| July 2012 Newsletter | - American Friends of the Ghetto Fighters

| July 2012 Newsletter |
Dear friends and colleagues,
The 2011-2012 working year has not been an easy one for the Ghetto Fighters’
House. A new director and subsequent turnover in department heads – for
the archives, marketing, finance, and education divisions – in the wake of
budget cuts and belt-tightening, created tension and concerns. But there are
moments, such as this with the birth of a newsletter, when we are invited to
raise our eyes from the piles of work on our desks, look around, and notice the
signs of change and renewal. I would like to draw attention to some events
that are very current:
The Academic Advisory Panel, composed of experts in the fields of
education and history, has begun to meet. This panel, formed for the
purpose of strengthening and revitalizing our educational activity, has held
several sessions and given impetus to the creation of new program content.
A project was launched to renovate the history-based exhibitions on the
main museum’s first floor. Funding has been allocated by Kibbutz Lohamei
Haghetaot (the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz) and the Claims Conference, a
curator and exhibition designer were chosen – both with rich international
experience – and a Steering Committee has begun to work on the topics of
the Ghettos and Jewish Youth Movements during the Holocaust. We view
these two exhibitions as the start of a series and hope to raise the funds
required to renovate the remaining exhibitions as well.
The Archives Department has begun to integrate new photographic
technologies for uploading the GFH collection to the Internet. The archival
digitization project has been in progress for several years, and now is
upgrading to state-of-the-art technology.
We have recently strengthened our connection with Kibbutz Lohamei
Haghetaot – on whose grounds GFH stands and whose members are
among its founders. This is reflected in dialogue and a sincere desire for
involvement and cooperation.
We have deepened our ties with academic institutions: GFH hosted 150
students from the Holocaust Studies Program at the nearby Western Galilee
Academic College, and with the College jointly hosted an international
academic conference on the future of Holocaust testimonies. Ties have
also been forged with Haifa University, which will offer a Master’s Degree
in Holocaust Studies in the coming year in partnership with GFH, as we
provide research opportunities and internships at our Archives.
Efforts are being made to attract the general public in a range of ages.
Recently a multi-media guide was developed for self-guided tours, making
visits easier and more enriching for those who are not part of a group. During
the interim days of Passover, special thematic activities were organized for
children and families at “Yad LaYeled” and the main museum. A high point
was the pair of evening programs called “Between the Sirens,” a new event
with talks and discussions on diverse subjects
in the broad context of Holocaust memory,
its significance and its relevance for our lives.
Some 500 people participated and their
feedback was warm and appreciative.
At present we are intensely involved in
programming around the upcoming 70th
anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. We
view this as an opportunity to raise the level
of our educational and cultural activity, and
increase public awareness of us.
This year we created a new infrastructure for
fundraising, and are revitalizing the “Friends
of GFH” Associations in Israel and the United
States.
Let me take this opportunity to thank from the
bottom of my heart those cherished colleagues
who have dedicated years of work to the Ghetto
Fighters’ House, and retired over the past year:
Archives Department Director Yossi Shavit and
Financial Director Miri Ben-Shoshan.
It is now eight months that I have served in this
position at the Museum. I was given a warm
welcome and, despite the difficulties and shakeups,
the staff of the House – dedicated and
professional – has been supportive and pulled
together to help achieve the goals we set. The
road is long, but I truly believe that together we
can meet the challenges and forge new paths.
Sincerely,
Dr. Anat Livne, Director, the Ghetto Fighters’ House

Holocaust Remembrance Day National Assembly 5772 (2011/12)
We shall work
untiringly to fulfill
the mission of
documentation,
education, and
memorialization
to ensure a
better world for
our children and
grandchildren.
The year 2012 marks 70 years since the
mass deportation of the Jews of Warsaw.
The deportation began in July 1942 and
continued for seven weeks, during which
over 300,000 Jews were murdered. These
events took center stage of the ceremonies
this year, as we focused on lamentation over
the devastation, the voice of the uprising,
and the tidings of the Jewish rebirth. As GFH
director Dr. Anat Livne noted in her opening
remarks at the ceremony:
The Jewish community of Warsaw, a Jewish
civilization of many faces and colors, was
almost erased from the face of the earth…
Traumatized, helpless, cut off from the
world and from hope, a small number remained in the Warsaw ghetto
– individuals who were the sole survivors of entire families – alone
and consumed by guilt and despair.
There, at the height of the deportations, leaders of the ghetto’s
youth movements, among them Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia
Lubetkin, convened a meeting and established the Jewish Fighting
Organization. This organization soon became the alternative
leadership for the Jews who survived, and infused courage and selfrespect
into the community.
After the war, the founders of the Ghetto Fighters’ House and Kibbutz
Lohamei Haghetaot, the remnants of the destroyed communities,
gathered together and undertook the mission of memorializing the
victims. They did not want to build a stone monument, but a vibrant
enterprise – a museum and educational center – to tell the story of
the creative, diverse, cultured, and very human community that was
razed to the ground during the Holocaust. An educational center that
would assume the moral imperative of building a new society whose
children will be raised on the values of equality and justice, a society
in which acts of racism and persecution would be unconscionable.
It would be a diverse and tolerant society that educates for freedom
of thought and for the human spirit. That mission has not yet been
accomplished, and much still remains to be done …We shall work
untiringly to fulfill the mission of documentation, education, and
memorialization to ensure a better world for our children and
grandchildren.
As is our tradition, six torches are kindled and a wreath laid.
Here are the stories of the torch-lighters:
Ardyn Halter, in the name of his late father, Roman Halter
Roman Halter was 12 years old when the SS took over his
hometown, Chodecz, Poland. At age 13, he witnessed his schoolmates
being used for target practice by Nazi troops.
Roman and his family were deported to the Lodz ghetto, where his
grandfather and father died. Roman escaped execution in the Chelmno
extermination camp, and survived the Auschwitz and Stutthof camps
and the bombing of Dresden. After the war, he learned that of his town’s
800 Jews, only he and three others survived.
Roman moved to England, where he became an architect and artist. The
memory of his schoolmates inspired Roman to memorialize the 1.5 million
children murdered in the Holocaust, and he was the visionary behind
the design and creation of “Yad LaYeled” memorial and educational
museum at GFH. This building is dedicated to the children’s lives, not to
their deaths. Together with his son Ardyn, Roman created unique stained
glass works for Yad LaYeled based on the drawings of the children in the
Terezin ghetto (Theresienstadt) during the Holocaust.
Roman Halter passed away a few months ago. He is survived by his wife
Susan, three children, and seven grandchildren. The torch was lit in his
name and to honor his memory by his son Ardyn – his professional
partner and successor.
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THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
Chaike Agami
Chaike Agami, together with her family,
managed to slip through the fingers of the Nazis,
escaping into Soviet Russia. Their years in Russia
were beset by suffering, unbearable living conditions,
hunger, and poverty. Death was always near.
After World War II ended, Chaike returned to her
home village in Poland, where she joined other young
Zionists who sought to make aliya. Captured after an
attempt to enter the country illegally on the Latrun, a
clandestine immigration ship, they were all deported
to an internment camp in Cyprus.
Chaike had already met her husband Meirke
Krasnostavski in Europe. Meirke was the son of a
community leader who had immolated himself to
avoid serving the Nazi destruction machine. Meirke
had survived the war in the forests. Together, Chaike
and Meirke made their home in Kibbutz Lohamei
Haghetaot, where their children and grandchildren
were born. Meirke passed away in 2009 and is buried
in the earth he loved.
Mordechai Ciechanower
Mordechai Ciechanower, born in Makow,
Poland, was educated in the town’s “Yavne”
modern Hebrew day school. He and his family were
deported to the Birkenau camp where, on the railway
siding platform, he saw his mother and sisters for the
last time. When his health deteriorated, the Germans
transferred him to the Bergen-Belsen camp from
which he was liberated.
Mordechai made aliyah to Mandate Palestine, joined
the British Army’s Jewish Brigade, and was posted
to Egypt. He brought with him a song that he loved
from the ghetto, and asked that it be recorded so
he would not forget it. The song was translated into
Hebrew and became one of the best-loved Palmach
songs. Mordechai gives talks in schools, and works
to instill the memory of the Holocaust in the coming
generations. In recent years, he has accompanied
many groups of IDF officers journeying to Poland in
the “Witnesses in Uniform” program. In lighting the
torch, Mordechai was escorted by Eldad Oren of the
IDF who became connected with Mordechai through
that program. Mordechai and his wife Devora have
two daughters, six grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren.

Viola Torok née Klein
Viola Klein-Nojbert was expelled from
her medical studies in Slovakia based
on the numerus clausus – the quota limiting
Jewish students at the university. In 1944, she
and her physician husband were deported
to Auschwitz. From there she was transferred
to the Lichtwerden labor camp in Silesia and
worked in the camp’s infirmary. Following the
liberation, she returned home to learn that her
husband and almost all her family had perished.
She resumed and completed her medical
studies, then devoted herself to the medical
care of Holocaust survivors. Viola remarried
Dr. Gabriel Torok, and the two managed to
escape Slovakia and reach Palestine. In 1959,
she and her husband moved to Beersheba,
the capital of the Negev. Over the next 22
years, Viola worked as a district physician,
developing medical services in the Negev for
its Jewish and Bedouin inhabitants. She and
her husband were among the founders of the
medical school at the Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev in Beersheba.
Dr. Viola Torok, honored as a Negev Notable,
has two children and six grandchildren. Her
daughter, Professor Hanna Yablonka, is a
Holocaust scholar and historian of the Ghetto
Fighters’ House.
Kalman Teigman
Piles of carefully sorted belongings are one of the gruesome
trademarks of Nazi cruelty. Kalman Teigman, then 19 years old, was
one of 200 Jewish prisoners ordered to sort such belongings, left behind by
those heading to the gas chambers in the Treblinka death camp.
On 2 August 1943, Kalman and his fellow inmates led the Treblinka uprising
after an extended period of gathering arms and explosives. During the uprising
they attacked the camp guards and managed to escape into the forest.
Kalman made aliyah and testified at the trial of Adolph Eichmann. He later also
testified in Germany at the trials of other war criminals.
Tamara Bromberg, “Righteous Among the Nations,” and Benjamin
Anolik, member of the “Righteous Among the Nations” Committee
This year, the wreath honoring the “Righteous among the Nations” was laid by
Tamara Bromberg, accompanied by Benjamin Anolik. Tamara and her mother
saved two Jewish families in Odessa, Ukraine. Together they would sneak into
the ghetto with food and clothes, smuggle food into Odessa’s well-guarded
jail, and bring food to another family in their hiding place. After the ghetto was
destroyed, Tamara and her mother traveled many kilometers to bring aid to
Jews who had been deported to another ghetto; they bribed the ghetto guards
and took a family under their wing, whom they supported. At the ceremony,
Tamara was escorted by Benjamin Anolik, among the founders of the Kibbutz
Lohamei Haghetaot. Benjamin, born in Vilna, survived six concentration camps.
When the war ended, he devoted himself to educating children and youth, and
continued this in Israel as principal of a local school. Benjamin filled several
management roles in the Ghetto Fighters’ House, and worked to keep alive the
memory of the Holocaust in Israel and abroad. For many years, he chaired the
Janusz Korczak Association of Israel, and for some twenty years was an active
member of the “Righteous among the Nations” Committee of Yad Vashem.
Many “Righteous Among the Nations” were identified and received recognition
thanks to his efforts.
Caption: Board of Directors chairman Mr. Eli Gonen and GFH director Dr. Anat Livne, giving a
tour of the museum exhibitions to MK Limor Livnat (center), Minister of Culture and Sports,
shortly before the ceremony.
Ya’akov Drachman
Ya’akov Drachman, born in Lodz in
1935, was an only child aged four
when the Nazis invaded Poland. Together with
his parents, Ya’akov survived the ghetto and
was sent on the last transport to Auschwitz-
Birkenau. Transferred to the Stutthof
concentration camp, he was sent to hard labor
at a munitions factory in Dresden. He was 11
when he survived the infamous “death march”
and arrived at the Terezin (Theresienstadt)
ghetto, liberated two weeks later by Soviet Red
Army troops.
After the war, Ya’akov and his parents went to
Uruguay where, for 25 years, he devoted his
life to catching Nazi war criminals and ensuring
they would be brought to justice.
His true revenge on the Nazis, says Ya’akov, is
his large family in Israel: three children, nine
grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Ya’akov is a volunteer lecturer about his life,
and frequently appears before groups of Israeli
security forces, teachers, and schoolchildren;
he is also active in the Ghetto Fighters’ House.
THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
3

“Between the Sirens”
Days of Study and Contemplation Between
the Holocaust and Independence
Special programs for study and contemplation were held
for the first time this year in on the days between Holocaust
Remembrance Day and Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen
Soldiers, with the participation of writers, scholars, intellectuals,
and Holocaust survivors. The events were open to the public. These
are days of soul-searching in Israel, and therefore provide a special
opportunity for discussing the meaning of the Holocaust in Israel
today, and its implications for fostering a democratic, multifaceted,
and tolerant society.
• On Sunday, 22 April, the first program of the “Between the Sirens”
series was held on the theme “Holocaust Remembrance – Binding or Uniting.”
Author A.B. Yehoshua opened the program, drawing lessons for contemporary times from his essay “The Holocaust: A Crossroads.” The
author noted: “As bearers of the anti-Nazi message, we must sharpen our sensitivity, not blunt it, as our having been victims does not
accord us any special moral standing. The victim does not become virtuous for having been a victim. The Holocaust, with all the terrible
injustice perpetrated to us, did not bestow on us a lifelong certificate of morality. The murderers were immoral; the victims were not made
moral. To be moral, you must behave ethically. The test of that is daily and constant.”
This talk was followed by study circles about the role of Holocaust memory in Israeli society, moderated by authors Nir Baram and Yossi
Sukari, and the historians Prof. Hanna Yablonka, Dr. Muki Tzur, Dr. Nili Keren, and Prof. Moshe Zuckerman. Groups discussed the following
topics: the Holocaust and Mizrahi Jews; Wagner’s musical
compositions and Israeli society; Germans and Jews and the
Holocaust between them; electing good people to govern;
and the “banality of evil.” The evening closed with a musical
rendition of lyrics by playwright Hanoch Levin performed by
Efrat Feldman and the instrumental Trio-Ma.
• On Monday, 23 April, the second program was held on
the theme “The Survivors’ Haggadah: A Multi-generational
Dialogue”, which brought second and third generation survivors
into discussion circles to talk about witnessing and memory.
Among those participating were journalist Sahara Blau, an
organizer of Tel Aviv’s alternative Holocaust Remembrance
Day event, as well as several Holocaust survivors: writer Alona
Frankel, Dorka Sternberg, Chavka Folman-Raban, Hava Lustig,
and Ruthie Ben-David. The public’s response was enthusiastic
– some five hundred people came from near and far to take an
active part in these programs.
A study circle in the program, “Between the Sirens”, April 2012
Tali Shner, Director of Educational Development
Rich and Diverse Educational
Programs Last Year
We have given guided tours to tens of thousands of visitors –
schoolchildren, soldiers, police officers, educators, preschool
teachers, university students, organizations, and groups from
abroad. Programs are customized to the needs of each group and
address human aspects of the Holocaust – the ethical choices made
during this period and their repercussions on our lives today after so
many years.
In the Education Division, we work on two levels: planning meaningful
guided tours for every group that visits the Museum, and program
development – creating new programs while renewing and updating
existing ones to keep them interesting and relevant to a range of
visitors.
This year we renewed our relationship with the Israel Prison Service
(IPS) and held process-oriented programs for groups of prisoners on
the topic of the educational philosophy of Janusz Korczak. In the first
stage of the activity, the inmates studied in the prison together with
IPS education officers. The concluding highlight of the program was a
tour of the museum exhibitions at the Ghetto Fighters’ House.
Recently the museum hosted Jewish groups from the Diaspora
who came to Israel directly from participating in the “March of the
Living” in Poland. They toured the GFH museum exhibitions with
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THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
us, and together we discussed the difficult journey they had
just made in Poland; we took them to the Carmel Mountain
to learn about the “Massada Plan” with the “200 days of
dread” for the Jews in Mandate Palestine at the time of the
Holocaust; and, while touring Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot
(“of the ghetto fighters”), we discussed the Jewish revival in
Israel after the Holocaust. These were important experiential
activities that were part Recently we held training seminars for
Jewish groups from the Diaspora who came to Israel directly
from participating in the “March of the Living” in Poland. They
toured the GFH museum exhibitions with us, and together we
discussed the difficult journey they had just made in Poland;
we took them to the Carmel Mountain to learn about the
“Massada Plan” with the “200 days of dread” for the Jews in
Mandate Palestine at the time of the Holocaust; and, while
touring Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot (“of the ghetto fighters”),
we discussed the Jewish revival in Israel after the Holocaust.
These were important experiential activities that were part of
their processing of the journey to Poland.
Next year we mark seventy years since the Warsaw ghetto
uprising. Many revolts erupted in the camps and ghettos in
1943, in small, remote areas as well as large, central locations.
The Ghetto Fighters’ House – Holocaust and Jewish Resistance
Heritage Museum is the natural place to study and learn
about these events. We are in the midst of preparing a host of
activities related to the uprising, the leadership of the uprising,
and the emotional wrenching that accompanied transforming
a youth movement from an educational, value-oriented group
to an underground combat unit.
Ron Cohen, Director, Education Division

New Museum Exhibition:
Twelve drawings by Abraham Ryza made in
the Lebenau Camp in 1945
Twelve drawings made by Avrum (Abraham) Ryza are being displayed
in the coming months in the “Yizkor” Hall. These drawings, held in
the Art Collection of the Ghetto Fighters’ House until now, are part of
the permanent collection of artworks that serves as the eyewitness
testimony of survivors, as they were created during the war or
immediately after liberation.
These twelve pieces were created by Avrum Ryza in 1945 in the Lebenau
camp, where he arrived after the death march from Auschwitz. Lebenau
was a small concentration camp in Bavaria that after its liberation was
used by the US army as a Displaced Persons camp.
Avrum-Abraham-Arthur Ryza was born in Lodz, Poland in 1920 and
died in Los Angeles, California, in 2001.
From February 1940, Ryza was in the Lodz ghetto. In May 1941, he was
sent to a forced labor facility for Jews in the city of Poznan. In July 1943,
he was transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, then moved to one
of its satellites, a forced labor camp at Jaworzno in Upper Silesia. The
inmates there, mostly Jews, worked in coal mines or on construction
of a power station for a company owned by the German Armaments
Minister, the celebrated architect Albert Speer.
Ryza survived in Jaworzno for almost two years, and
much of the descriptive elements in his drawings may
relate to his two periods of internment in camps. On
17 January 1945 as the Red Army approached, Ryza
and 3,200 other inmates were evacuated by a “death
march” to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in
Lower Silesia (in southwest Poland). In February, he
was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration
camp in Bavaria, Germany, and from there to Lebenau,
a nearby small camp. After the war, he spent time
at several DP camps in Germany and Austria until
leaving for Canada in 1949 and from there to the
United States.
The drawings were drawn lightly in pencil that was
then darkened. It is not known if they were made
prior to the camp’s liberation by Allied forces in May
1945 or in the days that followed. They retrospectively
document scenes Ryza witnessed in various camps
during the years of the Holocaust. It is possible, as
happened in other cases, that – in the absence of a
common language – the drawings were made to
convey to the American soldiers who liberated the
camp what the Jews of Europe and Ryza personally
had experienced.
Works by Naftali Bezem and Joseph Bau from the GFH Art Collection are now
on display in addition to the drawings by Ryza.
Naftali Bezem
(born in Essen, Germany, 1924)
A survivor of Auschwitz wielding a
pickaxe, c. 1953
Gouache and oil pastels on paper
In October 1938, Bezem’s family, together
with thousands of Polish Jews who lived
in Germany, was deported to the border
town of Zbasyn, Poland. In August 1939,
some two weeks before the outbreak
of the Second World War, the teenaged
Bezem was rescued and sent to Mandate
Palestine in the framework of Youth Aliya.
His parents remained behind, and in 1943
were put to death in the gas chambers
of Birkenau. In 1952, Bezem and his
wife Hannah designed for a temporary
structure of the Ghetto Fighters’ House
one of the first exhibitions of testimonies
about the destruction of European
Jewry. Bezem’s encounter with written
testimony and photographs made a deep
impression on him and his work as an
artist.
Joseph Bau (Kraków,
Poland, 1920 – Tel Aviv,
Israel, 2002)
Concentration camp inmates
dividing up the loaf of bread,
1945
Charcoal and chalk on paper
In December 1941 (apparently),
Joseph Bau was transferred to
the Kraków ghetto and from
there to Płaszów, the nearby
concentration camp, where
he worked as a draftsman
and graphic artist for the
German camp authorities. In
the summer of 1944, when
the Germans began to close
down the camp, sending
the inmates to Birkenau for
extermination, Bau, in unknown
circumstances, was added to
the list of Jews protected by
the German industrialist Oskar
Schindler (employees in the
Kraków factory, who were on
the original “Schindler’s list”),
whom Schindler managed to
transfer to the Brünnlitz forced
labor camp in Sudetenland. It
is known that Bau engaged in
drawing during his period in
Brünnlitz, so it is possible – as
suggested by the many fold
marks on the paper – that this
drawing about the equitable
division of bread was made
there prior to liberation by the
Red Army on 10 May 1945.
Evelyn Akherman, Director, Museum Division
THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
5

The
Ghetto
Fighters’
House
hummed
with
visitors
this past
Passover.
Thousands of Israelis visited the House
during the five interim days of Passover,
taking part in activities at the Yad LaYeled
children’s museum and the main museum.
Museum entry was free this year, thanks to the
sponsorship of Bank Hapoalim.
A special creative workshop – part of “The
Butterfly Project” – was held for parents and
children in Yad LaYeled. This project – the
painting of a million and a half butterflies – was
initiated by Sue Klau, an activist in the Puerto
Rican Jewish community, as a unique way to
memorialize the million and a half children who
perished in the Holocaust. Klau chose this theme
inspired by the poem “The Butterfly” written in
the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto by Pavel Friedmann.
In other Passover events, young people and their parents were
invited to view dramatized testimonies that are part of the
permanent exhibition and attend the play, “The Dance of Joy
and Sorrow,” which tells the story of a girl who was hidden in a
convent. The visit ended with a tour of the exhibition “Korczak of
the Children,” and the making of “Kites of Hope” in the spirit of
Janusz Korczak’s pedagogic legacy of freedom and equality.
Two special tours were created for Passover. In the historical
museum: “And you shall teach your children” addressed ways to
convey remembrance, while “For she has sustained us…” focuses
on the steadfastness of Jewish women during the Holocaust. The
movie Shoah by Claude Lanzmann was also screened in episodes
on each of the interim days.
Anat Carmel, Director, Yad LaYeled
Butterfly workshop in Yad LaYeled, Passover 2012
A multimedia guide has recently been installed, enabling visitors
to take a two-hour, self-guided tour of the Ghetto Fighters›
House and Yad LaYeled. The exhibitions are presented through
multiple media: audio commentary, video clips, photographs,
art, and musical excerpts. This guide provides a rich experience
of the exhibitions and allows
the visitor to delve more
deeply into the story told at
the Ghetto Fighters’ House
museum. The handheld guide
devices are available in Hebrew,
English, and Arabic.
Activities of the Center for Humanistic Education
“At the Center of
Attention”
Concluding Evening of
the Graduates’ Group
Over 60 participants of the Center’s Graduates’ Group came
together for an evening to conclude the workshop activity
conducted through the year. The Graduates’ Group gathering is a
highlight of the Center’s programs: Invitations are extended to those
who participated in an ongoing workshop about the meaning of the
Holocaust and in a dialogue workshop. Every year, some 80 Arab and
Jewish high school pupils from Haifa north and east to Sasa meet
monthly in after-school sessions to grapple with complex social issues.
This year we introduced a new format in a pilot program. Participants
could join one of several interest groups, each distinct in its content
and activity, and led by two moderators from the Center. The “Gender
Group” focused on gender power relations and image; an art group
(“Dialogue in Ten Fingers”) looked at personal and collective identity
through plastic arts; a critical dialogue group (“Plain Speaking”)
raised a controversial issue in every meeting concerning Jewish-Arab
relations; the theater group used the “playback theater” method to
probe personal and social issues; the film group (“Dialogue in Zoom”)
produced a short feature film made entirely by the participants. All
the groups came together for a moving conclusion in which each
group made a visual presentation and discussed their activities.
One Arab girl, who graduated high school and will be leaving the
Graduates’ Group, wrote: “I found a warm and loving home in
the Center for Humanistic Education and the Graduates’
Group, a home that accepts me for who I am and how I
am. I will never, ever forget this!”
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THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
Photos from the graduates’
conferences, 2011/12
Sharing Memories of Salem Jubran, in Deep Appreciation
In January this year, Salem Jubran – poet, journalist, and educator
– passed away. Salem was one of the founders of the Center for
Humanistic Education, and served a key role in shaping its ideology
to promote moral-universalist education in the wake of the
Holocaust and fostering Jewish-Arab dialogue.
Former students, teachers, and staff who shared his vision,
together with his widow and daughter, gathered in mid-May to
share recollections and the sense of loss. One by one, participants
told of their connection with Salem and how he influenced them.
Interspersed were readings of Salem’s poetry – words that could
express incisive insights sensitively, in compassion and hope. Salem
Jubran holds a special place in the heart of all those who knew him
and who believed, as he did, that what people share can overcome
what separates them, if only they accept the humanity of the other
and adopt the language of dialogue. The Center for Humanistic
Education deeply appreciates Salem’s contribution to its ideological
and educational vision. May his memory be a blessing.
Dr. David Netzer, Pedagogical Coordinator,
Center for Humanistic Education

Chasia Bieliczka-Bornstein donated
material she held from a children’s
home of the “Zionist Coordination” in
postwar Lodz, to the Ghetto Fighters’
House Archives for safekeeping. Chasia
was born in Grodno, Poland. From an early age, she was a member
of the Hashomer Hatsa’ir Zionist pioneering youth movement.
During the war, she was a part of the underground in the Grodno
ghetto and later at the Bialystok ghetto, where she took on a false
identity of a Polish girl and lived on the Aryan side of the city. Chasia
was a courier for the underground as well as a liaison for the Polish
undergrounds. After the Bialystok ghetto was destroyed, she and her
girlfriends became active in a partisan brigade in the nearby forests,
bringing supplies, food, and ammunition, as well as intelligence
information about what was happening in the city and the German
army facilities and troop movements. Based on the intelligence these
young women gathered, the city was conquered by the Soviet Red
Army without any casualties. Chasia and the other couriers, for their
efforts during the war, were awarded the highest honor given by the
Red Army to civilians.
When the war was over, Chasia went to Warsaw where she joined
“Aktiwa,” the coordinating committee of youth movement members
who survived in Poland or returned there from the Soviet Union. This
committee united these movements in order to continue Zionist
activity and to jointly form “kibbutz” communal groups for members
of the pioneering movements Hashomer
Hatsa’ir and Dror in cities throughout
Poland. In the spring of 1945, Chasia
went to Lodz for this purpose and helped
found a kibbutz joined by youth from the
city’s streets and from the headquarters
of the Central Committee of Jews.
The motto of this kibbutz was: “Selfsupporting
work and existence – work as
a value and a means to settle the Land
of Israel.”
In late 1945, Chasia and another two
Hashomer Hatsa’ir members were
delegates to the movement’s first
postwar European council meeting.
There she met Heini Bornstein, a
comrade from Switzerland, whom she
later married. In early 1946, she returned
to Lodz and took over management
of one of the two orphanages for the
“Zionist Coordination for the locating
and reclaiming of Jewish children in
postwar Poland.” These homes took in
Jewish youngsters who had been placed
with non-Jews during the war, as well as
“When she
approached the
campfire, we
sensed that she
was one of us”
Archival Treasures at the
Ghetto Fighters’ House
In the DP camp of Zeilsheim, Germany, 1946.
The Museum library houses a modest collection of books with personal
dedications to Zivia Lubetkin and Yitzhak Zuckerman. These books shed
light on the close personal relationship this couple had with various public
figures: Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever; Kibbutz Hameuchad movement
leader Yitzhak Tabenkin; physician and Holocaust researcher Dr. Marek
Dworzecki, and many others. One book on display, “How the Citadel Fell: The
Conquest of the Iraq-Suwaydan Fortress,” was written by General Yitzhak Sadeh
those returning from the Soviet Union
territories.
The orphanage was like one big family
caring for 73 children, and Chasia was
both “mother and sister” to them. In
her words, “From the day we opened the home, I moved in, 24 hours
a day…seven days a week, Sabbath and holidays, without a break,
eighteen months…I hugged, caressed, held in my arms, rose at every
hour of the night they needed me, and smiled. I smiled all the time,
even when I had tears inside” (from her 2003 book, Ahat MiMe’atim
[one of a few]).
After several months, Chasia and the children were moved to
Germany by way of Szczecin aided by the Berichah organization that
escorted Jews who attempted to eventually reach Mandate Palestine.
They reached the city of Lübeck, the Zeilsheim DP camp, and from
there to the Darmstadt DP camp. Chasia and her children were then
moved to France, arrived in Haifa aboard an “illegal immigration”
ship, and were expelled by the British to Cyprus. In August 1947, they
reached the Atlit detention camp for illegal immigrants, and two
weeks later were released to Kibbutz Gan Shmuel that had agreed
to accept them. Chasia’s eighteen months of total devotion to “her”
children finally came to an end.
Hasia and Heini Bornstein were among the founders of Kibbutz
Lahavot HaBashan in the Upper Galilee, where they still live.
Throughout the years they have remained in contact with the
children of 18 Narutowicza Street.
The Ghetto Fighters’ House holds
the largest collection of documents,
certificates, and albums that deal with
the Zionist Coordination in Poland. It
was only natural that Chasia would
donate to the GFH Archives the material
she had kept for so many years about
the child survivors’ orphanage and the
children under her care. Several months
ago, Chasia transferred to the Archives
a collection that includes photographs
from the orphanage in Lodz, the
youngsters in the DP camps in Germany,
and the “children’s kibbutz” that Chasia
directed in the British detention camp
No. 65 on Cyprus for unauthorized
immigrants to Mandate Palestine. Also
included is Chasia’s personal notebook
with the name of every child from the
Lodz orphanage, in order of their arrival,
letters she received from the children
and letters she sent to them, as well
as newspaper articles related to their
immigration.
Library Treasures at the Ghetto Fighters’ House
Anat Bratman-Elhalel,
Director, Archives Department
(1890-1952). Sadeh was the first commander of the Palmach, and in charge of the troops that liberated
this fortress (today called “Yoav’s Citadel” on the Kiryat Gat-Ashkelon road) during the Independence
War. On the evening following Zivia’s arrival in Mandate Palestine in late May 1946, she met Sadeh and
his colleagues, and this is how he described the encounter: “In the morning her feet first set foot on the
homeland and at night she sat with us around the campfire…When she approached, we felt something
more. We sensed that she was one of us, already belonging to the Land of Israel, that the working,
fighting, and struggling Land of Israel now had another friend, soldier, military figure.” In a letter from
that time to Yitzhak Zuckerman, Lubetkin wrote, “I met with Sadeh and some of his family, his sons are really very beautiful, and I
enjoyed the evening I spent with them.” Sadeh felt a closeness and sensitivity to Holocaust survivors, particularly the ghetto fighters and partisans.
“The door to this land opens from the inside,” he said with respect to the moral obligation to take in Holocaust survivors. In his first meeting with
Ruszka Korczak, a young woman partisan from Vilna, he said, “We will be friends – I am also a partisan.” This summer, 60 years after the death of
Yitzhak Sadeh, we will honor the man of whom poet Haim Gouri wrote, “He was a legend.” Poet-playwright Natan Alterman eulogized Sadeh with
the words, “There was no friendship more cherished and illuminating than yours.” Sadeh’s book, Lohamim [fighters], a collection of four plays, was
published posthumously. There is some symbolism in the fact that the last play was entitled, “Ghetto Fighters.”
Lior Inbar
THE GHETTO FIGHTERS’ MUSEUM | JULY 2012
7

Dr. Ehud Shapira will
head the Israeli Friends
of GFH Association
We are grateful to Dr. Ehud
Shapira for agreeing to assume
the mantle of leadership of the
Association of Israeli Friends of
the Ghetto Fighters’ House; we
wish him, and us, great success.
Dr. Shapira, born in 1944, has a
Ph.D. in economics and finance
from New York University. He
has 40 years’ experience in
banking and finance in Israel
and abroad, and currently
serves as chairman of the Psagot
Investment House, after having
held several senior positions
in Bank Leumi, including as
its Senior Deputy CEO with
responsibility for corporate and
international banking. Upon his
retirement from Bank Leumi,
Dr. Shapira became chairman of
Phoenix Holdings and a director
of Bank Leumi. Ehud Shapira is
married, the father of three girls
and grandfather of ten.
Dear friends and colleagues of GFH,
During the past year, the Ghetto Fighters’ House has undergone a process of significant and welcome
change, and this is beginning to bear fruit. Dr. Anat Livne took over as GFH Director and has brought
with her a new spirit, significant new directions, and a focus on activities that, I have no doubt, will
steer the Ghetto Fighters’ House toward attaining its objectives. During this period, Hadas Hochman,
Marketing Director, and Galit Globerman, Deputy Director in charge of Finance and Operations, have
also undertaken their new roles. New momentum is being generated by the revitalized management
that, together with the devoted members of the Board of Directors and staff, is moving the Ghetto
Fighters’ House forward. These welcome changes give new impetus to the task of ensuring the
sources and resources for GFH’s activity and growth. To that end, we are taking action on several
levels:
• We renewed our request to the government to make a special grant to the Ghetto Fighters’ House,
and I hope we are successful in this effort.
• We revived the activity of the “Israeli Friends of GFH” Association. I am delighted that Dr. Ehud
Shapira has agreed to head the Friends’ Association, and we are currently planning a strategy to help
raise funds for GFH’s various activities.
• We changed the structure of GFH’s fundraising arm and contracted the work to professional
fundraisers; I hope we’ll see positive results here, too.
The leadership of Dr. Anat Livne and her administrative colleagues should instill a sense of security to
all those who seek the good of the Ghetto Fighters’ House, knowing that we are headed in the right
direction with developing new exhibitions (three now in the works), renewed activities, and muchneeded
infrastructure maintenance.
Allow me to use this opportunity to thank the friends of GFH who have mobilized to help; the
members of the Board of Directors, who have staunchly upheld GFH’s ongoing operations; the new
director – and each and every staff member, for they are the heart of the Ghetto Fighters’ House.
Eli Gonen, Chairman of the GFH Board of Directors
Rafael Employees Volunteer in the Ghetto Fighters’ House
Over the last few months, the Ghetto Fighters’ House has undertaken a first-of-its-kind project: photographing the posters, maps, and family trees in the
GFH Archives. Many hundreds of documents of various sizes are being photographed by two volunteers from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Ltd.:
photographer Amit Bahat and his (and our) right-hand man Motti Preisler. The collections include anti-Semitic posters from Serbia and the Netherlands;
maps of Poland and Germany from the wartime and postwar periods; posters and notices from the Lodz ghetto; family trees from Mlawa, Poland; posters
about cultural programs by and for Holocaust survivors in DP camps in Germany and Austria; announcements about exhibitions and assemblies related to
the Ghetto Fighters’ House; and much more. The project will continue for several more months. We should mention that this is the third year that
Rafael employees have provided support to the GFH Archives staff in inputting and translating archival material – documents,
certificates, letters, and diaries. Their help expedites the information conversion process and enables
the general public’s access to these treasures.
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Rafael is proud to be a partner of the Ghetto Fighters’
House in instilling the memory of the Holocaust.
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Ghetto Fighters’ House | Tel: 972 4 995-8080 | Fax: 972 4 995-8007 | www.gfh.org.il
ARTMEDIA GAATON