ORTHODOX ENDS, UNORTHODOX MEANS
The Role of the Vaad Hatzalah and Agudath Israel during the Holocaust
By David H. Kranzler

“The Orthodox were flexible in their approach and were thus able to adapt to conditions of ‘total war’ more readily than other Jewish groups…apparently it set the pace for other groups.”1
Professor Aryeh Tartakower (World Jewish Congress)

In this essay, the term “Orthodox” refers to two small Jewish organizations based in the United States: the Agudath Israel (The Agudah) and the Vaad Hatzalah. The Agudah, a branch of World Agudath Israel, began its work on refugee and immigration matters in 1938 in response to requests for rescue from Austria and Germany. It concentrated on obtaining sponsoring affidavits and visas for Orthodox Jews in occupied Europe. But it handled all requests that came its way, including those from the non-Orthodox.2

Read more here.

View from the parking lot

Majdanek was opened on October 1, 1941 as a P.O.W. camp, became a death camp and was captured intact by the Red Army on July 22, 1944.

Where we were

You had to be blind.

I sat in the back seat of the bus, behind Isaac and Karen. Charley was upfront with other folks from his hometown, Detroit. He and I had gone to Bergen-Belsen in 1985 together to protest when U. S. President Ronald Reagan went to Bitburg to lay a wreath on the graves of the Waffen S.S.

When we pulled out of Warsaw, only a few of us knew each other, and I huddled near the window, feeling alone. Camera in hand, I was waiting to see what I could see from the window of this time capsule, a rocket shaped bullet of a bus that sped through the countryside. You could glimpse a bit of antisemitic graffiti scrawled on the walls, but not as much as expected. (I saw more in London in 2000 than I saw on the way to Lublin in 2011.)

Once we left Warsaw city limits, it was as if there were no suburbs. We went from city to country in a heartbeat. Little hamlets lined the two-lane road, until we came to little towns, where the road signs at the major intersections pointed to Reszow, Chelm, Bialystok, Wroclaw (Breslov to the Hasidim of Reb NaNaNa Nachman) and back to Warsaw.

Fields and forests on the way to Lublin

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A glimpse of the woods where the ghosts live

This is not the way to literary Chelm

We arrived in Lublin, a crowded city, and Agnieshka pointed out the castle on the hill. It was the same castle where Eta Wrobel, one of my favorite and feisty survivors, was held by the Nazis and then escaped into the woods. (Eta was a partisan from Lukow, who’d been betrayed for forging work permits and other papers.)

The Castle/Prison on the hill

Gateway to Hell

It looked like we were the only busload of “tourists” in the place. A handful of people, speaking Polish, passed us by. I wandered off by myself. I didn’t like group pictures, and having listened to so many stories, seen so many photos (all in black and white of course), I didn’t think I really needed explanations of how a death camp worked.

I wandered into the disinfection showers, and pulled out a little prayer book I had “neglected” to give back to Isaac, who carried a few copies. I thought this would be as good a place as I could find for the moment, empty but for me, so I could whisper a few psalms for the health of my cousin, Libbie, in Jerusalem. Her dad had asked me to say prayers over the graves of our “great” ancestors—the “Gedolim,” the generations of religious leaders of the Jewish people for centuries before the Holocaust. As far as I was concerned, all those who were murdered in this terrifying place were Gedolim.

Disinfection

One Murdering Place of two

Where our people tried to live

Soon Charley (from Detroit), Isaac (from Boston), Karen (from Pine, Colorado) and the others walked in with the guide. We were led from the showers to two gas chambers—one run on diesel fuel and the other on Xyklon B. These were no underground gas chambers. They were right there, near the entrance to the camp. Welcome to Majdanek, welcome to the death factory, we have nothing to hide.

Tears ran free as we recited El Moleh Rachamim and Kaddish. It wouldn’t be the last time, not in that place or in others.

We moved on to the barracks—did I need to know the numbers? These barracks were not shades of gray, they were in trendy “earth tones,” which gave me a dose of cognitive dissonance. (That was going to happen a lot to all of us on this trip.) How many bodies were squeezed into each bunk? What rained down on you from the pallet above if its inhabitant did not live through the night? The stench would have been unimaginable, and the stove, the only source of heat, looked incredibly inefficient, so that people would freeze in the winters. The ventilation was minimal, so that people would suffocate in the summers. (The day we were there, the temperature was hovering in the 90s. and the sun was brutal.)

The gray gravel crunched underfoot and when we looked back, the massive monument looked smaller and less overbearing.

But we were nearing the crematorium, and the town of Lublin looked down at the camp with its implacable façade. I looked at Charley. He looked at me. “Do you watch HGTV?” I asked. “House Hunters International,” he said. “Rooms with a view,” I said. “Do they get a discount? Move to Lublin and get a view of rolling green fields? Beats me.”

What does it take to live here?

A place to pray

Inhumane Water Heater

The crematorium was ingenious. It was in perfect condition, as if you could go back to business on demand. The ovens were spotlessly clean, not an ash to be seen. The energy generated by them was used to heat water for the camp and officers’ quarters. Some asked what they used for fuel. “Coke,” said the guide.

“The real thing,” I murmured to myself, bitterly. Charley heard me and gave me a poke. “Let’s say Kaddish,” I responded. And we did.

As we were leaving, Charley and I looked out the back door of this place that was hell, at the blooming flower beds, in the bright sunshine, as the city’s windows stared back at us blankly, with the castle on the hill behind them.

So tastefully done.

I walked over to the “flying saucer” and looked down at tons of ashes and bits of bones. All that was left of those who passed through the gates of this place in my face was this pile of human remains, whose souls we could feel floating around us.

The Ashes of Our Families

We said Kaddish once again, I prayed for Libbie, and we left for the city to look for some hope.

Most Americans—even many American Jews—believe that we didn’t know. Many assume that we couldn’t have done anything even if we had known. Meet Peter Bergson! A Palestinian Jew who had served with the nationalist Irgun organization in pre-Israel Palestine, Peter Bergson (born Hillel Kook, 1915-2001), had come to the U.S. in 1940. In America, this firebrand led what came to be known as the Bergson Group, whose strenuous efforts from 1941 to 1945 underscore just how much was known—and how much could have been attempted during those difficult years. Sometimes vilified at the time, Bergson remains a controversial yet relatively obscure figure in the history of America and the Holocaust.

The only documentary to draw on both existing filmed interviews with Peter Bergson, Not Idly By provides the riveting first-hand testimony of the charismatic and eloquent Bergson, who comments on the response to the crisis by non-European Jews and describes the Bergson Group’s determined efforts to fight the Holocaust. This notably included the fiery 1943 production We Will Never Die by Ben Hecht and Kurt Weill (Madison Square Garden, Hollywood Bowl), presented extensively for the first time in the documentary. Yes, this is a one-sided view of those times: Peter Bergson’s. Isn’t it about time we gave further though to that side?

Center for Jewish History
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Further information: Not Idly By – Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust

Timely?

Fresh Headlines From the Crypt: ‘Bomb Auschwitz,’ Says Golda; FDR: No Way, by J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Daily Forward, Sept. 5, 2011
Pierre Sauvage’s response to the attack on the Bergson Group that is at the heart of the article:

Yes, Roosevelt was good for the Jews—the Jews of America. And yes, bringing a reluctant country into the war was a major Roosevelt accomplishment. And yes, to be sure, American Jews then did not have the power and self-confidence we acquired later.

But let’s start by being candid about the American response—and the American Jewish response—to the massacre of the Jews of Europe: we here all have skin in the game. We are talking, after all, about what our families did and didn’t do during that long crisis. The widespread and persistent eagerness to assert that “we didn’t know” and “we couldn’t have done anything even if we had known” is one measure of how powerful the taboo continues to be about the unacknowledged American experience of the Holocaust. J. J. Goldberg’s trivializing of the Bergson Group’s amazing determination to get the word out and to do something about it strikes me as merely a new attempt to keep the taboos in place.

As Peter Bergson puts it my documentary Not Idly By—Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust, “We couldn’t have stopped the Holocaust, we could have slowed the Holocaust, we could have made it an inefficient Holocaust. The people who made it efficient were the Allies who didn’t interfere. And the people who didn’t urge them to interfere were the [American] Jews.”

The fact is that we will never never know what might have been accomplished to rescue Jews in Europe since so little was attempted or even considered. For my part, I was born and sheltered in a tiny Christian area of France that defied the Nazis and turned itself into the very haven of refuge that America refused to be. My own life has thus taught me that collective will and action can be startlingly imaginative and dynamic even under the most trying circumstances. Where there’s a will, there is indeed often a way.

What the article also completely misses is that at this point, the discussion should be as much about us as it is about them. So many years later, are we at last willing to probe not only what happened here then, but our many evasions today about that experience? If we do not fully and forthrightly—and without smugness—acknowledge and dissect our share in past failures, are we not limiting our ability to act effectively in meeting the challenges of today and tomorrow?

Belatedly Recognizing Heroes of the Holocaust, The New York Times, Sunday, Aug. 7 (on the Bergson Group)
Bergson Group Activists Recognized At Yad Vashem-Wyman Conference, The Jewish Press, July 27, 2011
Historians Debate: Could More Jews Have Been Saved?, Jerusalem Post, July 17, 2011, on the Bergson Group conference at Yad Vashem on July 15 (excerpts from Not Idly By were shown)

Pierre Sauvage also draws on Not Idly By and the work-in-progress And Crown Thy Good: Varian Fry in Marseille in his illustrated lectures Learning Hope From the Holocaust: The Challenge To Us Of Holocaust Rescuers, and Did We Fight the Holocaust? Varian Fry and Peter Bergson.
Upcoming: Syracuse University, NY; York College, PA; Memphis, TN; Denver, CO.

My mother was furious. My friend’s mother forbade her to come altogether, and she obeyed her mother. But I was determined to go and my cousin in Jerusalem made it possible.

A few days after my trip was booked, I received a call from the North American Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and after an interview with Mr. Sigmund Rolat in New York, I learned I would be in Poland for 18 days—to learn about the country and to witness the I.B. Singer Festival in Warsaw while learning about the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, which sits atop what used to be the street where my mother and grandmother lived, in the Jewish Quarter that became the Warsaw Ghetto.

The welcome we received on Friday night in what I call the cocoon (the hotel that could be anywhere) was heartwarming. Stefanie Seltzer, the Federation president, opened the conference. The Israeli ambassador, Zvi Rav-Ner and American ambassador Lee Feinstein welcomed us, as did the mayor, really the President of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, along with Rabbi Michael Shudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, who was born in Queens, New York.

Stefanie Seltzer opens the Conference

Ambassador Feinstein was honest. He noted that Jews have a very long history in Poland, one that was complicated at times, in part because of Poland’s location in the so-called “bloodlands,” where great power competition too often brought out the worst in humanity. He described how the Jews found a home in a historically diverse and tolerant Poland, and established what was once the world’s largest Jewish community. He talked about how the Jewish people made vital and lasting contributions to Polish society and world civilization, including in the arts, science, and commerce. And of course, he explained how the Holocaust changed all that, and yet there were Poles who risked everything to save Jewish lives, giving Irena Sendler, who saved 2,500 children, as the classic example of a Righteous Person.

U.S. Ambassdor Lee Feinstein

He said that our conference was helping Poland re-discover its heritage and talked about the growing interest among Poles in exploring this history and embracing Jewish culture, mentioning the annual Jewish festivals in Warsaw and Krakow, noting that the embassy is playing an active role in supporting this renewed cooperation between Poles and Jews. (It is no secret that Poland is a strong ally of Israel at the EU.) He mentioned Holocaust education programs and the renovations and restorations of synagogues and cemeteries. And he described how President Obama came to Warsaw, and paid tribute to the Ghetto Fighters. He also noted that the U.S. President visited the new museum that is “rising from the ashes of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw to teach future generations about this rich history.” And, he admitted, there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.

Part of that work took place in our workshops, where we met our 2G brothers and sisters in Poland, many of us for the first time. I was blown away by the courage of the Polish 2Gs, some of them who never knew their parents were Jewish, and some from mixed marriages, who grew up thinking and feeling they were apart from their society, and yet didn’t know why. Yet in their heart of hearts, they felt they were different, and at these meetings, finally felt as if they had found “a home.”

They told us that Jewish life was being reborn in Poland. For the first time in 73 years, they were able to talk about being Jewish. A.D., a psychologist and leader of the Second Generation movement in Warsaw, explained how after the war, their parents’ couldn’t understand what happened, and then were hit with the double-whammy of communism. Many hid their Jewishness as a result, and never spoke of it until communism fell in 1989. For the first time since the war, they thought they could tell their children who they really are.

The meetings were welcoming to those who thought they were lost forever—and that is truly the story of Polish Jewry today. While the community is a tiny fraction of what it had once been, for the first time, these people feel safe when they say they are Jewish. While some are discovering Judaism, others are discovering their Polish-Jewish history. They credit Pope John Paul II with doing more to fight antisemitism in Poland than anyone else, and while there is still antisemitism, as the older generation dies off, and the children become educated, it becomes less virulent, less effective, particularly in a global society. Poles are learning about Jews and Judaism, and are seeing that the Jews were an integral part of their culture and society, perhaps often separated, but part of Poland’s history for almost 1,000 years.

As one Polish 2G said, “We are discovering our Jewish roots, and the Poles are discovering Jewish Polish history. This creates a synergy…but while we are getting really good at seeing and fighting antisemitism because we have to, we are not so good at finding friends and allies. We need to find common ground.”

“Imagine how different the world would have been if we could have taught our children and grandchildren our heritage and legacy. We are like the hidden Jews of New Mexico, and now we have the unprecedented chance to change our future,” said another.

Some are discovering pride in their Judaism, while others just want to blend in. Another 2G talked about how he was born to be like everyone else. Now he deals with survivors every day, but says that was a choice that he made…and yet had no choice in making it, because he owes it to those who were murdered. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to be swallowed by the Holocaust. He feels like Ulysseys, who couldn’t deal with the souls of those who died. “There are too many stories, and some of them scare me, but I cannot come home. I hate going to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I must go… Only my mother and grandmother survived and I hate to go to them with questions because of the looks on their faces…and still I try to extend my Jewish experience.”

A young woman talked about her father, who was in the underground. Her mother and grandmother survived, but avoiding talking altogether. Her father’s mother simply lied. But it was much easier for her to identify with her father, because he fought back instead of being trapped in the fear, shame and guilt that came from her mom. It took her a long time to be able to listen to the stories, and now she is discovering who she is.

These 2G/3G workshops also discussed the differences between those whose parents did not speak at all, and those who wanted their children to be their supporters, to use them as a tool for hating. It created complicated feelings when coping with their parents and was an important obstacle in the 2G acceptance and exploration of their Judaism.

A, who was born in 1947, was able to come to grips with her Judaism for the first time when she was 55 years old. She was self-motivated because she needed to find out who she was and accept her identity. It was hard for her to find herself in the shadow of the Holocaust, and she began with the story of her grandfather, who used to sing songs in Yiddish—and tell her he was singing old Army songs. He had a tiny Torah scroll that no one was permitted to touch, and she wanted him to read it to her. He said it did not contain stories for children. “If you hear them, when you are an adult, you will run away,” he told her.

Another woman was told as a child to forget Judaism, forget the Holocaust. She felt a pervasive loneliness, and was comforted by our presence. When she found out she was Jewish, she cried, and pleaded not to be told she was a Jew. Those fears and the feeling of being different ran deep, and it was scary. As one American 2G said to her, “It took something good to justify our survival, and if you want the third and fourth generations to be proud, you remind them that they come from a people who have perservered.”

In Poland, Jewish identity fluctuates. Many were raised in an environment loaded with high doses of antisemitism. As one Polish 2G put it, “It still exists, of course, and it depends where you live. Sometimes, when you tell your lifelong friends the truth, they treat you differently…it can be compared to other traumas, like those of mixed races who live in Zimbabwe.”

Yet on a personal level, they are finding each other and creating close, emotional bonds–just like the American and Israeli 2Gs did when they came together decades ago.

On Monday morning, the last day of Conference, those who attended the Yad Vashem ceremony to recognize the Righteous—Polish families who had risked their lives and families to save the lives of our parents, brothers and sisters—were reminded that good can triumph over evil, if people make difficult choices. The Israel ambassador, Zvi Rav-Ner spoke movingly and forcefully about those choices, and noted that there is a universal lesson in what these people did.

Israeli Ambassador Zvi Rav-Ner

“They made the right choices even though it was so painful… Today we honor those human beings that we have to respect and honor forever. ..Yet not everyone saved people and not everyone could, but there were those who made the honorable decision. When we ask why not everyone did that, [why] there were collaborators…when we put must also put this question to ourselves…would you have risked your own lives and the lives of your family to risk to save a neighbor or friend or even a stranger? These people have done it, and we are forever in debt to them and their families… The message for the future is universal—to prevent such situations anywhere, God forbid that we get into such situations… These people give us hope that we can still believe in people.”

Because I believe it is important to name names—victims, survivors, rescuers—to put a human face on the tragedies of the past, to bring understanding that these were just folks who found themselves in dire straits and made choiceless choices, I list them here. Survivors’ children often presented these awards to the children, grandchildren and relative of the rescuers, all of them now resting in peace.

Leo Hoffman presented the award to the son of the late Janina Bereska. Ewa Banaszczyk of Lodz, received the award for her late grandfather, Adolph Brauner. Lilka Rosenbaum-Elbaum presented the award to the granddaughter of the couple who rescued her family, Jadwiga and Adam Chorqzkiewicz. Mira Becker honored two sisters, Maria and Marianna Kazuczyk, and gave the award to their family members. Jozefa and Wilhelm Maj were honored with an award given to their adopted child, a survivor herself, Ida Paluch-Kersz. The daughter of Katarzyna and Stanislaw Swietlikowski, Maria Nadstawek, received the award for them, and a survivor’s daughter, Agnieszka Bater-Shupska, gave the award to the nephew of her parent’s rescuer, Agnieszka Troszka.

Some of the children of survivors recognize the rescuers of their families.

You will probably be able to find all their stories and many more on the Yad Vashem website, along with information on how to honor the righteous who saved your own family members.

And the next morning, a group of us left for Lublin and Krakow…code words for Majdanek and Auschwitz… more to come.

link to the Standard here: http://www.jstandard.com/content/item/building_his_hidden_past/19669

David Gold, co-author of “Why Should I Care?”
“Ethnic cleansing has been used throughout history as an excuse to preserve or create a cleaner, healthier, safer, stronger or purer way of life.

Good people must get rid of those who are not really people and using derogatory names is the first step in dehumanizing others. It’s the first step on a horrific road that makes extermination okay, because “they” are different, and the rules and rights attributed to “human beings” don’t need to apply to them.”

Jeanette Friedman and David Gold, in their new book “Why Should I Care?: Lessons From The Holocaust” (The Wordsmithy, LLC 2009) discuss how this type of thinking dehumanizes everyone and how this thought process can and often leads to the final step, because killing the “other” is not murder, it’s the right thing to do.

read more here

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SOUTH ORANGE — The auditorium at Jubillee Hall was filled November 14, 2010, as curious Seton Hall students, Jews (including Holocaust survivors and educators), Muslims and Christians came to hear Imam Abdullah Antepli describe how a trip he took to Auschwitz last August changed his life. He was one of the imams from the United States, all with large followings, who joined Reform Rabbi Jack Bemporad, of The Center for Interreligious Understanding in Carlstadt, New Jersey, on a trip to Poland and the death camp. The trip was the brainchild of an Orthodox Jew from Washington, DC, a former Republican presidential advisor and a professor of law at Catholic University, Marshall Breger.

The imam was born in Turkey, and after a few ice-breaking remarks, got very serious when he admitted that he was a recovering antisemite. He described how the myths in the forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, poison millions of children in the Islamic world. The book is given away for free in Islamic countries and has been translated into 14 Arab dialects. “It is very insidious,” he said. “It convinced us that there is something vile about the religion and something inherently wrong with Jews and Judaism, and I hated the Jews.

read more here.

So we sat down in front of our computers, clicked on Googletalk and together wrote Why Should I Care? Lessons from The Holocaust, a “living” book that is constantly revised on the Internet and in paperback; designed to grab young peoples’ attention and make them think about the world and their role in it.

For me, the journey began in Teaneck, New Jersey thirty-one years ago, during the first oil crisis. I drove my kids to nursery school and found swatiskas and antisemitc graffiti scrawled on the beige brickwork. I was furious, but there was no one to blame. Before 1979, relatively few people knew about the Holocaust, and more didn’t care. As the Jewish student advisor at William Paterson College, I decided I wanted to do a program for the kids.

In those days, Holocaust education was rare in any school system, Jewish or secular. There was scant material to use in classrooms. There were few statewide or national observances or commemorations. Teachers went to film catalogues and chose the shortest film they could find because they had just 40 minutes to make the point.

Most chose a 28-minute documentary by Alain Resnais called “Night and Fog.” But it closed down conversation. Piling horror on top of horror did not work. It’s even worse now—in the age of HDTV, hi-res violence, blood and gore hit student’s eyeballs daily and grainy black and white images from the past hardly moves them.

When Holocaust education was incorporated into national social studies standards, I realized students were getting too little too late. Already hard-wired for bullying and hatred, it was hard to undo damage by showing “Schindler’s List” and expect a paradigm shift in behavior and values. Today, there is erosion, misinterpretation, trivialization, and perhaps, worst of all, exploitation of the Holocaust as a fundraising tool and political bludgeon. So what good is studying the Holocaust if no one cares—or doesn’t know HOW to care?

In 1982, it already made sense to me to start in first grade with Disney’s “Dumbo the Elephant,” because it could be used to teach values and character—by showing that those designated as different can get hurt, especially if “good” people around them do nothing to stop it. I was told it was a desecration to think that way, but as time passed, I was convinced I was right and a little over three years ago, visited my old college buddy from Brooklyn, David Gold, when he was sitting shiva for his mother. We talked and decided to work together to create a new approach.

The perspective we offer in Why Should I Care? came from continued study and personal experience. He was a Judaic Studies instructor on the university level; served as Director of the National Commission on Youth for the American Jewish Congress; was a founding Director of The American Endowment School in Budapest, and served on the board of the Endowment for Democracy. In 1979 I founded Group Project for Holocaust Education which became Second Generation North Jersey, the first such group in the state. I was Second Generation Education Liaison to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and served on the first state commission on Holocaust Education in the nation, as well as the Goldberg Commission on American Jews and Rescue during the Holocaust. I was familiar with lots of the material being produced for classrooms.

At the same time, I was mothering three teenagers in New Milford High School, then a hotbed of bullying and antisemtism. That’s where my son Dan was barred from entering a classroom because a student decided “No Jews Allowed.” He was told he was going to hell for killing Jesus, and that Anne Frank’s diary was a lie. The principal told me the Holocaust was a matter of opinion, and what did I mean the Jews didn’t kill Jesus? Fifteen years after the state made teaching the Holocaust mandatory, my son’s classmates sneered their way through “Schindler’s List.”

That had to change. David and I realized we needed to use students’ vernacular and the context of their lives to break through their cynicism. With brand-new media and communication tools at our disposal, we wanted to reach students imbedded in pop culture and the Internet. And so we link to hundreds of sites that make points true to the legacy the Holocaust survivors want to leave behind. We use a cultural framework they understand.
At its worst, Holocaust education creates disdain for Jewish people, ramps up the Victim Olympics, and creates old fashioned antisemitism with a modern twist—the exact opposite of what the survivors want. At its best, the result is a caring, responsible human being who understands what the Holocaust really stands for.

Why Should I Care? is written in short takes that show how the unprecedented Holocaust reappears on a smaller scale in genocides today. We use Borat and Bono, the National Geographic Genome Project, Harry Potter, and genocide survivors’ stories as means to engage students, to get them to think critically and challenge them to care.

Yes, academic research and documentation of the Holocaust must continue—for the scholars are the engines that generate the stories containing the values needed to “repair” the world. They allow us to translate that material into language, form and perspective that works for students, survivors and people of good will.

There may be those who disagree, but David and I believe “Never Again” is not a slogan for Jews only. And Why Should I Care? is written precisely to make that point.

On the day after Halloween in 1979, Jeanette Friedman Sieradski was dropping off her children for pre-school at B’Nai Yeshurun when she saw that the synagogue had been defaced with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti.

Friedman, whose parents survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, was appalled. But the experience changed her life, marking the beginning of three decades of Holocaust research and education.

Soon after the encounter, Friedman, an Ogden Avenue resident at the time, founded the first Second Generation Group of the children of Holocaust survivors in New Jersey. In 1980, she was appointed by Gov. Thomas Kean to the New Jersey Holocaust Education Commission. Locally, she began working with former Teaneck social studies teacher Ed Reynolds to revise the Holocaust curriculum used in the schools.

At the time, Teaneck schools used the Teaneck-Vineland curriculum, which Friedman found objectionable.

“They were using a Lenny Bruce poem and having kids do role playing games of Gestapo and Judenrat, which was teaching kids to be bullies,” she said. “We wanted the kids to know that the issue was not just about six million Jews who were killed, but about how people treat each other.”

On March 10, what Friedman calls her “31-year journey in Holocaust education” reached a culmination as she and her husband Phillip Sieradski presented the Teaneck Board of Education with their private library of some 300 Holocaust related books and DVDs. The collection will be housed in the high school’s Holocaust Center.

“It is an overwhelming gift,” said Acting Superintendent Spencer Denham.

Dave Bicofsky, the district’s director of School/Community Relations, recalled going to Friedman’s New Milford home with Assistant Superintendent Barbara Pinsak, to arrange for transfer of the gift.

“It is a treasure trove of memorabilia that help keep this topic alive forever,” Bicofsky said.

The collection will be available to Teaneck public and private school students and to the general public.

Many of the books are rare and unusual that the Sieradskis have acquired over the years, including out-of-print memoirs, primary history research texts and transcripts from major conferences.

The Sieradskis obtained much of the collection through their careers as editors and publishers. Their company, The Wordsmithy, has published Holocaust narratives, as well as books of general interest, including math text books and a history of the Haagen-Dazs® ice cream company.

“We edit and help people write their books,” Frideman said. She is assisted by her husband, a decorated Vietnam War veteran with a Ph.D. in educational administration, whom she describes as “the editor’s editor.”

For some of the Holocaust memoirs published by The Wordsmithy, survivors have related the material orally in Yiddish to Friedman, who then translated it into English.

One of The Wordsmithy’s recent endeavors is “Why Should I Care,” a book that Friedman co-authored with David Gold to teach the Holocaust to students from upper middle school through college.

The text is inextricably linked to the Web site: www. whyshouldicareontheweb.com

“We had to make the Holocaust relevant, and we saw the need to use popular culture,” said Friedman, noting that basic values can be taught through readings as diverse as Dumbo the Elephant and the Harry Potter series. “We want the kids to understand that the way they treat each other determines the condition of the planet.”

E-mail: prosnitz@northjersey.com