These we remember memorial book web

REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS HONORING THE SURVIVORS

April 22, 2014 | 22 Nisan 5774 Eighth Day of Pesah

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he decision to honor survivors and to remember the victims of the Holocaust on this, the last day of Pesah, 5774, began with a simple request of one of our members. Herta Baitch, herself a survivor, approached Rabbi Shulman with the recommendation that we honor her dear friend, Leo Bretholz, who had done so much to keep the memory of the Six Million alive.

This suggestion led to the formation of not one, but two committees. The first asked the question, “How can we know who the victims and the survivors are among our families, and once we have that information, what is the most meaningful way to present that to the congregation?” The second committee asked, “What would be the best way to honor the memory of the Holocaust victims in our greater congregational family going into the future?”

Working with the first committee, we developed and distributed forms to gather information from shul and school families, and organized that data. We then trained seven of our high school seniors to interview our survivors. This booklet contains the summaries of those interviews as well as a list of our family members who are no longer with us, victims of the Holocaust.

Our next task, the work of committee two, is to design an appropriate memorial. This work is in process, and we hope to have the plans approved by this summer. God-willing, Chizuk Amuno will dedicate this new memorial next spring.

We thank the members of both committees, as well as those who reviewed and organized the data. We are particularly indebted to our teenage volunteers for interviewing our survivors.

We acknowledge with joy and appreciation the presence today of two veterans of the armed forces, Sol Goldstein and Maurice “Chick” Paper, who participated in the liberation of Buchenwald and Dachau.

We will never forget the terrible price that so many of our people paid because they were Jews in a world infected with Jew hatred.

Millions were killed, and others have carried their wounds in their hearts and souls until this day. May they know peace. May the world someday know peace.

Rabbi Paul D. Schneider 1

Ela Amsterdam

Herta Baitch

Rachel Bodner

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orbert and Ela Amsterdam, parents of Chizuk Amuno member Dr. Larry Amsterdam, married in a displaced persons camp following the horrors of World War II. The son of an allpurpose store owner in Rzsed, Poland, Norbert endured “austere and difficult” conditions in Siberian work camps for the duration of the war, beginning at the age of 17. His wife encountered similar experiences following deportation from her home in Krakow at age 15. Dr. Amsterdam notes that his parents “were basically slaves...doing back-breaking work at twenty-below-zero temperatures.”

Victims of these camps often succumbed to fatal diseases such as malaria and typhus, or simply froze or starved to death due to the climate or malnutrition.

After their marriage, the couple fled to Czechoslovakia to escape the Poles that, according to Dr. Amsterdam “were determined to finish whatever Hitler didn’t.” Later, they arrived in an American-controlled zone in Austria before journeying to America, where they eventually settled and raised a family. Ela currently lives in Cleveland.

“They never complained,” Dr. Amsterdam revealed about his parents. “I feel a responsibility to carry the Jewish religion and traditions on, because people like my parents went through so much for it.

They lived and died for it.”

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erta Baitch was born in Vienna, Austria in 1933. After Herta’s father died of illness he contracted while working in the labor camp, her mother sent her away to the United States. She left at the age of seven with a group called the German Jewish Children’s Aid Society. The organization could only take eight children at a time, which made it incredibly difficult to be included in the program. Herta was placed in multiple foster homes in Baltimore as she grew up. She learned to speak English within the first six months of her first foster home, but was sent to a new home when the mother gave birth to another child. The second home was in Forrest Park and the mother of the house had a chronic illness. Herta worked with her foster sister, Beverly, always keeping the house clean and working in the father’s grocery store. Herta graduated from Forrest Park High School, took business courses at 18, and met her husband while working for a pediatrician. Together they had three children and seven grandchildren.

Recently, Herta found out her mother was taken to a concentration camp and killed in December of 1942.

She also found a few of the other children that travelled with her from Austria who were still alive and could recall the great struggle they each experienced.

achel Bodner, born in Antwerp, Belgium on May 19, 1927, is the second of three sisters. In May 1940, as the Nazis entered Belgium, Rachel and her family attempted to flee to Paris but ended up in a town called Arras, not far from the Belgian border.

The Germans, aiming to destroy a French army train, accidentally bombed the train on which Rachel, her mother, and her sisters were travelling, resulting in their eventual separation in the ensuing chaos (though they later reunited on the way back to Belgium). While Rachel’s parents, Israel and Rosa Rozenfeld, hid in the home of a resistance fighter in 1942, Rachel and her younger sister spent the war in a convent run by Mother Ligori, a Righteous Gentile responsible for saving 17 Jewish lives during the Shoah. Living as a Catholic under false pretense required an adjustment period, but Rachel met the challenge and survived. When asked today what we can learn from the Shoah, Rachel said that we should not just sit idly and let the world follow its course, but instead we should fight – to influence our fate rather than simply accepting it.

Ruth Ciker

Blanche Danick

Isak Danon

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uth Ciker was born in the town of Muhlhausen, Germany, living near 40 other Jewish families in the town of 40,000 people, where her family ran a dry goods store. Ruth was told that her brother would be leaving Germany with her aunt to come to America, and it came as a shock when, a few days before their departure on the SS Washington, her parents announced that she too, would be leaving Germany without them. “I guess they were scared to tell me,” she explained. “I was only 14.”

She and her brother joined their extended family in Baltimore, with the help of the Council of Jewish Women. Ruth’s parents, however, stayed in Muhlhausen until the pogroms became more frequent, and finally Kristallnacht occurred. That night, the inside of her synagogue was destroyed, although the outside was left intact. “They couldn’t burn the synagogue; it was too close to the houses.” Just after Kristallnacht, the Sturmabteilung, paramilitary police, broke into her parents’ house and arrested her father, who suffered from a chronic illness. He was brought to the Buchenwald concentration camp but released after four weeks – that is when he and his wife came to America to reunite with their children. Unfortunately, he died six weeks after his arrival in Baltimore.

“The only thing that kept him alive was bringing his wife, my mother, to the States.”

Ruth married, and had two children.

Years later, the synagogue that Ruth attended in Muhlhausen was restored, and she was invited to see the re-dedication. She brought her daughter, Terry Holzman, with her.

lanche Danick was separated from her family at the start of the war and hid out with nearby Christian farmers in Nobograd, Wolynsk, Ukraine. When she went to meet her parents, all she found was a letter telling her of her uncles’ location in Luck. Blanche tried to enter the ghetto in Luck, but was denied entry because the guards thought she wasn’t Jewish, a trait that would serve her well throughout the war.

With no place to turn, Blanche, then 17, lived out on the street until nuns took her into their convent. After uniting with her uncle’s wife, Blanche performed difficult physical labor, during which she suffered abuse.

On the day the ghetto would be closed and its inhabitants relocated, a German guard alerted Blanche, and she fled to the woods, seeking refuge in the barn of a friendly family. When arsonists burned the barn, Blanche fled and was captured by the Czechoslovakian police. She was then sent to Wittenberg, a work camp where 2,000 women were interned. When Blanche was freed by the Russians in 1945, only 60 women remained.

sak was born in 1929, and lived in Split, Yugoslavia with his parents and four sisters. When the war broke out, Italian forces occupied the area.

Isak and his father escaped to the mountains, his older sister joined the partisans, and his mother and younger sisters went into hiding.

Isak and his father found safety with the partisans in the Dalmatian Mountains. When the English invaded Italy, first his father and later Isak, made their way to Italy on PT boats. They met up with each other in the city of Lecce, which was now liberated by the allies. They made contact with his mother and younger sisters, and they took advantage of an offer by Roosevelt to bring 1,000 refugees to the U.S. for temporary asylum. They were brought by ship to New York, and then to Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY. This was the only effort by the US to shelter Jewish refugees during the war. A special measure by congress enabled them to become U.S. citizens after the war.

Finally, Blanche was liberated.

Malnourished and ill, she was sent to a hospital in Austria to recover.

Eventually, she made her way to Italy.

There she met a man who had lost his family. They married, had a son and a daughter, and moved to the United States, where they also became grandparents and great-grandparents.

“Plenty of times I got tired of suffering and hunger, and there were times when I was jealous of the people who were chosen for the gas chambers.”

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Reverend Yehudah Dickstein

Dr. Irvin Donick

Mayer and Irving Feldman

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ehudah Dickstein was born in Eastern Europe and was one of eight children. He is the only one of the siblings who survived the Shoah. As a young man he attended the Mir Yeshivah, one of the premier schools for Jewish higher learning.

When WWII broke out, and the Nazis advanced, it became clear that the Jews of Europe were destined for annihilation. At that moment a “Japanese Schindler” appeared, Chinue Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. Risking his family’s lives and his career, Sugihara issued over 6,000 visas for Jews, a move that saved the students of the Mir and Telshe yeshivot, among them Yehudah Dickstein. The Jews fled to Shanghai via the TransSiberian railroad, and they survived under difficult conditions. Nearly all their families in Europe perished.

In 1985, the State of Israel honored Sugihara as Righteous Among the Nations.

Yehudah remained in Shanghai from 1941 to 1949. He then came to the U.S., where he married Evelyn and raised a large family. He served as Ritual Director at the Rogers Avenue Synagogue for years. In 1965 he was recruited by Rabbi Goldman to join Chizuk Amuno, where he served with love and care until his retirement in 1999. He now lives in Atlanta with his daughter and many grandchildren.

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rvin Donick was born in the small town of Radzivilov, Poland in 1937.

When the Germans came in 1942, his family was moved into the ghetto.

Those people who couldn’t work, including Irv’s grandparents, were taken outside the town and killed. In order to escape the ghetto, his father paid off a Ukrainian man who helped him secure a place for his family to live outside the town just two days before the ghetto was liquidated, and its occupants sent to Auschwitz.

When the woman they were living with feared discovery, the family was forced to move, first to a field and later to a hole underneath horses in a barn owned by a schoolmate of Irv’s aunt.

When the Russians came into Poland in 1944, his family was able to come out of hiding but was not permitted to leave Poland, so they moved to Krakow. In a plan to escape, Irv’s father and his friend, Dov, acquired Russian uniforms and trucks through the black market, hired drivers, and hid with their families in the back of the trucks. They successfully crossed many borders, and then traveled by train, finally arriving in Germany, where they were sent to Nifrieman, a displaced persons camp. Later, Irv’s father established a leather factory and eventually the family immigrated to America.

ayer Feldman was born in Radzivillov, a city in western Ukraine, in the year 1934. He grew up surrounded by family. Before the war, his father was an important small-business owner and they lived a life of comfortable wealth. First, the Russians came into the city in 1939; they targeted capitalists and members of the intelligentsia – thankfully Mayer’s family was spared. However, Germans entered the city in June of 1941, and instantly began targeting the Jewish population. By 1942, the city had been turned into a ghetto, and the Jews divided into two groups “useful” and “non-useful.” Mayer’s family was deemed “useful.” The Nazi’s murdered the “non-useful” Jews during Passover of 1942, after which, Mayer’s family decided to try to escape the ghetto. Mayer and some extended family escaped during a work detail, and his mother travelled with a salesman. They all made their way to the nearby city of Brody.

Then the Germans came to Brody and began to organize the gassing of all of the Jews. However, the family, more or less intact, was able to escape the murders and make their way to a farmhouse where they stayed until being liberated by the Russians on July 17, 1944.

Mayer also recounts how his younger brother, Irving, could not find work and had to stay in Radzivillov longer than Mayer. However, through the efforts of their grandmother, he was able to make his way to Brody shortly after Mayer arrived.

Monica Finkel

Monique Goss

Israel Gruzin

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onica Finkel was born in Vienna in 1932. Her parents finally decided to leave Austria after Kristallnacht, when they realized things were no longer safe for Jews.

Her family was one of many that paid a man in the Gestapo to take them out of the country. Her father left first, and arrived in Belgium safely. Next, on Christmas Eve of 1938, Monica, her mother, and her aunt walked through the freezing snow to the border of Belgium, along with twenty-some other Jews.

A bus took them to meet Monica’s father. Eventually, Monica’s mother obtained a domestic visa to enter England. She left in March, and Monica followed in July of 1939, leaving on a train from Brussels.

Unfortunately, her father and aunt weren’t able to get out of Belgium and her father was eventually killed in Auschwitz. Monica stayed in London through the rest of the war, where she experienced the Blitz first-hand.

She and her mother lived with a family in London; the daughter in the family remains Monica’s closest and oldest friend. Monica and her mother moved to the U.S. when she was 15, in 1948, to reunite with cousins who had also escaped.

onique Goss, born in Toulouse, France, in 1941, testified on behalf of her good friend, Leo Bretholtz z”l, before the Maryland General Assembly this past winter.

Opposing the Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais (SCNF) railroad company that once transported some 76,000 Holocaust victims to their deaths, Mrs. Goss spoke not only in Mr. Bretholz’s honor, but also in memory of her father, Julien Epstein, who traveled by an SCNF train to his death in 1943. The principle stock-holder in a light rail project set to begin in Maryland in 2015, SCNF workers cramped hundreds of Jews per cattle car without food or water, and minimal light. Meanwhile, Monique and her mother, Margaret sought refuge in Carbonne, France, on a farm owned by a gentile. In 1947, young Monique, her mother, her grandmother, and her greataunt immigrated to the United States and settled in New York.

Eventually, Monique’s mother, Margaret Epstein received a $7 per month compensation from the French government for her husband’s death, and, in 1999, the French awarded Mrs. Goss further monetary compensation. However, until the SCNF company agrees to pay its reparations to the American victims and second-generation survivors of the SCNF trains, Mrs. Goss will continue to seek justice for her father, for her friend Leo Bretholz z”l, and for the 76,000 others.

srael Gruzin, born in Slabodka, Lithuania, during Hanukkah of 1928, is the youngest of two brothers.

A reliable heder attendee throughout his childhood, along with his older brother, Yitzchak, Israel’s Jewish education came to an abrupt stop before his Bar Mitzvah when the Germans entered Lithuania. After fleeing to Dvinsk, Latvia, Israel’s family went into hiding back in Lithuania, avoiding capture by the Nazis because of his father’s fluency in the native tongue. However, after returning to the Slabodka ghetto, Israel and his family were taken to a forced labor camp at Red Castle, often the site of cruel beatings, and then to Landsberg and Dachau.

Along with his father and brother, Israel worked under forced labor conditions again. Near liberation, the Nazis running the camp started Israel, his father, and his brother on a death march, which ultimately culminated in their encounter with a group of U.S. soldiers and subsequent freedom. Israel spent 10 years after the war’s end in a displaced persons camp in Europe, after which he moved to the United States with his wife, Adele.

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Adele Gruzin

Nehemia Hampel

Ingrid Hess

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dele Gruzin (nee Miller), born near Lublin, Poland, is one of seven siblings. Only five years old when the Germans invaded Poland in autumn 1939, Adele joined four of her siblings with her parents on the steppes of Siberia, the cold, desolate destination of their banishment at the hands of the Russians. None of her oldest three brothers, who lived over 600 km away, survived—the oldest fought in Leningrad in 1942-1943, a brutal battle almost entirely devoid of survivors. Adele, her three remaining siblings, and her parents were then sent to Uzbekistan for the duration of the war, after which they bounced around Europe (Poland, Berlin, Bavaria) until they ended up in the same displaced persons camp that held Israel Gruzin.

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he Nazis entered Poland in 1939 and forced the Jews into ghettos.

Among those destined for the Radomsko ghetto were the parentsto-be of Nehemia Hampel.

Nehemia’s father was a physician who studied in France because, at the time, Jews were not permitted to attend medical school in Poland.

In 1939, on the eve of WWII, his father returned to Poland to marry Nehemia’s mother. His father and mother had been planning to leave Poland, but it was too late for them to escape. In the ghetto, they had a son, Nehemia.

Nehemia’s maternal grandfather owned a wood mill and bought wood from a Duke in town who owned land. This Duke helped Nehemia’s family escape from the ghetto and acquire a home in a neighboring town. Nehemia’s family quickly assimilated into the population of the new town with the help of the Duke’s wife. No one in the town suspected anything because Nehemia’s father spoke French, German, and Polish and this was an extremely uncommon skill for a Jew at the time. When the war ended and the borders were closed, Nehemia’s father was able to get help from the French to acquire papers, and his family moved to Paris.

In 1947, his family went to Palestine as French tourists. When they arrived, they received papers from the Haganah stating that his family had always lived in Palestine.

ngrid Hess was born on July 29, 1927 in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1942, at 14 years old, she and her family of five were taken to Auschwitz. After one year, Ingrid was separated from her family and taken to another concentration camp. She was put to work in a factory making ammunitions for the soldiers. She went to three different concentration camps in three years until she was liberated by Russian soldiers. Soon after, Ingrid was taken back to where she originally lived, but her house was destroyed. For a short time she lived with her neighbors, but in 1946 was taken by her uncle to America, where she met her husband Julius one year later. She was still with her younger brother and sister at this time but her other brother had died in Auschwitz.

Lotte Holzman

Bernice Horon

Anna Jacobs

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otte Holzman came to the U.S. in December of 1937, when she was only six years old. Her father was a cattle dealer, and had been feeling the effects of anti-Semitism in his business, so he and his family decided to leave their small village of Ober-Ramstadt, Germany. Lotte, her mother and father, and her mother’s sister’s family all came to the States. However, Lotte’s grandparents stayed in Germany, and were sent to concentration camps. Lotte started public school without any English.

After about a month, she spoke it fluently, and even spoke it at home so that her parents could learn, too.

Her father worked at the Schreiber Brothers’ butchery, and her mother began to work in a sewing factory.

Her family subscribed to the New York German paper, Aufbau, which published lists of survivors after the war. Her family was overjoyed and surprised to see her grandfather’s name on the list. Lotte now has three children, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

ernice Bram was born on April 16, 1924 in Czestochowa, Poland. She was in the Czestochowa ghetto and the Hasag slave labor camp. In 1944, she was transferred to Ravensbruck, a women’s camp in Germany. Toward the end of the war she was placed onto a cattle car. When the train finally stopped and the prisoners were permitted to disembark, Bernice and the others learned that the war was over.

She then went to a displaced persons camp in Sweden. It was there that she met her husband to be, Ira Haron.

They were both from Czestochowa and, ironically, their childhood homes were only a few blocks apart.

Bernice came to the U.S. in 1948 and was joined soon thereafter by her husband.

n 1923, Anna Jacobs was born in Wloclawek, Poland and grew up in a big, largely observant family. In 1939, the Germans took the city, arrested many people, and burned down the synagogues and chapels.

After the Germans came, the family escaped to Warsaw, which at this point was not yet a ghetto. She was able to survive there for some time, even after the ghetto was established.

At age 16, she escaped the ghetto by being pushed over the wall into a Polish section. From the city she made her way to small town where she was able to stay. However, once again, the Germans came and she was captured. She was sent to work camp where, for three years, she made ammunition. With Russian encroachment imminent, the Nazi’s liquidated the camp and she was sent elsewhere. In January of 1945, she was liberated by the Russians. After the war she lived in Poland for a while, but due to anti-Semitism, she made her way to Germany, where an organization sent her to New York City in 1951.

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Howard and Esther Kaidanow

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sther Kaidanow, youngest of four siblings, lived in the town of Split, in former Yugoslavia. Split was an accepting town and Esther was not aware of prejudice until 1941, when the Italian Fascists took control.

Immediately, her older sister joined the Partisans in the mountains. “It was hard for Jews, but livable.” What little food that existed was rationed, but Jews were sent to the back of the line, and there was often no bread left. A neighbor warned Esther that the men would be taken by the Germans the following morning. Her brother, Isak Danon, and father fled to join the Partisan resistances.

Between 1941 and 1944, there were air raids and bombardments. Again, a gentile neighbor alerted Esther that women and children would be taken, and she, her mother, and her sister Sarah, also joined the resistance in the mountains. After months of hiding during the day and moving during the night, walking through thirst and hunger, they arrived at the ocean, hoping to be brought to liberated areas of Italy. Instead, they were brought to the displaced persons camp in Bari. There they connected with her father and brother. The five of them boarded the Henry Gibbons ship with 1,000 other refugees and came to New Jersey as “guests” of Eleanor Roosevelt. Once in the U.S, they were sent to yet another displaced persons camp in Fort Ontario and made to sign an agreement promising they would return to their country of origin.

After navigating politics and quotas, they were allowed to stay. Esther met another survivor, Howard, and they happily married.

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Irene Starkova Lebovic

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oward Kaidanow was born in Belarus, grew up comfortably in a middle class family and attended a Jewish day school. Howard immediately began to feel the effects of anti-Semitism in 1939 as a young child, when the Soviet occupation began. In June of 1941, the Nazi party took over, and Howard was forced to wear a yellow star marking him as a Jew, his family was told they had to give up all their gold, he wasn’t allowed to walk in the streets, and many local Jewish women were raped repeatedly. On April 28, 1942, both of Howard’s parents were killed, but Howard and his younger brother, Yehudah, hid and survived. In the night, they escaped into a neighboring village, where he stayed hidden with 25 other people in a secret room in his uncle’s house.

After running out of food and other supplies, the group crawled in the middle of the night into the woods.

For the next two years, Howard lived in the woods, living off the land and protecting his brother. Eventually, a group of Partisans came through the woods and befriended Howard.

This prompted him to steal a gun off a Nazi policeman and join the Partisans. He was only thirteen.

In July of 1944, liberation came.

Howard spent a while in displaced persons camps. He came to the U.S., met his wife, Esther, in New York City, and moved to Baltimore in 1968.

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rene Starkova Lebovic, born in Perbinik, Slovakia, near the Hungarian border, in 1926, was the youngest of five daughters. Her father, a grocer, and her Hungarian mother moved the family to a larger town in Hungary, Uzgorod, ultimately the site of the outbreak of World War II. When Czechoslovakia was handed to Germany, Irene and the rest of her family went into hiding with false papers in Budapest; her one sister who remained was sent to Auschwitz and perished.

While in Budapest, Irene and her family endured numerous close calls with the Nazis, and at one point fled as the Nazi’s gathered the women in the city – all who obeyed the summons were sent to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Irene and much of her nuclear family managed to avoid capture and concentration camps for the entire duration of the Shoah. After the war, Irene and her husband married in Czechoslovakia and moved to Rome, and from there made aliyah. After two years in Israel, Irene and her husband moved to North America, first to Montreal and then later to Detroit. She taught her children from early childhood not to hate, to defend Judaism and to maintain it, and to respect differences in others.

Max Lerner

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ax Lerner was born on September 4, 1924 in Vienna, Austria. In May of 1938, Max’s father went to the Czechoslovak embassy and obtained four valid Czechoslovakian passports for his family. On May 20, 1938, Max and his family took the overnight train to Paris where they stayed in a small hotel. After some time in Paris, his family began to understand that they would need to leave Europe, but they were not successful in obtaining visas.

In the summer of 1939, his family moved to Nice to be close to the Italian border for business reasons.

After Italy declared war on the side of Germany in 1940, his family took the overnight train back to Paris, but soon realized they had made a huge mistake. At the station in Paris, they found out the German army was to arrive in Paris momentarily and Max’s family decided to relocate to Bordeaux. In Bordeaux, they soon saw a German motorized column and decided to go south towards the Spanish border. When details of the

Renee Guntherz Neschis Armistice went public, his family knew they could no longer stay, and they returned to their apartment in Nice. One day, Max went by the U.S. consulate and found out that their quota number had been reached and they could go to the U.S. once they had received all the proper paper work and visas. Eventually, they reached Lisbon and, through hard work, ended up on the last ship to the U.S. before their visas expired.

After a 10 day voyage, Max and his family arrived in Brooklyn, NY. In September 1943, Max became an official U.S. citizen before he was shipped overseas for his military service. Upon his arrival in Ireland he was placed in the Intelligence and Reconnaissance division, which later became the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA.

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enee was born in Vienna in 1934. Her father had a major position with I G Farber, a major chemical company. When it was clear that there was no future for Jews in Austria, the family made its way to Shanghai via Genoa, Italy. They were able to take their wealth in the form of jewels that were hidden in Renee’s doll. Renee’s uncle, a jeweler, and her aunt joined them on this journey.

Although life was difficult in the Shanghai ghetto, the money they had managed to take with them enabled the family to have an ice box and running water, two luxuries that they shared with others. Renee, who spoke German, attended an English school, and thus became bilingual.

After the war, they came to the States, but were not permitted to enter, so they made their way to Palestine.

After a short time, they returned to Vienna. It was there that Renee met her husband to be, a teacher from the Bronx who was leading a student tour. They married in 1960, and she returned with him to the U.S.

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Robert Okonski

Erich Oppenheim

Minnie Osher

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n only child, Robert Okonski was born in 1937 in Berlin.

Berlin was no longer a safe place for Jews. Unfortunately, his father was beaten to death by the Germans before they could leave. In 1942, his mother took him with her to Paris to live with her father. When the Nazis took over Paris, they started rounding up the Jews, including Robert, his mother, and his grandfather.

In 1944, Robert was rescued by an organization founded by a Jewish doctor from Russia. He was sent to live with a minister in Switzerland, who actually sent him to a Hebrew school. He remained with that minister until the end of the war. At that time, the agency took out ads in the United States, and his aunt and uncle, who were living in Virginia, located him and brought him over to live with them. He later learned that his grandfather and uncle survived in France, but, unfortunately, his mother was killed in a concentration camp.

orn in Nentershausen, a small, 800-person village in Germany, Erich Oppenheim enjoyed his early childhood with his father, Isadore, his mother, Flora, his brothers, Manfred, Fritz, and Ludwig, and his sister, Berta. The day after he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in 1935, however, his childhood ended abruptly and irrevocably, as Erich and Manfred fled to the United States through the German Jewish Children’s Aid Society, never to see his parents and younger brothers again.

Mr. Oppenheim recalls the gradual progression of Nazi-driven terror throughout Germany in the years before his escape. Jewish families, threatened by the government, voted Hitler into power out of fear for their lives. German schoolchildren taunted their Jewish classmates, including Erich’s brother, Manfred, who asked to join in after-school play.

His father, the owner of a general store, eventually lost the majority of his customers, who could no longer patronize a Jewish businessman.

According to Mr. Oppenheim, the intense anti-Semitic attitudes of the general American public “made it very difficult for Jews to come here.” Through the German Jewish Children’s Aid Society and the support of several synagogue Sisterhoods (including Chizuk Amuno’s), the rescued children found foster homes throughout the country.

Mr. Oppenheim and his brother eventually moved from New York to Baltimore, where they reunited with their youngest sister, Berta, a kinder transport survivor.

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innie Osher was born in Lodz, Poland with a family of eight who ran a dairy store. The store’s business ended when Lodz was turned into a ghetto and the entire family was put to work making shoe covers for soldiers. Minnie’s mother and two of her siblings died during their time in the ghetto. Minnie was 13 when she and the rest of her family were taken to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, everyone had to stand in a straight line every morning as Dr. Mengela and other SS soldiers selected people to be killed. Minnie’s three sisters were taken to the gas chambers. She also met a cousin, Luba, who stayed with her from then on. Minnie was taken from camp to camp including Rosen, Dachau, and finally Bergen-Belsen. Minnie considers herself very fortunate as she came close to being shot for eating food stashed in a barn and for never being tattooed. Bergen-Belsen was a death camp and everyone was becoming sick with typhus, including Luba. After six months of being in the horrid conditions of the death camp, the cousins were rescued by British soldiers who liberated the camp. Minnie later went on to marry her husband in Munich, Germany.

After being there for two years, they had their first daughter and moved to New York. Minnie went on to have a large family with ten greatgrandchildren. Minnie is now 88 and stays in touch with her cousin, Luba.

Mieke Van Praag de la Parra

Pierre Pelech

Frieda Pertman

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Pierre came to Baltimore after the war, stayed for a year, and returned to France, where he pursued a career as a chef. He is alive and well in Palm Desert, CA where he is the chef/ owner of a renowned restaurant called “Chez Pierre.”

Together, they crossed the border into Russia where they were put to work in the Ural Mountains. In 1941, when Germany went to war with Russia, Russian soldiers took Frieda’s husband to a labor camp.

At the end of the war, reunited with her husband, they traveled back to Poland, and in 1957 they immigrated to Israel with their four children. In 1958, they arrived in Baltimore.

ieke was born in Holland.

At the beginning of the war, her parents divorced, and she and her sister, Els, remained with their mother, and stayed in the home of her maternal grandmother in Amsterdam. When Mieke’s mother was taken away by the Nazis, through sheer luck the children were not discovered. The family hid the sisters in different gentile homes. Since she was no longer married to a Jew, her mother managed to convince the authorities in Westerbork, a transit camp in Holland, that she should not be held prisoner, and after nine months she returned to Amsterdam where she was reunited with her daughters. Together, the three of them survived the harsh winter months.

ierre Pelech was born in 1942 in France to Dora Spatz Pelech and Bernhardt Pelech. His parents were fleeing the Nazis and were able to leave the child with nuns. His parents were both killed in a concentration camp. Pierre was later adopted by a French family. During the war, his aunts and uncle in America located him and sent CARE packages to the family.

rieda Pertman was born in 1917 in the town of Wohyn, Poland. At age 22, she went to work in Warsaw.

At the start of the war, in 1939, she walked back to her hometown which she found in ashes. While there she married an old friend.

Until recently, Mieke was president of the Liberal Jewish community in Amsterdam. Her grandson, Ethan Rushlow, is a student at KSDS.

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Rifka Pollack

R

ivka Pollack was born in 1921 in Transylvania, Romania. She was the fourth oldest of six children.

Before the war, her father died a young man due to illness. As a widow, her mother could not support the children, so she moved the family to Budapest, Hungary. In Budapest, at the age of 10, Rivka found work as a governess. When Budapest became a ghetto, the situation looked grim.

Fortunately the resistance was able to smuggle around 30 children into a nearby forest. They were located on a farm with a sympathetic gentile.

Unfortunately, some nearby people spotted the smoke coming from the cooking and turned them in to the Gestapo. The children were then taken back to the ghetto. Happily, the resistance was able to pay off the guards and the children were smuggled into a more secure part of the forest. This back and forth continued until the Russians came in the mid-1940s. The Russians

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Eva and Alex Raden requested that all of the young children be given to their care, however the resistance told them that they all had typhoid and the Russians allowed them to stay in Budapest.

Soon after, Rivka’s aunt found her and took her to Sighet. In 1952, Rivka met her husband and they were married the next year. In 1959, they moved to Israel.

Rivka’s husband also has an important story. He was captured early on and was forced to build trenches for the army. One night, it was raining heavily, so he and his friend decided to escape. Unfortunately, his friend was shot and killed, but he was able to escape. He made his way to the Russian camp, however they mistook him for a Hungarian spy. He was then sent to a Siberian gulag until 1947, when he was released.

Rivka still lives in Israel today. Her story was passed on through her daughter, Shuli Raffel.

A

lex Raden, along with his father, mother, and sister, lived in the Warsaw ghetto from its inception.

The family managed to escape before the Warsaw ghetto uprising and its subsequent liquidation. Through business connections he had made before the war, Alex’s father managed to find gentiles who were willing to take his family into their homes.

Alex went to such a home, where the family told people that he was their cousin. In 1945, Alex reunited with his mother and his sister, only to learn that his father, who had been passing himself off as a gentile, had been shot and killed just days before the war ended. In 1947, Alex immigrated to London where he studied for four and a half years at Yeshivas Toras Emet while waiting for a visa to America.

In 1951, he left London and arrived in New York where he continued his studies at Yeshivas Chaim Berlin.

Eva Raden was born in Puspokladany, Hungary. In 1944, Eva’s mother and her eight children were taken away by train. Eva never saw her father again.

Mrs. Raden remembers 80 people packed into one small compartment on the train with no bathroom.

After one week, the train arrived at the Strasshof concentration camp in Austria, where she recalls picking through the garbage cans for extra food. Miraculously, Mrs. Raden’s mother and her eight children spent the war together, the train to the concentration camp and the internment at Strasshof – and all survived. After the war, her brothers went to Belgium and eventually to America to learn at a yeshiva. She stayed in communist Hungary, studying at a Bais Yaakov school, before moving to Debrecen, Hungary where she taught in a Jewish school.

During the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956, she escaped Hungary, joining her siblings in New York. She attended Stern College at night and eventually taught at the Dov Revel Yeshiva.

Mr. and Mrs. Raden met at the Oceancrest Hotel at Rockaway Beach, NY where they both worked. They married in 1958. Eva taught at both the Rosenbloom Religious School and Krieger Schechter Day School.

Sara and Bernard Rosenthal

Bluma Shapiro

S

B

ara Rosenthal (nee Krieger), born in Warsaw on December 24, 1922, is one of four children.

She lived in Warsaw until the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto in 1939. Although her younger sister managed to spend the entire war with her, her older brother, a member of the Polish army at the outbreak of the war, died in combat.

Her father, Benyamin, passed away of cold exposure soon after the Nazis forced the family to leave their home.

Because of her traditionally ‘unJewish’ appearance (at least, according to the Nazis’ definition—she had light hair and light-colored eyes), Sara managed to sneak outside the ghetto to barter for food for the family.

Eventually, after becoming unable to provide for themselves and entering dire straits, she and her younger sister, Rachel, posed as Polish non-Jews (her alias was Wajawa Siec) and entered a German forced-labor camp. Sara and her sister spent four years this way, manufacturing torpedoes from 1941 until the war’s end in 1945. She now lives in Baltimore with her husband Bernard Rosenthal, also a survivor.

luma Shapiro was born into a middle class family in the small town of Bialystok, Poland. Attending a private Jewish school, she felt very little anti-Semitism growing up.

When Germany occupied Bialystok in 1941, Bluma was placed in the local ghetto, but managed to obtain a job working for a Righteous Gentile outside of the ghetto. The ghetto closed in 1943 and Bluma never saw her parents or five siblings again.

She was taken to the Majdanek concentration camp. She worked in a sewing factory, and was eventually admitted to the hospital while suffering from pneumonia.

In 1944, when the Majdanek camp closed, Bluma was sent to Auschwitz. When Auschwitz closed, Bluma joined thousands of other prisoners in a death march that led her to Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp. The Russian army liberated Bluma in May of 1945. After a brief stay in her hometown, Bluma met her husband, Philip, and moved with him to a displaced persons camp in Austria in 1946. They finally emigrated to the U.S. in 1949.

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Frieda Shualy

Helen Silber

Mania Smith

F

H

M

reida Shualy was born on October 19, 1923 in the town of Cernowitz, Romania. At the age of 16, Freida got married and six months later the Germans invaded and exiled the people of the town.

Freida and her family spent four years traveling the backroads of Ukraine, going from town to town, struggling to find work and shelter. She would sneak into local communities for food and occasionally find work at farmer’s houses. During the first winter of this difficult time, Freida’s father was killed right in front of her.

In 1944, when the Russians took over in Ukraine, her family decided to join the Czech army rather than the Russian army due to rumors of greater anti-Semitism in the Russian army. In the army, she worked as a seamstress, making uniforms. In 1948, Freida had her first child, Moshe, and fled Czechoslovakia when the Russians invaded that year.

She fled first to Belgium, then to Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and finally arrived in Israel in 1953.

In 1960, Freida and her two children immigrated to the U.S. to meet up with her husband who had arrived two years prior.

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elen Silber was born on March 12, 1929 in Krakow, Poland.

When she was 10, the Nazis forced the Jews into a ghetto. The Nazis began sending people to labor camps, including Helen’s older brother and sister. Helen’s mother sent Helen away. Helen’s parents and two younger siblings were murdered by the Nazis after she was sent away.

One day, some German officers came and picked a few women, including Helen, to go work in Schindler’s factory.

In 1944, the factory was supposed to move to Czechoslovakia, and she and the other factory workers were supposed to move with it. However, the train arrived at Auschwitz instead.

And then, a miracle. One night, a German officer came to Auschwitz with Schindler’s list of protected employees. Helen was once again put on a train, which successfully made it to Czechoslovakia. Thanks to Schindler’s list, Helen and about 1,200 other Jews were saved from the Nazi death camps.

ania was born in Purka, Poland to an Orthodox family. She was one of seven children, and, because her appearance allowed her to pass as a gentile, she was the only one of her family to survive. A friend suggested that she could save herself by pretending to be a Christian and volunteering to work in Germany.

She boarded the train, but soon returned to her home village, afraid that she would be discovered. She wandered from village to village, and hid in the forest. At one point she was arrested, but was able to escape.

She saw a priest, presented herself as a Christian orphan, and he put her on a farm, where she worked for the next two years. After the war, she returned home and found some family friends.

After three years in a displaced persons camp in Germany, she came to the United States.

Leo and Henny Stern

L

eo and Henny lived their lives in parallel for many years before meeting. Both grew up in small German towns – Leo in Jesberg, and Henny in Frechen, both their fathers worked as butchers, and both worked with fabrics when they made it to New York City – Leo as an upholsterer and Henny as a seamstress.

In 1938, Leo’s family perceived that trouble was coming, and they applied for and received immigration status and came to the U.S. with their extended family. At the same time, Henny’s family soon assumed that life would return to normal and that the political unrest would pass. A wake up call came with Kristallnacht; the family store was destroyed and they were forced into hiding, at which point they filed for visas. Henny herself was hiding in the attic of relatives with other young children, when she caught scarlet fever, and thankfully was hospitalized and cared for.

While Henny was recovering, two visas arrived, allowing only part of the family to leave. Despite Henny’s illness, her family decided to send Henny, who was 18, to the United States with her brother, who was 23.

The siblings arrived in New York City and Henny traveled to Baltimore to meet her only family in the USA. She quickly left for New York where she worked as a seamstress, with the two siblings looking out for one another,

Marion Stern Straus and writing to their parents back in Germany until the letters stopped coming. On New Year’s Eve of 1941, she met Leo. A few months later Leo was drafted into the war, but before leaving, he proposed to Henny, who turned him down, saying she couldn’t lose Leo and her parents. Leo was trained as a dental assistant at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, DC and then was shipped to Western Europe where he was a part of a supporting medical team. Leo and Henny’s only child, Barney Stern, said thankfully, “His high intelligence kept him off the front lines and saved his life.”

When he returned home in 1945 at the end of the war, he and Henny were married. Years later, Barney confirmed that Henny’s parents were shot and buried in mass graves alongside a railroad line, presumably on their way to a concentration camp. Barney told me that this news came as relief to Henny – she now knew her parents never suffered in concentration camps.

Barney mentioned that Leo and Henny’s experiences and survivorship resulted in their deep belief in education, which allowed Barney, as a second generation immigrant, to achieve his own dreams. Leo and Henny celebrated their 68th anniversary together this past March.

M

arion Stern Straus was born to a banker and housekeeper in 1931 in Frankfurt, Germany. They lived near an Orthodox community, and her father led services in a small nearby shul. When she could not attend her school any longer due to being Jewish, she had to take a bus to another school, which had only one classroom for Jews. One day when she was six years old, the teacher said that the Jewish children had to go home.

Her family gathered and hoped that her father, a World War I hero, would not be persecuted. However, the SS came and rounded up the uncles and her father. Later, her father was able to return home and soon thereafter, she was put on a kinder transport to Holland. Her parents also were able to get to Holland, but were captured and murdered at Auschwitz. All she had was a bag and a small doll.

From Holland the children boarded a ship to England, landing in South Hampton. She went to an Orthodox children’s hostel and she did not feel comfortable there. When the fighting in Europe worsened, she was evacuated from the hostel and sent to Stotford, England, where she was welcomed into a non-Jewish family. She relates that she was happy there, but they were too close to a munitions factory, so they were evacuated. She was relocated to a small cramped community, but she hated it there and was able to move in with her aunt and uncle and remain with them until the conclusion of the war. They came to the United States in 1947, starting in New York and New Jersey, and then, at the prodding of old family friends from Frankfurt, they moved to Baltimore.

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Rubin Sztajer

Dr. Henry Tyrangiel

Survivors

orn in Klobuck, Poland, on February 28, 1926, Rubin Sztajer grew up in a large, religiously observant family of eight. His father, Icek, worked in the fish business, while his mother, Hindl, tended to their home and the children. On April 12, 1942, at age 16, three German soldiers seized Rubin from his home in Klobuck; he ultimately survived six different concentration camps across Europe before the Allied Forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945.

B

L

e would like to acknowledge the following survivors whose individual stories we do not have. We honor them as well as the countless other survivors who also have incredible stories:

“I was in hell,” he explains sadly.

One day, after Leon attempted to trade raisins for goods with a nearby community, the Russian government seized him as a prisoner of war and transported him to a gulag, a forced labor camp where inmates completed slave-labor tasks with minimal food.

He would spend the next five years imprisoned there while his wife struggled for food and money to keep herself and their son alive.

Mr. Sztajer credits his unlikely survival to sheer luck and determination. His older siblings, Sam and Gussie, also survived, while his parents and younger siblings Yosef, Yiska, and Charnia, perished.

One lone framed photograph remains from his house in Poland.

Today, Mr. Sztajer continues to speak about his horrific experiences to large audiences throughout the state of Maryland. Last year, he recounted his Holocaust testimony before seventy different schools.

“Don’t ever, ever give up,” he advises every audience. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

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eon and Chanah Tyrangiel and their young son, Henry, resided in Eastern Poland when the Russian government assumed control of their homeland. To prepare for battle, the Russians began clearing fields and open spaces for their trenches, transporting the displaced persons via train across Russia to Muslimdominated areas all the way east. As a result, Leon, Chanah, and Henry moved to a resettlement location in Muslimist Buchara, an impoverished, cramped village community of tents.

In 1945, Leon and his family reunited and began to search for their missing family members. Fearful for their son’s safety, young Henry’s parents deposited him in a Polish orphanage. Unbeknownst to them, during the week they spent abroad, the orphanage relocated to western Germany, where six-year-old Henry would spend the next 14 months without his parents. Eventually, the family would reunite once more, and relocate to Israel.

W

Lola Lewinsky Morris Rosen Lottie Steinberg

In Memoriam z”l Leo Bretholz

L

ast month, on March 6, we lost Leo Bretholz. He was scheduled to be part of our Chizuk Amuno Holocaust Remembrance Service today. He was also to testify in Annapolis in regard to the French train company which transported thousands of Jews to death camps. He was dedicated to the cause of teaching about the Holocaust, traveling all over the U.S. and abroad to speak to diverse audiences including college and grade school students. An eloquent speaker, Leo was sensitive to the feelings of his audiences, even using humor when appropriate.

is a documentary film describing his work with students. Leo was born in Vienna, Austria and in 1938, at age 17, his mother insisted he try to leave Austria. One cold, dark night, he swam across the Sauer River and made his way across Europe to Belgium. From there he fled the Nazis to Southern France and joined the Resistance. He was captured and placed on a cattle car to Auschwitz. Miraculously, he and another youth worked through the night to bend bars on a small window and then they jumped from the moving train. At one time he collapsed and was taken to a hospital in France where he underwent Leo’s story is documented in his surgery. There he was protected by book, written with Michael Olesker, a nun, Sister Joan D’Arc. Just a few Leap Into Darkness, which has been translated into several languages. There years ago, Leo returned to France and

located her in a nursing home. She was ninety-nine years old and still remembered him.

Leo came to Baltimore in 1947 and married his beloved Flo in 1952. They had three children, Myron, Denise, and Edie. In 1962, he learned of the terrible fate of his mother and two sisters in Auschwitz. He was crushed by the loss of his beloved Florine in 2009 by leukemia, but continued to speak, teach, and testify. Those of us who were fortunate to know Leo remember an incredibly smart, eloquent, and energetic man with a wonderful sense of humor. We are all grateful for his commitment to educating the world about the Holocaust.

Nina Lederkremer

N

ina Lederkremer was a teacher here at Chizuk Amuno for many years. She was beloved by the children, their parents, and her colleagues for her gentle and smiling manner, her obvious love and dedication to her pupils, and her passion for Judaism.

In her oral history, she describes a

comfortable life in Poland. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, she moved alone through Europe and Asia, was imprisoned, changed identities, and escaped from place to place. She lost her entire family in the Holocaust.

She married Jack Lederkremer, also from Poland. Having no children of

her own, she nurtured generations of students at Chizuk Amuno. Her message to them in her own words was, “Be proud and knowledgeable Jews. For us, ignorance is a luxury we cannot allow. That’s my message, kinderlach. We must learn.”

later, Sigi Strauss would become the fifteenth president of Chizuk Amuno.

the United Synagogue of America.

He served on the executive committee of the United Synagogue Seaboard Region. He was married to Lucille (Cille), and had a son and two daughters. He died on July 10, 1988 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Sigi Strauss

I

n 1936, heeding the call of Henrietta Szold to try to save the Jewish children of Europe, Julia Strauss, the daughter of Chizuk Amuno’s fifth president, Dr. Harry Friedenwald, together with her husband, Meyer Strauss, adopted two teenage brothers from Chemnitz, Germany, Siegfried and Manfred. More than 40 years

Sigi, who owned a wholesale dry goods business, was a founder of our Solomon Schechter Day School, and active in the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland, Mercaz, the World Council of Synagogues, and

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We Remember z�l Berta Bernstein Labala Bernstein Andor Blum Julius Blum Leo Bretholtz Boris Brick Etta (Leikach) Brynn Daniel Carasso Rena (Gani) Carasso Baila (Goldseker) Collidge Aaron Danon and 2 children Blanka Danon David Danon Hanah Danon Heskiya Danon and children Isak Danon Jacob Danon and children Joseph Danon Solomon Danon and 3 children Hans Deutscher Jacob Deutscher Nathan Deutscher David Diamond Benjamin Dolinko Chana Dolinko Lea Dolinko Tibel Dolinko Jack Donick Jacob Donick Nina (Spitzglass) Donick Shirley Donick Karl Drobny Mark (Mendel) Eigenberg Julian Epstein Rivka (Pateka) Fain Joel Filar Genia Fischelberg Isaak Fischelberg Mira Fischelberg Rose (Kass) Franklin 18

Raise Dov Ber Fuchs Abraham Glazer Rosa Glazer Ben Glaun Regina Gluck Rochel Gluck Louis Goldstein David Granat Erika Greenblum Griffel (Nagel) Beila Wolf Griffel Charma Goldseker Gruber Faige Gurevitz and Chaim Zaiman Gurevitz Jean Gurevitz Grete Gutherz Josef Gutherz Magda Hafter Gittle (Genster) Held Yetti Held Fred Hittman Ira Horon Jack Jacobs Erna Junker Fred Junker Charlotte Starkova Jurovich Regina Kabiljo and children Arie Kabiljo Jacob Kabiljo Joseph Kabiljo Sida Kabiljo Hugo Kahn Irma Kahn Eliyahu Kaidanov Leib Kaidanov, his wife, and 3 children Moshe Avrum Kaidanov Sarah Freda Kaidanov Shimon Kaidanov Etka Kancyper

Feiga Kancyper Felitzia Kancyper Fradel Kancyper Jakob Kancyper Malka Kancyper Miriam Kancyper Rachel Kancyper Yisrael Kancyper Yusel Kancyper Channa (Pateka) Katz Chia Dubba Katz Gussie Kaufman Braco Klimpl Rachel Klimpl Victor Klimpl Ernest Kopstein Rose Krol Alter Chaim Lebovic David Lebovic Rifka (Solomon) Lebovic Nina Lederkramer Chana Leikach Dvossiah Leikach Leibish Leikach Moishe Leikach Nissel Leikach Tzinah Leikach Bertha Lerner Lifsha Lifshitz, her husband, and baby Rivka (Leikach) Lindenblatt Zivia Lubetkin Blimka Majer Chaika Majer Devorah Majer Fayga Majer Freida Majer Hershel Majer Lemel Majer Henry Malinger

Mira Malinger Golda (Birnbaum) Maroko Jerry Maroko Rubin Maroko Avram Meschulam Rita Meshulam Bukitza Montiljo Joseph Montiljo Sarah Montiljo Rosa Montiljo Hana Montiljo Claude Mugot Helmut Okonski Pessa Okonski Carl Osher Esther Osher Eva Osher Itzhak Osher Jacob Osher Luba Osher Muni Osher Pearl Osher Anna Pateka Boruch Pateka Eli Jay Pateka Isadore Pateka Tobi Pateka Yankel Pateka Yudel Pateka Bernhardt Pelech Dora Pelech Charles Pelta Sala Pelta Avraham Dov Pertman Ben Tzion Pertman Chaim Pertman Sara Devora Pertman Shmuel Pertman Debora Pfefer Iccuk Pfefer Malka Pfefer Yoina Pfefer Ruth Pollack

Pearl (Goldseker) Pressman Yitzchok Radinski Frima (Weinreb) Reiter Rachmiel Reiter Cheika (Pateka) Roizen Leib Rosen Nathan Rosen Rosa Rosen Moses Rosenberg Jacob Rosjanski Sara (Zuchowicki) Rosjanski Allan Rothman Bernard Rothman Julius Rothman Marty Rothman Sara Rothman Gisa Rothmensch Herschel Rothmensch Rosa Rothmensch Frieda Schmelzer Philip Schmelzer Edith Schreier Sigmund Schreier Bertha Schwelm Hilde Schwelm Max Schwelm Mordchai (Fuchs) Shualy David Silber Freida Silverman Moshe Sinkeich Michael (Zavilevich) Smith Rachel (Zavilevich) Smith Sol (Zavilevich) Smith Hanna Spatz Josef Spatz Peter Spatz Sussel Spatz Roche Spectre and Eli Spector Taibe Spector and Samuel Spector Devora Spiegel Abraham Stark Helene (Chaya) Klein Stark Kurt Steinberg

Dora Stern Helene Stern Herman Stern Isidore Stern Paula Stern Siegfried Stern Sigi Strauss Gesha Szapiro Mendel Szapiro Samuel Szapiro Shale Szapiro Sonia Szapiro Zalman Szapiro Hadassah Tauber Joseph Tauber Regina Tauber Arthur Trieger Helen Trieger Rae Turnofsky Michel Van Praag Erna (Kahn) Weiler Franziska Weiler Kurt Weiler Max Weiler Guta Weintraub Leon Weintraub Abraham Weitz Carl Weitz Joseph Weitz Max Weitz Wanda Weitz Ella Wilner David Yurovich Sylvia Yurovich Anna Zellermayer Eli Zellermayer Gusta Zellermayer Isadore Zellermayer Margeret Zellermayer Matzu Zellermayer Rose Zellermayer Salo Zellermayer Robert Ziegelstein

In compiling this list of victims, every effort has been made to ensure that it is accurate.

However, mistakes are always possible. Please accept our apology and notify Dr. Susan Vick of any corrections.

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We Express Our Gratitude to Those Who Dedicated Their Time to This Project

dax dcez

HONOR THE SURVIVORS, REMEMBER THE VICTIMS COMMITTEE Dr. Arthur Baitch

Heller Kreshtool

Erika Schon

Herta Baitch

Rita Plaut

Margie Simon

Leslee Gold

Rabbi Paul Schneider

Marlene Sussman

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COMMITTEE Dr. Arthur Baitch

Debby Hellman

Dr. Susan Vick

Herta Baitch

Heller Kreshtool

Frada Wall

Ann Betten

Rabbi Paul Schneider

Margot Zipper

Sarah Gratz

Margie Simon

INTERVIEWERS Aaron Gladstone

Matt Rosen

Rebecca Shapiro

Hallie Miller

Naomi Roswell

Solomon Swerling

Josh Schwartz

Our appreciation as well to: Herta and Dr. Arthur Baitch for their support of this program.

Dr. Steven Saltzberg, who trained our student volunteers, and to Mickey Simon and Leah Helman, for organizing the data.

Erika Schon and members of HaZamir Baltimore.

SYNAGOGUE LEADERSHIP Ronald J. Shulman, Rabbi Deborah Wechsler, Rabbi

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Dr. Paul D. Schneider, Rabbi Joel H. Zaiman, Rabbi Emeritus Emanuel C. Perlman, Hazzan

Dr. Moshe D. Shualy, Ritual Director Glenn S. Easton, Executive Director Shelly Malis, President

8100 Stevenson Road • Baltimore, Maryland 21208 • www.chizukamuno.org