HAKOL LEHIGH VALLEY The Voice of the Lehigh Valley Jewish Community
MARCH 2015 | ADAR/NISAN 5775
Denmark synagogue attack seen as ‘wake-up call’ By Cnaan Liphshiz Jewish Telegraphic Agency
SAM GLASER OPENS UP ahead of concert at the JCC on March 14. See page 7.
FROM BABIES TO BUBBIES Super Sunday touched so many lives. See pages 16-17.
From the window of the Jewish Community of Copenhagen’s crisis center, Finn Schwarz can see his country changing before his eyes. Hours after the slaying of a guard outside the Danish capital’s main synagogue early Feb. 15, two police officers toting machine guns were on patrol outside the center – a common sight in France, Belgium and other trouble spots for Jews, but which resistant authorities in Denmark had previously considered both excessive and unpalatable. “I think this attack was a wake-up call,” said Schwarz, a former community chairman who has lobbied the authorities for years, often in vain, for greater security. “What we have long feared happened and we will now see a changed Denmark. We have never seen this much security and guns before.” The deployment of armed officers at Jewish institutions came within hours of a shooting at a Copenhagen cafe where a caricaturist who had lampooned Islam was speaking. One person was killed at the cafe in what Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt called a terrorist attack. Later that night, Dan Uzan, a 37-year old volunteer security guard, was with two police officers at the Great Synagogue when a gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon, killing
Copenhagen’s main synagogue, where a guard was shot and killed on Feb. 15. Uzan and wounding the officers. The trio were standing guard over approximately 80 people who had gathered for a bat mitzvah celebration in a building behind the synagogue. Guests reportedly took shelter in the basement after the shooting and later were escorted out under heavy guard. Former community chairman Finn Schwarz says there is a gap of tens of thousands of dollars between the security funding sought by Danish Jews and what the government is offering. The attack comes amid an escalation in anti-Semitic incidents in Denmark, includ-
ing one this summer in which several individuals broke into a Jewish school just weeks after the conclusion of Israel’s seven-week conflict with Hamas in Gaza. No one was hurt in the incident, but some weeks earlier Jewish educators had instructed students not to wear yarmulkes or other identifying garments to school. “This reality and the attack hurt the Jewish community both by encouraging emigration and by forcing people to distance their children, for security reasons, from the Jewish community, its schools and institutions,” Schwarz said. Yet Danish authorities often
resisted requests for greater security measures, an issue that Rabbi Andrew Baker raised last September during a visit to Denmark in his capacity as the representative for combating anti-Semitism of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Noticing the absence of the sort of security arrangements familiar in Paris and Brussels, Baker asked Danish officials whether they were worried about an attack on Jewish institutions. “The officials I met recognized the risks but said that Denmark had a ‘relaxed approach to security,’ as one interlocutor put it, and that having armed police in front of buildings would be too disturbing to the population at large,” said Baker, who also serves as director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee. “I was taken aback because I never encountered in other countries this argument of rejecting security measures while fully acknowledging the threat,” Baker told JTA. “I left knowing it was only a matter of time before I got the call.” Schwarz said authorities had improved security around Jewish institutions after the slaying last month of four Jews at a kosher market near Paris. “I think the heavy security is good, but I’m also sad to see Denmark Continues on page 6
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In the year marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, leaders from Congregation Sons of Israel will transform their annual Purim Gala and honor Lehigh Valley Holocaust Survivors during “From Darkness to Light” at the Jewish Community Center of Allentown on Sunday, March 15, at 6 p.m. "It took tremendous strength for my family to return to normal life after the Holocaust,” said Eva Levitt, who as a very young child survived in hiding with her Non-Profit Organization
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mother. “We must all, Jews and non-Jews, show great strength and perseverance to prevent another Holocaust from occurring.” “This was the time to do this. I am very passionate about the need to show proper respect to our survivors,” said Harry Fisher, who is co-chairing this year’s event with Robert Simon and synagogue president Dr. Scott Brenner. After helping launch a Holocaust remembrance project in 2014 for The Morning Call, Fisher promoted the theme to the event’s committee, which included Brenner, Simon, Rabbi David Wilensky, survivor Regina Brenner, Sandra Preis, Judy Livny and Jordan Goldman. Allentown residents Julius and Roseanna Jacobs will be the guests of honor. Julius, who has dedicated a large part of his life to Holocaust education and prejudice reduction and previously served as the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley’s Holocaust Resource Center coordinator, was featured in The Morning Call’s report. Growing up in Lodz, Poland, Jacobs first learned of the Nazi invasion of Poland 10 days before his 14th birthday, after school one day
at a newsstand in his native city, The Morning Call reported in a story by Dan Sheehan and Samantha Marcus published on Julius and Roseanna Jacobs April 27, 2014. To begin with, toward his brother who would the invaders burned synagogues labor to survive, according to The and required Jews to wear yellow stars. With his parents Mailech and Morning Call report. The final words as their mother was led Ruth, and siblings Fred and Reaway had been for Fred to take gina, Julius was then marched into care of Julius. the Lodz Ghetto where the only Later, when Julius could go food was, as he told Sheehan and on no longer, he was again put in Marcus, "moldy bread, a couple of the line for death but, as Sheehan potatoes, whether they were good and Marcus quote him saying, or not.” “As I'm walking, I hear a loud Being appointed a mechanic’s scream from my brother. He said, helper eventually saved Julius’s 'Come back! They need mechanlife; still, like everyone else, he ics!'” became emaciated. With the infaThe two ended up in the mous terrors of the 1944 liquidation of the ghetto, the Jacobs fam- camp, Wobbelin, which was liberated on May 2, 1945. They were ily spent two weeks hiding in the attic of an abandoned cottage in a later reunited in the U.S. with their sister, and Julius married cemetery. Yet they were eventuRoseanna, who had survived an ally found. The night of the train Eastern European work camp. ride to Auschwitz was the last he spent with his parents, who were gassed upon arrival. Julius, too, had been selected but said that at Purim Gala the last moment “a jolt” sent him Continues on page 10
HARRY FISHER
Lehigh Valley Holocaust survivors to be honored at Sons of Israel’s Purim Gala