1940 Bucharest – The Countess’s View of Life from a Hotel Lobby

Romania, a place I had barely thought about, is now on my bucket list of countries to visit.   When I go, I must stay at the Athene Palace Hotel.   This is the perch upon which the Countess settled for eight months.   With her freshly printed American passport, her media credentials from Newsweek, her irresistible charm, and her “listening soul” she was ready to uncover the inner workings of Bucharest politics. 

The Countess arrived in Bucharest on June 14, 1940, the day that the German army entered France. “Her room on the first floor of the Athene Palace,” writes Ernest Latham, Jr. in the introduction of the 2019 edition, “was a front row seat for a crucial sequence in Romanian, Balkan and European history.” (Athene Palace 7-8)

“When I came to the Athene Palace on that hot June afternoon in 1940,” the Countess wrote, “I was an American who had felt and still did feel against my will, that Hitler might not only win the war but could win the peace and organize Europe if he did. When I left Athene Palace on an icy morning at the end of January 1941, I was convinced that under no circumstances could Hitler win the peace or organize Europe.” (Athene Palace 57)    

Athene Palace Hotel Lobby (Wikipedia)

Though the Countess spilled ink about the Jewish community of Romania, her primary concern was not the “Jewish question.”   In Athene Palace, the Countess shared her view of the big picture – with Romanian history in the rear-view mirror and the unknown post-war Europe out the front windshield. She sat on the precipice of history, waiting to see what Germany would do and how the Romanian people and other Europeans would respond. 

Romania was of strategic importance to Germany as it sits at “the crossroads of southeastern Europe, the country bestrides a major artery of empire, the Danube.” (Athene Palace 39) It is a country rich in natural resources.  Its oil and agricultural surpluses were high on Hitler’s shopping list.    By the time France fell to Germany in June of 1940, western Europe had been swallowed by Germany.  Hitler’s next stop was the Soviet Union or the Balkans.  It was in June of 1941 that Germany ripped up its friendship pact with the Soviet Union and attacked.  Romania was a stepping-stone to the Soviet Union. 

There were people from all over the world in 1940 Bucharest, including plenty of Nazis.  After the fall of France, the Nazis insisted that the war would be over in three months.  “To the Romanians,” wrote the Countess, “there was nothing in the performance of the German armies so far which did not justify this belief. France was gone. There was on the Continent no army left to take up the battle.  Talk in the cafes said Britain would surely capitulate or, if she would not capitulate, she would be bombed off the map and invaded.” (Athene Palace 159-60)

Taking a look in that rear view mirror, the Countess saw the fall of France as a “climax to twenty years of failure of the promises of democracy to handle unemployment, inflation, deflations, labor unrest, party egoism, and what not.” She goes on to analyze why Hitler seemed to be “walking into” every country in Europe.  “Europe,” she wrote, “tired of herself and doubtful of the principles she had been living by, felt almost relieved to have everything settled – not satisfactorily but in such a way that it absolved her of all responsibility.  Freud talks somewhere about man’s subconscious longing to get away from light and back to the stuffy warmth and safety of the womb. The European man’s surrender to Hitler seemed to be the translation of this longing for the mother womb.  Hitler, Europe felt, was a smart guy- disagreeable but smart. He had gone far in making his country strong. Why not try his way? That’s how Europe felt in this summer of 1940.” (Athene Palace 160)

As the Countess described Western Europe, I couldn’t help but hear an echo of Donald Trump’s 2016 America.   “What really made for surrender to Hitler,” argued the Countess, “was people’s distrust of freedom because of the weaknesses in its wake and people’s fedupness with their ruling class; and the ruling class’ fed-upness with itself.” (Id.)

Back to Romania – I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that Romania had a king.  His name was King Carol, and he dumped his queen for a Jewish mistress named Lupescu.  It seems the Romanian people were terribly antisemitic and never forgave Carol for this.  The Countess felt that Lupescu “would probably have got by if she had been the natural daughter of an orthodox Catholic streetwalker but being of Jewish extraction was too much for her to overcome. The Romanian people felt humiliated that their King had dropped his Queen for a Jewess.  And now they were blaming her for the misfortune which had befallen the country – and they blamed the entire Jewish race for Lupescu.” (Athene Palace 165)  

King Carol II (Wikipedia)

 According to the Countess, the Romanian antisemitism was the “old-fashioned kind” – religious, not racial – and under this antisemitism it was well known that “the Jewish middlemen had built up a devilish system to enslave the peasant.” (Id.)  After King Carol fired the British as an ally and appointed a pro-German premier, laws excluding Jews from “the press, theater, and the management of big business” were enacted. (Athene Palace 162)   Next came laws declaring “who was a Jew and who was not.” (Id.)

The Nazis had an idea for a new world order.  This new world was one without Jews, but it was also one where other inferior peoples were subservient to the Aryan race.  The Countess came to a deeper understanding of Germany’s intentions as she overheard a conversation on a train between two SS officers.  

It was a fancy Pullman car and there were SS officer together with a “dark-haired Romanian lady with a dark-haired little boy.”  

“If that’s not a Jewish mama with her little Moritz, I’ll be hanged,” the SS man said to his colleague. 

‘He’s Romanian,’ the other SS-man corrected him.  ‘His father saw him off – an officer.’

‘A Romanian is he?’ said the first.  ‘Just wait until we are masters here, then Romanian boys will travel in cattle trains and not in Pullmans.’”

“So this, I thought,” the Countess wrote about this overheard encounter, “was the new European Order.   It was nothing of the sort – it was a German order. . . clearly this new order benefited only Germans. The same SS-men who were gentle baby-kissers with little Germans from Bessarabia, were savages with a Romanian or a Jewish boy.  It was an order in which only the Germans partake of mercy and salvation, and almost everyone else is condemned to everlasting doom. Yet, I knew one could never organize Europe on ‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles.” (Athene Palace 333)

After her train ride, the Countess summed up her view of the new Nazi world order that appeared to be unfolding across Europe.  “The Nazi order,” she wrote, “rested on the trinity of race, nation, and state. . ..   Their church was the Party hierarchy; the Gestapo was their Holy Inquisition; the French revolution was their original sin; Dachau was their purgatory for the sinners against the trinity of nation, state, and race. Heretics were everyone who was neither Nordic nor German.”  (Athene Palace 334)

This Jewish girl of Staadecker stock from Mannheim, Germany, watched Hitler rise to power and here a year into the war and she was able to grasp ahold of the stark reality that confronted Europe.  Ernest Latham, Jr., the expert on the Countess, told me that her analysis of Romania and Europe in the Athene Palace is one of the best he’s ever read. 

Countess Rosie Waldeck (Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.)

After the war, the Countess went back to Europe and wrote one more non-fiction book titled Between the Acts.  She lived in New York City until she died in 1981.  The timing of her death hit me as I realized that the Countess and I lived in the same city for two years; I arrived in New York for college in 1979.   Had I only known about her then, what interesting conversations we could have had. 

I am amazed and grateful that I “stumbled” into my cousin Rosie and my life is richer for “knowing” her.  Thank you, Seattle Jewish Transcript, for recording the social life of the Victor Staadecker family and for writing about the Countess’ visit to Seattle 82 years ago. 

So, was she or wasn’t she?  

After 300 pages of intelligence gathering, the FBI concluded that she was not a Nazi spy.  But no one really knows for sure.

The Countess – Tried as a Spy in Berlin

Before the United States worried that the Countess was a Nazi Spy, she was accused of being a spy for France and the Soviet Union. These accusations were brought by jealous, spiteful family members. But, let’s not rush . . .

Rosie Goldschmidt was precocious.  She read voraciously and, as a teenager, had an unusual relationship with her teacher, whom she called Michael.  They had secret meetings at museums and parks. This went on until their secret meetings were discovered and the teacher was sent a’packin.  “Michael,” Rosie wrote, “had made me at home in the world; the intellectual interests that he had instilled were lasting and so were the friends I made through him.” (Prelude 70).   Of these early days, Rosie noted in her memoir: “’How is it that you are so sure of yourself, my dear?’ my only girlfriend used to say in those days.   I really don’t ever remember having felt unsure of myself, but it was a sort of ‘drawing-room sureness.’ The nicest thing that was said to me in this period of my life was that I had a ‘listening soul.’” (Id.)

Graduating high school in 1917, Rosie attended University in Munich but found it lacking and transferred to the University of Heidelberg where she put herself on fast forward and graduated with a PhD in Sociology – summa cum laude in 1920.

In the years after World War I and the signing of the Versailles Treaty, Germany experienced hyper-inflation.  It was in Berlin, working for a banking house that Rosie watched her clients “get rid of their hourly depreciating marks” and saw how “[p]eople bought anything that was supposed to represent ‘real value’ with scarcely any investigation.  They reckoned as ‘real values,’ besides houses, carpets, antiques, and the trousseaux bought ahead for daughters hardly born or thought of, the shares in various industries.”  (Id.)  She also described how the Versailles Treaty was “for every German . . . a thorn in the flesh.”  (Prelude 115) It was, in part, Germans’ hatred of the Versailles Treaty and post-war inflation that allowed Hitler to rise to power in the 1930’s.

Rosie’s interest in older men continued and soon after arriving in Berlin, she married a Jewish gynecologist, Dr. Ernst Graefenberg, who was seventeen years her senior.  Their marriage lasted for “1,090 days,” as Rosie recalled.  After divorcing the good Doctor, Rosie moved to Paris and began her career as a journalist.

Leopold Ullstein, Founder of Ullstein Press (wikipedia)

But things got more interesting when she moved back to Berlin and began to work for the Ullstein press, a Jewish-owned publishing conglomerate – think a Jewish Rupert Murdock – they owned a book publishing business, but also newspapers, and magazines.  They controlled four daily papers in Berlin alone with a circulation of 800,000; four weeklies with a circulation of 1,000,000 and ten monthlies. The company was founded in 1877 by Leopold Ullstein. The company sent Rosie to Geneva to cover the League of Nations.  There in Geneva is where Rosie met “Kobra —  Karl Ritter, who became a Nazi diplomat and operative.  After the war, in 1947, Ritter was arrested, sentenced to crimes against humanity for being complicit in the deportation of Danish, French and Hungarian Jews to the death camps and for war crimes. He was sentenced in 1949 to four years imprisonment which, with time-served, allowed for his release on May 15, 1949, at age 65.” (Prelude 18)     

 Rosie, however, wrote that Kobra was the “love of her life” and she would do anything to keep the relationship going.  In a novel-worthy plot twist, in November of 1929, Rosie married Franz Ullstein, head of the Ullstein publishing company.  Rosie’s mother disapproved and told her daughter that Franz, at 63, was even too old for her.  Rosie agreed to Franz’s marriage proposal because she somehow believed that marrying Franz would allow her relationship with the budding Nazi, Ritter, to continue and flourish.  She convinced herself that as Frau Franz Ullstein she would command a position of power in Berlin that would captivate and entertain Kobra. 

This marriage didn’t sit well with the rest of the Ullstein family.  To them Rosie was a “blond hussy” – “gold digger” – waiting for the aged rich husband to kick and inherit it all.  These family members used their vast media network to slander Rosie and accused her of being a spy for the Soviet Union and for France.  What was it about Rosie that continually led to the label of “spy?” The “Ullstein Affair” as it was known, was a huge scandal and was in all the papers for months.  Also, her not so secret affair with Kobra became public and was fodder for the tabloids.  She and Franz divorced, which made Rosie rich.  At the end of a year and a half long trial in Berlin, the judge declared that Rosie was NOT a spy for France or the Soviet Union and the Ullsteins had to apologize.

This embarrassment to the Ullstein family occurred just a few years before the Nazis came to power and “aryanized” the Ullstein company. A November 2, 1933 headline The New York Time read:

NAZIS SWALLOW UP ULLSTEIN PRESS, LARGEST IN REICH; Family Will Lose Control of the Concern It Founded in 1877 in Transaction Today.

The Ullstein family was forced to cede control of the company to the Reich and were left with a non-voting, minority share of the company. Franz was allowed to stay on as a director, but the rest of the family was out. The value of the company, according to the Times article was 60 million marks ($1,714,000 – today – approx. $32 million). In 1941 Franz made it to the United States and lived in New York until his death on November 12, 1945. He died in a car accident on Columbus and 79th. Queary whether the Countess and Franz ever visited during the four years they both lived in New York city? I don’t know.

The Countess’s first memoir, Prelude to the Past, ends in 1930, before the Nazi’s rise to power, with the triumph of the trial, the divorce from Franz and the devastating news that Kobra – the love of her life – broke off the relationship.  It seems, however, that there was a reunion on the Hindenburg flight in 1936.  Maybe Kobra’s interest was renewed with Rosie’s new impressive title – Countess.

The Countess – Passport Photo Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

In the next and final Countess episode, I will share the Countess’ experience as a journalist in Bucharest, Romania in 1940 and we shall continue the quest to uncover her persona as a spy.

The Countess Revealed – Rosie Goldschmidt

Rosie Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

Countess Rosie Waldeck began life on August 24, 1898, as Rosie Goldschmidt, daughter of Johanna (Staadecker) Goldschmidt and Max Goldschmidt, a well-respected Jewish banker in Mannheim.  Her only sibling, Ella, was born 1903. 

Rosie’s 1934 memoir provides a glimpse into the affluent, assimilated, Jewish life in Mannheim at the turn of the 20^th century. The city of Mannheim, according to Rosie, was a place of opportunity for Jews and Christians alike.  “The Mannheim aristocrats were not, in general, anti-Semitic,” Rosie writes, “and in the eighties had intermarried with such Jews as were rich, and at least as patrician as themselves. . .   The Mannheim Jews are completely assimilated, and distinguished from their Christian fellow-citizens chiefly by their great interest in things of the mind and of art. Their wealth was every bit as brand-new, as nineteenth century, as that of the Christian citizens.” (Prelude 32) 

Though her father was one of the leaders of the Mannheim Jewish community, her family was, like most other Mannheim Jews, secular.  “Very few, ‘ate kosher,’” Rosie explained, “[t]hey attended the synagogue only on the great festivals.  And they cheerfully allowed their children to become free-thinkers or Protestants.   But even those who remained Jews from tradition, superstition, and a kind of snobbery, had nothing Jewish in their aspect or speech. They were Mannheimers.” (Prelude 33)

Max Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

The Countess writes of her deep love for her father and how his death in 1926 was crushing.  Max Goldschmidt was a bespectacled banker who was happy to be a big fish in the small pond of Mannheim and had no interest in expanding into the banking world of larger cities, such as Berlin.  When Grandfather Goldschmidt died, Max took his seat as head of the Jewish congregation in Mannheim.  Though Max knew little about Judaism, he was a committed Jew and told his daughter that “though we might have Christians as our friends, we must never think of marrying one.” (Prelude 41)

When they attended the Synagogue on the two “great feast-days,” her father, “stood in his place of honor among the men below, and mother and we two girls sat above in the gallery, on the chairs which had belonged to the women of our family for generations. . . . We children [read] the service in translation, but always a little ahead or behind, because one kept losing one’s place those Hebrew books, which begin where other books finish; after the service, the somewhat disconcerting ‘Happy New Year’ – for really it was absurd to be exchanging New Year greetings in September, when the rest of the world (and we ourselves as well) had had them on the first of January.” (Id.)

 Her mother Johanna “was a singularly beautiful woman with magnificent dark eyes and a very lovely complexion.  At thirty she already had a white lock in her black hair, right above her forehead.”  (Prelude 36)   She was an athletic woman who loved to play tennis and other sports.  Rosie described her as “witty, intelligent, and has a fastidious taste in all personal and practical things. She is always exquisitely dressed, and understands more about the inside of a house than most interior decorators.”  (Id.)  But, she had “an impatient and violent temper when she was young.” (Prelude 37) Rosie had a deep regard and love for her mother, but clearly, she favored her father. 

Johanna (Staaadecker) Goldschmidt: Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

In the Goldschmidt home, Christmas, not Chanukah was celebrated in December.   But Rosie complained that she would rather have celebrated Chanukah because it would have been a more authentic celebration.  Their family’s celebration of Christmas “left out the Christmas tree with candles and silver tinsel, which spoiled the whole thing for me . . . I used to feel on Christmas Eve that we were all embarrassed and awkward – and was always glad when it was over, and I could take refuge in my own room with my new books.” (Prelude 42)

I learned that my great-grandfather Victor Staadecker lived with the Countess’s grandfather, Abraham Staadecker, during his high school years in Mannheim.  Before I knew of the Countess, I discovered that Uncle Abraham was an attorney and a Talmud scholar.  This would have been dayenu – enough – for this information created a strong kinship toward this Mannheim attorney with whom I shared a love of the law and of Jewish texts.  But his granddaughter, Rosie, filled in more details.  

Abraham Staadecker died in 1910, when Rosie was twelve.  But she explained that anything that she learned about Judaism, she learned from her grandfather.  He told her stories from the “Old Testament” and the history of the Jewish people.  She described going to his house each Saturday for a meal.  “Grandfather” Rosie wrote, “used to say a short Hebrew grace before meal, and put on a little cap while he was saying it.  I did not understand it, but knew that I must fold my hands for it.  The whole thing only took a few seconds, and then came the meal, with everything I liked best to eat – and always the same: vermicelli soup, chicken with green vegetables, and an apple-compote with lots of raisins in it.” (Prelude 35)   Rosie described her grandfather as “radiant with vitality, intelligence, and goodness.  He was a big, heavily built man, with fiery eyes under bushy white eyebrows.”  (Id.) At first, he pursued rabbinical studies, but then “changed horses” and studied law. 

As a girl, her grandfather told her that she must “always be faithful to Judaism even if it were not easy.” This was bewildering to a privileged daughter of an assimilated German banker.  “I did not then understand what could make it difficult,” Rosie wrote, “but I dimly divined that Judaism is not only a religion like the Protestant or Catholic, but has a special condition of its own.  But as I was only twelve when my grandfather died, I forgot about all this.” (Id. 35)

She did indeed “forget about all this;” as an adult, living in the United States, Rosie converted to Catholicism.

My Cousin the Countess – Nazi spy?

Photo: Countess Rosie Waldeck – from Photo Archive of Ernest Latham, Jr.

Was she a Nazi spy or was she not? 

The FBI and the CIA wanted to know whether Countess Rosie Waldeck was a Nazi spy?  A 300-page file was amassed with evidence and counter evidence. 

The Countess, a brilliant, enigmatic, Jewish woman, obtained a PhD in sociology from the University of Heidelberg at the age of 22, married three times, was the subject of a scandalous court case in Berlin, and moved to the United States in 1931.  Why, the U.S. intelligence organizations wondered, would a German Jew return to Nazi Germany in 1936 and fly on the zeppelin Hindenburg’s maiden voyage across the Atlantic in March of that same year with high-ranking Nazis?  Further, her affair with Karl Ritter, who became a Nazi diplomat, raised quite a few eyebrows.  Coincidentally, Ritter was also on the Hindenburg’s maiden voyage.[1]  

Zeppelin Hindenburg (photo: airship.net)

For me, this all started innocently enough with a simple search: “Staadecker” in the computer archives of the Seattle Jewish Transcript. Here is one of the hundreds of entries I found:

“Distinguished Guest Seattle Visitor,” the headline read on January 13, 1939.  “A visitor with a glamorous history, Countess Rose Waldeck,” the Transcript’s Social page noted, “formerly of Berlin Germany and now of New York City was in the city last week. Countess Waldeck is a niece of Mr. Victor Staadecker and a sister of Miss Ella Staadecker.  The title lady is the author of “Prelude to Life” an autobiography, and is associated with Dorothy Thompson, eminent writer, on her work on the refugee situation.”

My interest was aroused: who, is this Countess and how is she related to my great-grandfather, Victor Staadecker?   However, my attention was diverted as I had other more pressing research matters on my list and the Countess got relegated to the back page.  But ultimately, the Countess drew me back as I sorted through the ten Staadecker children born in Merchingen, Germany and various Staadecker relatives that lived in Mannheim.  I struggled to place the Countess on our family tree. 

What I found is that she is indeed related – she was my great-grandfather Victor’s first cousin, once removed.  The Countess’s mother, Johanna (Staadecker) Goldschmidt was first cousin to Victor; their fathers were brothers.  Johanna lived in Mannheim and Victor lived 60 miles away in the smaller town of Merchingen.  But when it came time for Victor to attend Gymnasium, he went to Mannheim and lived with Johanna’s family.  Perhaps he went to school in Mannheim because it was a better school or perhaps because there were just too many kids in the house and his stepmother wanted one less to care for.  It was, in 1885, after high school, that Victor emigrated to America at the age of 17. 

Great-Grandfather, Victor Staadecker

Re-reading an interview given by my Uncle William Staadecker to the Jewish Archive Project in 1981, I noticed that he mentioned the Countess as attending his father, Victor’s 70th birthday party.  “At that party,” Uncle William states, “was the Countess Walldeck [sic] who was a cousin of my fathers.  She was German and had to leave because of Hitler.  She was a very wealthy and charming lady.  Of course, she didn’t have any money now. . .. She’s now a very old lady.”[2]  Ella and their mother Johanna did indeed come to America to escape Nazi Germany.  It appears that Victor was the one who sponsored them and helped them settle in Seattle, along with other members of the Staadecker family.  Sadly, it seems Johanna had a hard time with the adjustment.  She died by suicide in 1940 at the age of 61.  It’s possible that the Countess’s visit to Seattle in January of 1939 was the last time she saw her mother. 

So, how did Rosie Goldschmidt, a Jewish girl from Mannheim, become a Countess?  Well, after two failed marriages, sometime between 1935 and 1939, she married a Hungarian Count.  I was told by Ernest Latham, Jr, the world expert on the Countess, that it was a marriage of convenience – the Count did her a favor.  As a German Jew, the Nuremberg Laws stripped her of her citizenship, and she didn’t become a naturalized American citizen until 1939.  Marrying the Count gave her Hungarian citizenship and, crucially, a passport. 

 The Countess was an author and a journalist.  I read both of her early memoirs: Prelude to the Past: An Autobiography of a Woman, published in 1934 and Athene Palace, about her year in Romania as an American journalist, published in 1942.  These books have been re-issued in the past few years with an introduction written by the expert – Ernest Latham, Jr.  By contacting the publishing company, I was able to connect with Mr. Latham and I have learned so much about the Countess that I feel I know her.  Well, not really, but I can say that I wish I had known her. 

Over the next few blog posts, I will introduce you properly to the Countess and will share a bit of Jewish life in Mannheim, as well her insights into the early years of World War II and Hitler’s rise to power as she saw it from her vantage point, especially during her year in Romania.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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[1] Here is a list of all passengers on the Hindenburg’s first flight with bios of them – both Ritter (age 52) and Waldeck (age 37) are listed. 

[2] Interview with William Staadecker, Jewish Archive Project, November 6, 1981. The Countess died the same year Uncle William gave his interview – 1981.  She was 83 years old.

Yom Hashoah- Make it Personal

Photo: Memorial Lights in Barracks at Majdanek

It’s been 76 years since the end of World War II.  As I reflect on this, I am a bit shocked to realize that I was born only 16 years after the War.   Maybe turning 60 makes the number 76 look not so far away.   Today I have the opportunity, as we commemorate Yom Hashoah, to look back to 16 years before my birth, when the war ended. 

 My generation grew up in the immediate shadow of the Holocaust – the survivors were in our communities, some of them with numbers tattooed on their arms.  Even if they didn’t speak of the horrors and the loss, we knew they had survived the Shoah.  In Jewish Day School they showed us the footage of the camps being liberated with the piles of dead bodies and the emaciated, skeletal human figures wandering, reaching out their hands to the soldiers for food, for help.  The number six million was thrown around everywhere.   Six million murdered – our sisters and brothers – killed because they had a Jewish grandparent.

 Still, it wasn’t until I joined the Goldberg family and heard the deeply personal stories of my in-laws, Sam and Esther Goldberg, that I internalized the depth of loss and suffering that took place. “Six million” numbs the mind and is impossible to visualize – it becomes a mantra, like “never again” and these mantras become meaningless over time. 

Learning what happened to Sam and Esther put the horror into a frame that my mind could process.  As I heard how Esther survived the Slonim massacre because she was in the hospital recovering from typhus, but her parents – Bracha and Shloime Zalman Wisznia, and her siblings – Yisroel Yoseph, Yitzchak, Shaina, and Shimon, were shot into a pit just out of town – I could felt pain deep in my soul – this is horror I can touch.  I too have parents and siblings – I can attempt to imagine what I might feel like if one day, as I am recovering from illness, I discover that my parents and two brothers were all murdered in a horrific antisemetic shooting – family gone in an instant. This doesn’t feel like an impossibility after Pittsburgh and Poway.

Photo: Museum-Chamber of the Holocaust – memorial stone for Jews murdered at Slonim

Sam described how in 1941 as a Soviet soldier he was captured by the Germans.  He was a prisoner of war, exhausted and starving.  He wanted to give up and end it all as he heard – “all Jews step forward” – he knew that meant a bullet to his head.  It was only because of his friend, who he called “the Kafkazer,” who put a cube of sugar on his tongue, that he didn’t step forward and take the bullet.  Somehow the sugar cube revived Sam and gave him the will to survive, to live one more day.  When I heard this story from Sam, I could feel his exhaustion and his hunger and appreciate how another human being intervened and gave him hope and strength.  I wonder if it was the care and concern of the Kafkazer more than it was the sugar cube itself that kept Sam alive.  What a lesson we can learn about how to support one another when we see a friend in need. 

Now that I am a Bubbi, I wonder what the Shoah will mean to my three grandchildren.  They were born 74/75 years after the War.   How will they relate to the number “Six Million?” How will they relate to the fact that their great-grandparents survived?  What will they say to their grandchildren?  I don’t know, but I will do my best to connect them to their history and to the preciousness of life and what it means to be a friend.

It’s incumbent on each of us to humanize the “Six Million.”  Make it personal.  Maybe it’s something you read, maybe it’s someone you know or knew, maybe it’s a movie you saw.  Take a piece of it and internalize it.   As the generation of survivors leaves us, we will be bereft. It becomes our responsibility to tell what happened to the next generation. If we make it personal, make it come from our kishkes, it will have a lasting impact. 

I hope on this Yom Hashoah, we each have the opportunity to reflect on our lives and how we can help to create a world where hate and bigotry find no resting place.   

         Making it Personal – Our family recording Hashem He’elita