Together

When a human atrocity takes place in your figurative backyard, it is hard – if not impossible – to let go of that memory. The events which took place at Babi Yar were first obliterated physically, with cremation pyres manned by adjacent concentration camp prisoners – Jews and non-Jews – followed by other attempts to hide and disguise the site, including construction there during the Soviet era.

Yevtushenko was acquainted with the Russian-language writer Anatoly Kuznetsov, who would later write Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, and Yevtushenko asked him to take him to the site. Yevtushenko recalled to the BBC World Service on the 70th anniversary of the massacre: “What I saw was absolutely terrible – there were lots of trucks and they were unloading stinking garbage on the tens of thousands of people who were killed. I did not expect that.” He went back to his hotel and wrote the poem in under five hours.

Babi Yar – ‘grandmother’s gully’ in Ukrainian – is, surprisingly, not a remote location. It is a natural ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, then the city’s outskirts near the medieval monastery of St. Cyril.

The Babi Yar atrocities followed Germany’s surprise invasion of its ally, the Soviet Union, in June 1941. Some 160,000 Jews resided in Kiev, comprising around 20% of the city’s population. German forces entered Kiev on September 19, 1941.

DURING THE first week of the German occupation, on September 24, two major explosions occurred, thought to be set off by Soviet military engineers, blasting the German headquarters. The sabotage was deemed by the Nazi commandant to be the responsibility of the Jews, and this became the pretext for retribution to murder the remaining Jews of Kiev. It also roused enormous animosity on the part of Ukrainians towards their Jewish neighbors.

According to Yad Vashem, there were still about 60,000-70,000 Jews living in the city, mostly those who could not flee: women, children, the elderly and the sick.

These were the words of Rabbi Simcha Weiss of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate.

On Sunday afternoon, a bittersweet ceremony was held on the banks of the Danube River.

The Jewish community in Budapest celebrated the opening of two new synagogues and the dedication of two new Torah’s in memory of some 600,000 Hungarian Jews murdered on the banks of the river during the Holocaust.

Between December 1944 and January 1945, the Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews at the Danube River, which runs through Budapest.

The first synagogue was inaugurated in Budapest and the second in Szentendre, a small town just outside the capital city.

Referring to the Torah, Weiss stressed that “you can kill us, but our message will live on.”

“The center’s consequential mission will be to train both school and university educators in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, with plans to offer graduate programs in the discipline,” the university announced on its website on Friday.

The Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is named for Holocaust survivor Emil Fish, who is funding the project.

“We must know the history about what happened and why and what the implications are for today,” Fish explained. “The Center will educate young people and adults about a singular event in history that regrettably, too few people understand, including what conditions existed before the Nazis ascended to power, how they rose to leadership positions, and why they targeted Jews.”

Born in Bardejov, Slovakia, Fish was sent as a young boy with his mother and sister to Bergen-Belsen, from where he was liberated in 1945. The family later reunited with Fish’s father and immigrated to Canada, and moved to Los Angeles in 1955.

Fish is the founder and president of the Bardejov Jewish Preservation Committee, which works to preserve and create a memorial for the survivors of the Holocaust in the Jewish suburb in Bardejov, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

As antisemitism continues to remain rampant in New York and across the United States, and knowledge of the Holocaust begins to falter among future generations, Fish said that he believes “it is important to provide educators with the resources and programs needed to impart the relevancy of the Holocaust to a new generation of students who know less and less about this.”

On Sunday, a special event in Warsaw on Sunday to honor Polish Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust was held by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR).

“These righteous gentiles are dwindling in number, such that the JFR luncheon is likely to be among the last of such commemorations of its kind,” the organization said in a statement.

The JFR’s website explained that the organization “provides monthly financial assistance to the aged and needy Righteous Gentiles living in 18 countries.”

“The majority of the rescuers receiving financial support live in Eastern Europe, with Poland having the largest number of rescuers,” according to the site.

As of September 1, the JFR said it gives financial assistance to a total of 275 aged and needy rescuers, including 147 Polish rescuers, 37 rescuers in the Ukraine, 23 in Lithuania, 12 in Belarus and 11 in Hungary.

Although such events are held by the JFR, Sunday’s was extra special as it also served as the launch event for the partnership between the organization and Warsaw’s first kosher food bank, which launched earlier this year under the leadership of Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Schudrich, with the support and guidance of Yad Ezra of Detroit.

The food pantry, based in the Nozyk Synagogue complex, will provide food packages bimonthly to righteous gentile rescuers who are in need.

The event was also attended by foreign diplomats, as well as religious and community leaders, who spoke at the gathering.

Israeli ambassador-designate Alexandre Ben-Zvi paid his respects, while the US deputy chief of mission Bix Aliu, who is of Albanian heritage, paid tribute to their extraordinary courage.

“The JFR provides monthly financial support to some 147 aged and needy Polish rescuers,” the foundation said. “In the calendar year 2019, the JFR will send approximately US $600,000 to rescuers living in Poland.”

JFR executive vice president Stanlee Stahl said that “these are heroic people of exceptional character who risked their lives and often the lives of their families to save Jews during the Holocaust.”

“This special event is designed to recognize them and give them the proper honor they deserve,” Stahl said. “While we have been doing this event for some time, this is a special year with the opening of the food bank.

“Having developed food banks in the United States, I personally know the positive impact they have on families, so I am very happy we can play a role in the creation of the facility in Warsaw and utilize it as a local base through which to provide support to Polish rescuers,” she added.

During her address, she highlighted the actions of two brothers who were in attendance. Andrzej and Leszek Mikolajkow, together with their parents, saved a Jewish mother, father and two sons. One of the sons moved to Israel and had 12 sons of his own. Today, the family numbers about 300.

“You made it possible for hundreds – if not thousands – of people to be alive today,” Stahl told the brothers. “You have helped repair the world.”

THE JFR first funded eight rescuers, and that number quickly grew, reaching 1,800. Now, as the rescuers age and pass on, the number of them receiving support is declining; however, the foundation continues to receive new applications.

The foundation also does its best to provide “one-time grants for the purchase of food during the Christmas holiday season to rescuers living in Poland and other Eastern European countries,” depending on availability of funds, it said.

In 2018, the JFR distributed approximately $1.1 million in direct support of Righteous Gentiles.

All those being funded have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Yad Vashem defines Righteous Among the Nations as “non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms, and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life.

“What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed,” the Holocaust remembrance center said.

According to Yad Vashem, as of January 1, there are 27,362 people recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, including nearly 7,000 Polish men and women.

The center also stressed that “the numbers of Righteous recognized do not reflect the full extent of help given by non-Jews to Jews during the Holocaust,” and that it is “rather based on the material and documentation that was made available to Yad Vashem.”

Yad Vashem made it clear that “most Righteous were recognized following requests made by the rescued Jews,” however, sometimes survivors were unable to “overcome the difficulty of grappling with the painful past and didn’t come forward.” Others “were not aware of the program or couldn’t apply, especially people who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the years of Communist regime in Eastern Europe.”

Yad Vashem also pointed out that survivors may have also died “before they could make the request.”

The findings, recently published in The Journal of Traumatic Stress by Dr. Arad Kodesh, Prof. Itzhak Levav and Prof. Stephen Levine, add to an ongoing debate about the psychological effects of extreme adversity.

The University of Haifa researchers found that 16.5%  of those who were exposed to the Holocaust – more than 10,000 participants, or about one-fifth of the total study pool – contracted dementia, compared with a rate of 9.3% among the other participants.

The results of the study are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to the trauma of genocide increases vulnerability to the risk of dementia later in life.

The researchers analyzed registry data on 51,752 Israeli residents who were born between 1901 and 1945 and who did not have a history of dementia during the period 2002 and 2012, but who were still alive in 2012. They then reexamined whether those people developed the disease between January 2013 and October 2017.

The researchers classified participants by their exposure to the Holocaust based on government recognition and assigned hazard ratios from Cox proportional hazards-regression models to quantify risk of dementia, with adjustments made for demographic factors such as sex and age.

“The study findings are clinically significant in terms of the long-term identification of dementia among Holocaust survivors, and they may also be relevant regarding crimes against humanity in general,” Levine said. “The findings highlight the need for careful monitoring of cognitive decline in risk populations that experienced extreme and protracted trauma in general, and Holocaust survivors in particular.”