Levitt Letter Extra News

By Monika Scislowska, Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland - Irena Sendler — credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets — died today, May 12, 2008, her family said. She was 98.

Sendler, among the first to be honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial as a Righteous Among Nations for her wartime heroism, died at a Warsaw hospital, daughter Janina Zgrzembska told The Associated Press.

President Lech Kaczynski expressed “great regret” over Sendler’s death, calling her “extremely brave” and “an exceptional person.” In recent years, Kaczynski had spearheaded a campaign to put Sendler’s name forward as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city’s welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw’s Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.

Seeking to save the ghetto’s children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

Records show that Sendler’s team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

“Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory,” Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis’ death camps — Sendler wrote the children’s real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.

When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate’s yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded.

“It took a true miracle to save a Jewish child,” Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler’s team as a baby in 1942, recalled in an AP interview in 2007. “Mrs. Sendler saved not only us, but also our children and grandchildren and the generations to come.”

Anyone caught helping Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland risked being summarily shot, along with family members — a fate Sendler only barely escaped herself after the 1943 raid by the Gestapo.

The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team.

“I kept silent. I preferred to die than to reveal our activity,” she was quoted as saying in Anna Mieszkowska’s biography, “Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Story of Irena Sendler.”

Zegota, an underground organization helping Jews, paid a bribe to German guards to free her from the prison. Under a different name, she continued her work.

After World War II, Sendler worked as a social welfare official and director of vocational schools, continuing to assist some of the children she rescued.

“A great person has died — a person with a great heart, with great organizational talents, a person who always stood on the side of the weak,” Warsaw Ghetto survivor Marek Eldeman told TVN24 television.

In 1965, Sendler became one of the first so-called Righteous Gentiles honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Poland’s communist leaders at that time would not allow her to travel to Israel; she collected the award in 1983.

Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said Sender’s “courageous activities rescuing Jews during the Holocaust serve as a beacon of light to the world, inspiring hope and restoring faith in the innate goodness of mankind.”

Despite the Yad Vashem honor, Sendler was largely forgotten in her homeland until recent years. She came to the world’s attention in 2000 when a group of schoolgirls from Uniontown, Kan., wrote a short play about her called “Life in a Jar.”

It went on to garner international attention, and has been performed more than 200 times in the United States, Canada and Poland.

Sendler, born Irena Krzyzanowska, said she lived according to her physician father’s teachings, arguing that “people can be only divided into good or bad; their race, religion, nationality don’t matter.”

She married Mieczyslaw Sendler but they divorced after the war’s end. Sendler then married fellow underground activist Stefan Zgrzembski, and they had two sons and a daughter. One died a few days after birth. The second son, Adam, died of a heart failure in 1999.

Sendler is survived by her daughter and a granddaughter.

See page 28 of April 2008 Levitt Letter.

Israeli youths embrace as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Jerusalem. Photo: AP

Israelis stand outside their cars as a siren marking the annual Holocaust remembrance day sounds in Tel Aviv. Photo: AP

By Hillel Fendel, www.IsraelNN.com

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, will commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening.

Yom HaShoah V’Hagvurah, Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day, begins this evening at 8 PM with a public ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square in Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will speak, survivors will light six torches (see below), the Chief Rabbis will recite prayers, and Cantor Asher Heinowitz will sing the El Malei Rachamim prayer.

The central theme of this year’s commemorations is “Choose Life.” Last year, it was “Bearing Witness.” At 10 PM, a symposium will be held on the topic of “Choose Life,” with the participation of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.

The six survivors lighting the torches are the following:

Esther Samuel-Cahn, born in 1933 in Norway. A religiously observant professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she was awarded the Israel Prize in Statistics in 2004. When she was 9, her father, Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Samuel, the rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. Several months later, she and her family were hidden behind potato sacks and smuggled to Sweden. At age 13, a year after World War II ended, she immigrated to Israel with her mother and two brothers.

Meir Brand, born in 1936 in Poland. In 1943, closed up in a Nazi-built ghetto, his parents decided to smuggle him out, and after many narrow escapes, he arrived in Budapest, Hungary. He was on the Kastner Train - a trainload of almost 1,700 Jews who escaped from Hungary to safety in Switzerland - but was one of the few dozen who was detained in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After his rescue in 1945, he was brought to Israel via the Jewish Agency’s Aliyat HaNoar (Youth Immigration) project. Here he learned that his parents had been murdered. Meir lived in the Jordan Valley’s Kibbutz N’vei Eitan, and fought in most of Israel’s wars.

Naomi Shadmi, born in 1931 in Hungary. At age 13, her father, older brother and mother were abducted, one after the other, by the Nazis. Naomi and her remaining younger brother were taken to the Budapest Ghetto. After their release, they found that their relatives had been murdered. They came to Israel, where Naomi worked for Israel Police for 20 years.

Tzvi Ungar, born in 1929 in Poland. He survived the Birkenau and Buchenwald concentration camps, as well as the infamous Death March, but the remainder of his family was murdered. In 1948, he immigrated to Israel, fought in the War of Independence, and helped found Kibbutz Malkiyah, practically atop Israel’s border with Lebanon, where he still resides.

Menachem Katz, born in 1925 in Poland. At age 17, he and his family were taken to a ghetto, then banished to the Belzec concentration camp in Poland, where an estimated 600,000 people were murdered. He escaped, and was later followed by his family. In 1946, they were caught on their way to Palestine and taken to Cyprus, where they remained for about a year. A prominent architect, Menachem designed the museum at Kibbutz Baram in memory of the Jews of Berezhany, his birthplace.

Michael Maor, born in Germany in 1933. His family fled to Yugoslavia, then to Italy, and then to the forests with the partisans when Italy came under Nazi influence. In 1944, the Nazis murdered his parents, and he was taken to an orphanage. In Israel, he worked for the Mossad Intelligence Agency, collected evidence against Adolph Eichmann, and established the Border Guard’s intelligence department.

The date of Yom HaShoah was chosen to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although the day became official by an act of Knesset, it has been traditionally commemorated by Jewish communities around the world. Some religious communities prefer not to commemorate the Holocaust on this day, which falls in the generally happy month of Nissan, but rather on Tisha B’Av or on the Tenth of Tevet, which the Chief Rabbinate of Israel fixed as the day for the recital of the Kaddish prayer for those murdered during the Holocaust whose date of death is not known.

by Dr. Jeffrey L. Seif

Benazir Bhutto, 54, was gunned down on 27 December 2007. Democratically elected as the first female prime minister of the Muslim country of Pakistan, on December 2, 1988, she served as a leader in an Islamic world where women are typically not granted access to power. She served her first term until August 6, 1990 and was subsequently reelected, holding the post again from October 19, 1993 through November 5, 1996. While making a fresh bid to influence Pakistani politics in 2007, she was mercilessly slain by Islamic extremists. In the same year, 40 suicide attacks have left 770 Pakistanis dead, and many others wounded–further evidence of a world on fire.

Ms. Bhutto’s lamentable death follows on the heels of the untimely deaths of other family members. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s first democratically elected prime minister, was ousted by an army chief and then executed, on what are understood to have been trumped up charges. His son, Shah Nawaz Bhutto, was poisoned in France some years later; and another of his sons, Murtaza–who wanted to take up the father’s mantle–was gunned down by police in Karachi. Benazir joins the list of slaughtered family members, individuals guilty of trying to make progress in a world noted for regression.

Educated at Oxford University and Harvard University, Benazir gleaned from the “West” but still beamed in the “East,” where she was construed by many as a moderate voice in a region cluttered by extremist and militaristic voices. A bright light in a darkened and tempestuous world, Benazir Bhutto held out the promise of a hoped-for, new day–an illusive dream, seemingly pushed back farther into the future as a result of her slaughter.

Her shocking death reminds all God-fearing women and men, as with people of good will, generally, that we truly live in a world wrought with many perils. In possession of nuclear capabilities as Pakistan is, the thought of anarchic forces getting the better of the country threatens both the people and the region–the world, in fact. Mindful of this, join me in praying that God helps Pakistan get the better of their day’s troubles, and that He hastens the Day when He returns as the “Prince of Peace,” and brings stability to a world where it is in very high demand but very short supply.

The Campaign
International Holocaust Remembrance Day
A day for the Church in Europe to Learn from History
www.LearnfromHistory.eu

Background
January 27 has been declared the International Holocaust Remembrance Day both by the European Union and the United Nations.

Objective
The objective of this initiative is to make the week leading up to January 27 also a week of remembrance, and pro-active action against anti-Semitism, for the church in Europe. What role did the church play in Europe in the 1930’s? What role could we play today in order NOT to repeat the mistakes of the past? Are the Jewish people still threatened to destruction today? Listen to some voices from 2006.

• Iranian president Ahmadinejad openly questioning the existence of Holocaust and asking for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
• Norwegian award winning author Jostein Gaarder stating that “Israel has lost its right to exist.”
• Protesters in the streets of Europe asking for “Death to the Jews.”
• The Palestinian Hamas lead government calling for “the destruction of Israel.”

Sadly to say, the old lies of the past are still being repeated in Europe today and even the historical facts of the Holocaust are denied, questioned, and put in to doubt.

What can we do about it?
Raise awareness in our church communities in Europe. History shows that not even Christians are immune against the deadly virus of anti-Semitism.

Inform and educate the church about the Holocaust, but also about the parallels to our time when world leaders are again calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, and anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe.

Speak out about the dangers of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in the corridors of power in the European Union and in our national capitals. Today European Coalition for Israel and its member organizations are providing Christians with a platform to speak out and take action effectively.

How can you take part in this campaign?
Make the International Holocaust Day a day of remembrance in your church. Take a moment in the Sunday service on January 28 to pray and raise awareness of the lessons of the past and the challenges of today. “Learn from History” will provide you with speaking points, background material, and a DVD about how Christians today are raising their voices against anti-Semitism and are promoting better relations between Europe and Israel.

You can also organize a special event to commemorate the victims of Shoah (the Holocaust). The website will provide you with material on how you can do this practically.

Sign up today – adopt January 27 as a day of remembrance in your church. Our goal is to have churches in each of the 25 member states signing up to take part in the campaign. During the Remembrance event we will also provide you with an opportunity to financially support the work which is today carried out by European Coalition for Israel to fight anti-Semitism and improve relations between Europe and Israel.

The multilingual website has now been launched and will contain these resources:

• Introduction to the Holocaust week (this page, above)
• Downloadables such as speaking points, background facts, outline for sermons, etc.
• A special section where each church can add its name to pledge, “we want to learn from history.”

The “Learn from History” campaign is being initiated by the European Coalition for Israel in collaboration with a leadership team consisting of the following pastors:

• Colin Dye, Pastor, Kensington Temple London, United Kingdom
• Ulf Ekman, Pastor, Word of Life, Uppsala, Sweden
• Ingolf Ellssel, Pastor and Chairman of Pentecostal European Fellowship
• Johannes Fichtenbauer, Chief Deacon, Catholic Diocease of Vienna, Austria
• Willem Glashouwer, Reverend, Reformed Church of the Netherlands, Chairman ECI
• Wolfhard Margies, Pastor, Church on the Way, Berlin Germany

Zola’s favorite author Oriana Fallaci loses her battle with breast cancer
June 29, 1929 - September 15, 2006

Zola loved the writings of Oriana Fallaci. He agreed not only with her ideas, but with her straightforward and fearless style. —Ed.

Though she wrote novels and memoirs, Italian author Oriana Fallaci remains best known as an uncompromising political interviewer, a journalist to whom virtually no world figure would say no. She was a tough nut. Known for her abrasive interviewing tactics, Fallaci often goaded her subjects into revelations, taking on—and besting—some of the most prominent politicians of the last third of the 20th century.

Her subjects include Henry Kissinger, Willy Brandt, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the late Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, from whom she extracted such criticism of India’s Indira Gandhi that a 1972 peace treaty between the two countries almost went unsigned. As famous as many of the figures she interviewed, Fallaci was a freethinker passionately committed to her craft. “I do not feel myself to be a cold recorder of what I see and hear. On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice).”

According to New York Times Book Review contributor Francine du Plessix Gray, Fallaci combined “the psychological insight of a great novelist and the irreverence of a bratty quiz kid.”

Henry Kissinger, who later wrote that his 1972 interview with her was “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press,” said that he had been flattered into granting it by the company he’d be keeping as part of Fallaci’s “journalistic pantheon.” It was more like a collection of pelts: Fallaci never left her subjects unskinned.

Forced to wear a chador while interviewing the Ayotollah Khomeini, Fallaci asked a more insolent question: “How do you swim in a chador?” Khomeini snapped, “Our customs are none of your business. If you do not like Islamic dress you are not obliged to wear it. Because Islamic dress is for good and proper young women.” Fallaci saw an opening, and charged in. “That’s very kind of you, Imam. And since you said so, I’m going to take off this stupid, medieval rag right now.” She yanked off her chador.

Fallaci saw the threat of Islamic fundamentalism as a revival of the Fascism that she and her sisters grew up fighting. She said, “I am convinced that the situation is politically substantially the same as in 1938, with the pact in Munich, when England and France did not understand a thing. With the Muslims, we have done the same thing.”

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she appalled many with her hostile assessment of Islam in articles and two best-selling books. She denigrated Muslims who immigrated to Western nations for their unwillingness to adapt to new cultural practices.

She saw a lack of political willpower in the West to resist the new immigrants, and she wrote that the result would be a continent called Eurabia in which “instead of church bells, there will be the muezzins; instead of miniskirts, chadors; instead of cognac, camel’s milk.”

She wrote among others:

• The Useless Sex: Voyage around the Woman, Horizon Press (New York City), 1964.
• Penelope at War, M. Joseph (London), 1966.
• The Egotists: Sixteen Surprising Interviews, Regnery (Chicago),1968.
• Interview with History, Liveright, 1976.
• A Man, Simon & Schuster, 1980.
• Inshallah, Doubleday, 1992.
• Rage and Pride, Rizzoli, 2001.
• The Force of Reason, Rizzoli, Nov 2005.
• articles to periodicals, including New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Life, La Nouvelle Observateur, Washington Post, Look, Der Stern, and Corriere della Sera.

Even as Oriana Fallaci breathed her last, protests rumbled in the Muslim world over an utterance by Pope Benedict XVI in which he faulted the prophet, Mohammed, for exhorting his followers to spread Islam by the sword. Effigies of the pope were torched by mobs, although the irruption also included unintended drollery; a spokeswoman in Pakistan observed that “anyone who describes Islam as intolerant encourages violence.”

Once more, the West collided with the Muslim world; and once more, the West scrambled to soothe “the hurt.” The Vatican issued a statement that “it was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to… offend the sensibilities of Muslim faithful,” and everyone, on tenterhooks, waited to see if the pope himself would apologize. So it is tempting to believe that, on the September night she died, Ms. Fallaci—peering through her hospital window at that circus of pieties and outrage—simply said to herself, “I really can’t take this any longer. I’m outta here.”