeting. That is, until 2015.

By then, Freund had directed six archeological projects in Israel and three in Europe on behalf of the university, including research at the extermination camp at Sobibor, Poland. In 2015, he was in Lithuania doing research on a Holocaust-era escape tunnel, adjacent to the Great Synagogue of Vilna. He and his team had brought with them specialized equipment that enabled non-invasive examination of the ground and walls, and they offered it to anyone wanting to do such research. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum came calling, and brought Freund to a site on the outskirts of Vilna, where he was told about Plagge.

photo - Nazi Maj. Karl Plagge oversaw a military vehicle repair complex that he used to try and save 1,257 Jews in Vilnius — Nazi Maj. Karl Plagge oversaw a military vehicle repair complex that he used to try and save 1,257 Jews in Vilnius. *(photo from Richard Freund)*

Of that moment, Freund told the Independent, “I’m sitting there and I say, ‘Karl Plagge? I know that name!’”

Freund connected with survivor Sidney Handler, who was 10 years old when he hid from the Nazis in the work camp. After the Nazis left in July 1944, Handler was forced to move dead bodies, and could point out decades later where 400 Jews were buried.

“We could have gone through the entire 20 acres and not located exactly where that was,” said Freund.

Using scanners, thermal cameras, radar and other methods, Freund’s team discovered and recorded the various hiding places, also called malinas. Under Plagge’s plan, Jews had built malinas in building crevices, behind the walls, to keep out of sight when Nazis came to “liquidate” the complex.

The garage (repair shop) was dubbed HKP. It was on Subocz Street and is likely the only Holocaust-related labour camp left completely intact. Until recently, people had been living in the two six-floor buildings, which comprised 216 apartments.

Freund reached out to filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, telling him how important it was to document the site, the story, and reveal it to the world. Things were made all the more pressing when Freund and Jacobovici discovered that developers were going to demolish the site. Fortunately, before this happened, Jacobovici took a film and photographic crew to HKP, in January 2018.

The Turning of Plagge

In 1941, Karl Plagge was placed in command of the HKP 562, a unit responsible for repairs of military vehicles damaged on the eastern front. Plagge experienced something of a pang of conscience – he hadn’t signed on to genocide. He made the decision to leverage his position and use Jews as “slave labour” for HKP, pleading the case to his superiors that, if Jews didn’t work there, there would be no one to fix the vehicles.

Virtually none of the 1,200 Jews was knowledgeable in fixing cars; they were accountants, lawyers, hairdressers, academics, cooks and others. They all learned various HKP tasks on the job, and Plagge somehow convinced the Nazi SS that every single one of them was necessary for HKP.

Even though the entire charade was met with a barely tolerated wink and nod by Nazi brass, Plagge had a deep (and correct) hunch that their patience would eventually wear thin.

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, announced, in the summer of 1943, that he wanted every Jew in Eastern Europe eliminated, irrespective of whether they were contributing to the war effort in a work camp. So, with Plagge’s approval, his workers carved out malinas in the walls of the buildings and in attic rafters.

As the Soviet Red Army approached the outer edge of Vilnius in June 1944, it was a sign that the Allies were nearing victory. In this context, on July 1, 1944, Plagge made an impromptu announcement in front of an SS commander and the Jewish workers, who gathered to listen. He explained that his unit was being transferred westbound and, though he requested his labourers be allowed to join, his superiors wouldn’t permit it. All of this was code for the Jewish prisoners to take cover. Roughly half of the workers – some 500 of them – hid away in malinas or ran from the camp, while others decided to stay.

photo - A monument placed recently at the complex to honour Karl Plagge and memorialize the Jews who were killed at HKP — A monument placed recently at the complex to honour Karl Plagge and memorialize the Jews who were killed at HKP. *(photo from Richard Freund)*

When Nazi troops took over the camp two days later, 500 Jewish workers appeared for roll call, and were killed. It took the Nazis three more days to comb the camp and the surrounding area for any survivors, eventually finding roughly 200 Jews, all of whom were shot.

When the Soviets finally took over Vilnius later that week, approximately 250 of HKP’s Jews in hiding emerged.

When the war was over, Plagge returned home to Darmstadt, Germany, where, for the next two years he lived quietly, until he was brought to court as a former Nazi. Somehow, word traveled to a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, a three-hour drive away, where many survivors of HKP had ended up. In Plagge’s defence, the survivors sent a representative to testify to the court in the hopes the charges would be overturned.

The testimony resulted in a favourable judgment, and Plagge received the status of an exonerated person. In 2005, after evidence and survivor testimony, Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre posthumously bestowed the title Righteous Among the Nations on Plagge.

The Good Nazi was produced in Canada for VisionTV by Toronto-based Associated Producers. Jacobovici was writer and executive producer, Moses Znaimer executive producer, Bienstock producer and co-director, Yaron Niski co-director and Felix Golubev line producer/executive producer.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Honoured for their heroism

On Nov. 7, members of the Kalkman family – left to right are Danielle, Victoria, Matthew, Peter and Bonnie – received the Righteous Among the Nations award from the consulate general of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada and the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, on behalf of Dirk and Klaasje Kalkman. (photo by Rhonda Dent Photography)

One night in the Dutch village of Moordrecht, the call went out: the Nazis were doing a round-up. In a round-up, the Nazis would surround a neighbourhood and then search house by house for those they hunted: Jews, resistance fighters and others they deemed enemies. Wim Kalkman’s family rushed to prepare for their arrival: two Dutchmen who refused to work as forced labour building battlements for the Nazis were taken through a trap door under the carpet in the living room. The really dangerous guest of the family, however, was hidden in plain view. Tanta Ina, they called her, saying she was an aunt who had fled the battle zone on the coast to find refuge with the family.

Tanta Ina was not related to the Kalkmans, however. She was a Jewish woman, the widow of a Dutch-Jewish nobleman who the family had been urged to protect by Reverend Henk Post, the brother of Dutch resistance fighter Johannes Post and a fellow clergyman to Wim’s father, Dirk.

Dirk Kalkman, a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church, and his wife Klaasje, had taken Catharina Six tot Oterleek-Kuijper in and given her a new identity. They hid her, with the help of their four children, from 1943 to 1945, at great personal risk. On that fearful night, the Nazis did not discover the two Dutchmen or Tanta Ina, who sat on the couch with the rest of the family while they were all interrogated. When a Nazi soldier asked young Wim if the family was hiding anyone, he broke into a gale of nervous laughter, which confused the Nazis, who also began laughing. Fearful of Wim’s sister, who was suffering from diphtheria, the Nazis rushed their search and left.

This was the story that was told to Wim’s son, Peter, and his grandson, Matthew, both of whom were in Vancouver Nov. 7 to receive the Righteous Among the Nations award from the consulate general of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada and the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, on behalf of Dirk and Klaasje Kalkman.

Righteous Among the Nations are non-Jews who assisted or sheltered Jews during the Holocaust, often at the risk of great peril for themselves and families. The project was established by Yad Vashem in 1963 and to date has granted the award to more than 26,000 people. It had been Wim Kalkman’s lifelong dream to see his parents honoured for their heroism, as Matthew Kalkman told those gathered at the Rothstein Theatre for the ceremony.

After Peter Kalkman read his father’s account of that terrifying night and told the story of his grandparents’ protection of Tanta Ina, Matthew Kalkman gave an emotional speech, often through tears, about the importance of his great-grandparents’ actions to his own life. He said he had first connected with the reality of what his great-grandparents had done when he visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.

When his grandfather Wim died in 2014, they discovered a note expressing his dying wish that Wim’s father be honoured. Matthew took up the task personally and, together with researchers in the Netherlands, was able to find definitive evidence of what happened in the Kalkman household so many years ago.

The award was given to the Kalkmans by Consul General Galit Baram on behalf of the state of Israel and by Josh Hacker on behalf of the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem. Liel Amdour, a classical guitarist born in Israel, played two pieces of music that embodied hope and rebirth, and Dr. Ilona Shulman Spaar, education director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, and Salomon Casseres, president of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, also spoke, as did Karen James, the chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver board. All of the speakers touched upon the importance of remembering the heroes of the Holocaust as inspirations in the current times of resurgent nationalism, racism and xenophobia.

Casseres, who has Dutch ancestry, also stressed the relevance of the Kalkmans’ story for himself, as a descendant of Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust. “In Hebrew,” he said, “we say kol hakavod, which means ‘all the respect.’” In Dutch, he added, “A hearty thank you for your family’s deeds of heroism.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

New Yad Vashem exhibit

The new exhibit at Yad Vashem features artworks, artifacts, diaries, letters and testimonies that illustrate how Jews yearned for Eretz Israel during and immediately following the Shoah, from 1933-1948. (photo from Ashernet)

“I see a sign that we will meet each other face-to-face in our land, our homeland, Eretz Israel,” wrote 10-year-old Eliezer Rudnik in 1937 to his aunts who had immigrated to Palestine.

The letter, written in Hebrew, is surrounded by his parents’ writing, in Yiddish, as there was a lack of paper. Aryeh and Sarah Rudnik and their son, Eliezer, were the only Jews living in the Ukrainian village of Kosmaczow – they were shot and killed by Nazis in 1942. Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust.

photo - Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust — Eliezer’s letter is just one of the hundreds of items now on display at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in a new exhibition, They Say There is a Land: Longing for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust. *(photo from Ashernet)*

The exhibit, which opened May 30 in the Auditorium Exhibitions Hall of Yad Vashem’s Museums Complex, features artworks, artifacts, diaries, letters and testimonies collected by Yad Vashem over the years, all of which illustrate how Jews yearned for Eretz Israel during and immediately following the Shoah, from 1933-1948. It is divided into three sections.

The first section presents how Jews viewed their connection to and longing for the Land of Israel during the rise of the Nazi party to power in Germany, until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was during this period that Jews searched for asylum in various countries, including Eretz Israel.

The second section focuses on the years 1940-1944, from the period of the ghettos to extermination. During this stage, Jewish communities in Europe dwindled and, under their daily struggle for survival, many Jews found themselves distanced from Eretz Israel to the point of disengagement; however, their hearts’ yearning for the land remained.

The third and final section focuses on the period immediately after the Holocaust – the displaced persons camps in Europe and the detention camps in Cyprus, and the establishment of the state of Israel. At this time, many survivors felt that only in Israel would they be able to regain their stature and build a full Jewish communal and personal life.

“The longing for Zion and the Land of Israel has been a cornerstone of Jewish identity for generations, manifested in many different forms,” Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said at the exhibition’s opening. “While the Zionist movement was not embraced by the majority of Jews in Europe during the Nazi rise to power, through the course of the Holocaust and in its aftermath, it became increasingly popular. This exhibition portrays the ways in which Jews before, during and after the Shoah expressed their dreams for a brighter future in the Land of Israel, and their fervent hope to rebuild their lives here.”

The exhibition’s title is that of a well-known poem written by Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernichovsky in 1923 in Berlin. The poem brings up existential questions that characterized the Jewish people’s struggle in the interwar period, as well as the forces of dream versus reality, and hope versus despair.

Teaching about Shoah

Eyal Daniel (photo from Eyal Daniel)

Three Vancouver-area teachers who traveled to Israel last summer for an intensive three-week symposium on teaching about the Holocaust now plan to share their knowledge with other educators throughout the region.

The three were chosen to study at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, with many of the world’s foremost scholars on the Shoah. The focus was on how to educate students of diverse cultures and faiths about the Holocaust and to leverage that knowledge as a framework for teaching about human values, responsible citizenship and social justice.

Eyal Daniel, former head of school at Vancouver Talmud Torah elementary and high school, the latter of which became King David High School, now teaches at Buckingham elementary in Burnaby. As a Jewish person and a native of Israel, Daniel said his experience was somewhat different from most of the other participants from across Canada, but he tried to go into the process ready to absorb everything presented.

“The symposium was three weeks, from 8:30 to 5:30 every day,” he said. “It included lectures about all the different facets connected to the Holocaust by really top lecturers.”

The group also visited different parts of Israel, including Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot, the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz, formed by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto. In addition to teachers, participants included Christian clergy, researchers and some people from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The Canadian teachers were sponsored by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem.

Among the most impactful aspects, said Daniel, was meeting and hearing from people with perspectives on well-known aspects of the Shoah.

“One of them was Anne Frank’s childhood friend, a woman at the age of 94, who knew her personally because she met her before [Frank] died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp,” he said. “The second one was a couple that was on Schindler’s list, people that worked in Schindler’s factory and knew him personally.” Hearing firsthand accounts leaves a deep impact, he said. “You’re part of this history.”

He was also impressed to see how many non-Jewish people are touched and moved by the Holocaust and how committed they are to teach people from different cultures, he said.

The provincial education ministry curriculum does not require educators at any grade level to teach the Holocaust, although it usually comes up when studying the Second World War. It falls to the individual teacher to determine what to emphasize. Daniel has incorporated the topic into social studies, language arts and art. His students, for example, wrote poems about the Holocaust and Daniel sent the seven best to a competition for young writers by the Poetry Institute of Canada. All seven were published in an anthology.

He also incorporates books like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Old Brown Suitcase (by Vancouver writer Lillian Boraks-Nemetz) or Anne Frank’s diary, and films like the documentaries Paper Clips and Freedom Writers.

“The Holocaust is a one-time event, but it is also connected to racism and prejudice and stereotypes and genocide,” he said. The multicultural students of Metro Vancouver can often personally relate to the historical or contemporary manifestations of these topics.

“The idea is to show that, first of all, you need to learn about this kind of an event because even though it’s an exceptional event, it can happen – or may not happen – because of you,” he said.

Delta high school teacher Stephanie Henderson participated in the program, as well. She too tries to weave the topic into the curriculum when appropriate. When studying the history of Venice, for example, she will note the history of the Venice ghetto, the original Jewish ghetto but not the last.

“The Holocaust is getting to be far away,” she said. “Slowly, people are forgetting about it. This is giving us the ability to keep talking about it.”

The third local teacher on the program was Surrey high school teacher Mark Figueira. “Having been there, it’s something that I think about every day now, whereas before I had been to Israel, it was a topic that I covered in my class, but now it’s become much more than that,” he said. “When I teach about the Holocaust now, it’s so much more rich. It’s stories about people that we met. Just having been there gave me such a really good context for it now.”

The three have created a presentation they will share with other teachers during professional development days, beginning in Delta next February. They will offer advice and approaches on educating about the Holocaust for teachers at every level of knowledge and experience.

In the last decade, the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem has sent more than 200 teachers to attend the summer seminar, where they acquire pedagogical tools for teaching about the Holocaust to Canada’s multicultural students.

Exhibit’s familiar face

This photo is among the images in The Face of the Ghetto: Pictures Taken by Jewish Photographers in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1940-1944, produced by the Topography of Terror Foundation, Berlin. The bride on the right is Bronia Sonnenschein; beside her is her groom Erich Strauss. The second bride is Mary Schifflinger with husband Ignatz Yelin. Blessing the couples is Chaim Rumkowski, head of Lodz Ghetto’s Jewish council. Only Sonnenschein survived the Holocaust. She passed away in Vancouver in 2011. (photo from Yad Vashem Photo Archive)

The Face of the Ghetto: Pictures Taken by Jewish Photographers in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1940-1944, opened last week at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Produced by the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin, among the traveling exhibit’s photographs was a surprise – a photo with a local connection.

“Unidentified in the photo caption but recognized by our education director [Adara Goldberg] during her research about this exhibit, Bronia Sonnenschein is depicted in the photo to my left,” said VHEC executive director Nina Krieger in her remarks at the opening on May 14, directing attendees’ attention to an image “showing a double wedding ceremony presided over by Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Council of Elders in the Lodz Ghetto. Bronia was the sole survivor of those shown in this photograph. A multilingual secretary in Rumkowski’s office and a survivor of Auschwitz, Bronia passed away in 2011 but is fondly remembered by so many of us.

“Bronia, who stood maybe ‘this’ tall,” continued Krieger, indicating a measure of about shoulder height, “was a giant in terms of her dignity, her resilience, and her dedication to sharing her eyewitness testimony with tens of thousands students as a VHEC outreach speaker.”

About the Topography of Terror Foundation, Krieger explained that it “is mandated to transmit the history of National Socialism and its crimes, and to encourage people to actively confront this history and its aftermath. A distinctive indoor and outdoor museum, the Topography of Terror is located on the very grounds previously occupied by the primary institutions of Nazi persecution and terror: the SS, the Gestapo secret police and the Reich Main Security Office ran their central operations from the site.”

Krieger provided context for the exhibit. “Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis imposed a ghetto in the city of Lodz, which they renamed Litzmannstadt. From 1940 to 1944, more than 180,000 Jews and 5,000 Roma and Sinti lived in the ghetto’s cramped quarters, with many working in factories that supported the war effort.

“Ghetto residents were not allowed to own cameras, yet Lodz is the most documented of all the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe. Some of these images were taken by perpetrators, often trivializing the terrible conditions in the ghetto and attempting to justify the exploitation of Jewish forced laborers. Others – and the focus of this exhibit – were taken by a handful of Jewish photographers, commissioned by the local Jewish council. While instructed to document the productivity of the war industry for the Nazis, the photographers also captured – at great personal risk – intimate moments of family, childhood and community.”

The Face of the Ghetto exhibit is here as a result of VHEC’s partnership with the German Consulate General in Vancouver and the sponsorship of the German government. Consul General Herman Sitz was at the opening and said a few words, as did Sonnenschein’s son, Dan. Drawn from a collection of 12,000 images held by the Lodz State Archives, one of the intimate moments captured is the one in which his mother appears.

“Last Friday was the historic 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day,” said Sonnenschein, addressing those assembled. “May 8th was personally very meaningful for my mother, as it was the date in 1945 on which she was liberated from the Nazi horror. For her, the bitterly harsh years had begun on March 13, 1938, when Germany annexed a largely welcoming Austria, immediately setting off intense persecution of the Jewish population.

“My mother, with her sister and parents, were among the longest-held prisoners in the Lodz Ghetto, from its formation in spring 1940 until its so-called liquidation in August 1944. Unlike many deported there from other places, they had fled Vienna after the notorious Kristallnacht, and were living under great stress in Lodz when the family was forced from their new home into the ghetto. They were later joined by a beloved aunt of my mother who was deported from Vienna. Her cherished elderly grandmother was deported elsewhere and murdered soon after.

“My mother, with her German-language and office skills, worked as a secretary in the ghetto’s Jewish administration,” he explained. “The photo in this exhibit shows her being married to Erich Strauss, who had been deported from Prague with his mother. The other bride in this double ceremony was Mary Schifflinger, my mother’s fellow office worker and good friend, whose groom’s name was Ignatz Yelin. Shown in the photo blessing the couples is Chaim Rumkowski, appointed head of the Jewish council by the ghetto’s masters in the German administration.

“These five people were all transported, in the usual dreadful way, to Auschwitz, where Rumkowski was killed. Soon after, the others were sent to a less well known but no less brutal concentration camp called Stutthof. There, Mary and her husband were killed, Erich Strauss and his mother were killed, my mother’s father and aunt were killed. As my mother once said, it was a killing field.

“Other photos of my mother in the ghetto may be seen on the internet, along with such photos of my Aunt Paula, who also married in the ghetto, to Stan Lenga,” continued Sonnenschein. “Unlike my mother’s first husband, my Uncle Stan survived and the couple was reunited after the war, being a part of my close family in Vancouver along with my maternal grandmother, Emily Schwebel. The local Jewish Family Service Agency gives an annual Paula Lenga Award in my aunt’s memory for exemplary volunteer service.

“My mother was also an exemplary volunteer, in her case, in Holocaust education. She began this late-life career, first under the auspices of the Canadian Jewish Congress and then with this centre, for over two decades compellingly conveying the suffering imposed on her and so many others for, as she put it, the crime of being Jewish. She often quoted Elie Wiesel’s saying: ‘Not every German was a Nazi but every Jew was a victim.’

“Although we no longer can experience her vibrant presence,” concluded Sonnenschein, “we are fortunate to have many recordings of my mother, as well as a book, to help her testimony live on.” Included in those recordings, he said, is one of her talking about the photo in The Face of the Ghetto exhibit, and related matters. The photos he mentioned of his mother and aunt can be found at google.com/culturalinstitute, searching for “Bronia Sonnenschein” and “Paula Lenga.”

In conjunction with the exhibit, the VHEC has developed a school program and teaching resource to engage students. “Visiting school groups will explore topics such as resistance to dehumanization; the unique experiences of children; and the complex role of Jewish leadership under Nazi occupation,” said Krieger, noting that several of the volunteer docents were at the opening. “Volunteers are central to our work,” she said, “and it’s my honor to acknowledge and to thank our docents for everything that they do.”

Krieger also thanked the VHEC staff – present were Goldberg, designer Illene Yu, archivist Elizabeth Shaffer, collections assistant Katie Powell and administrator Lauren Vukobrat – and the installation crew, Wayne Gilmartin and Adam Stenhouse, as well as the consul general.

The Face of the Ghetto is on display at the VHEC until Oct. 16.

– With thanks to Nina Krieger and Dan Sonnenschein for providing electronic copies of their remarks.