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YAD VASHEM: "EVERY PERSON HAS A NAME": HISTORY AND JEWISH GENEALOGY
Yad Vashem celebrates its Jubilee Year (2003-2004) against the backdrop of new manifestations of antisemitism in the world, clouded by Holocaust denial. Yad Vashem Publishing publishes innovative historical studies, documents and memoirs to make the facts available to the general public as well as the community of scholars.
Recent publications shed light on persecution of Jews in Romania (Jassy, by Jean Ancel; Wilhelm Fieldermann's Diary); Poland (Inner Life in Ghetto Lodz, edited by Michal Ungar) and Hungary (We blew the shofar in Auschwitz). Books about the rescue of Jewish children (Norman Bogner's Kindness of Strangers) describe the heartbreaking efforts. A devastating new book in English by Prof. Manfred Gerstenfeld (Europe's Crumbling Myths) discusses the "new antisemitism."
All of Yad Vashem books contain extensive bibliographies, maps and notes, often complete with glossaries to help researchers follow the different versions of place names in various languages assist people tracing their family history through shtetls, villages and cities that may have changed names several times. Prof. Dov Levin's book, THE LITVAKS: A Short History of the Jews of Lithuania (2nd ed.), contains extensive history and tri-lingual place name indices that may help people trace their ancestry.
One of Yad Vashem's most important projects is collecting the names of the Righteous Among the Nations, people who risked their lives to save Jews. The first volume has now been published on France, in English and in French, detailing the circumstances of the brave deeds and short biographies of each Righteous person, with a photograph if possible. Families who owe their lives to these individuals will find background information on what happened in each region.
The Project of the Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations calls for the publication of approximately 10-15 volumes, divided by country and in alphabetical order. Each volume to be published in the language of the relevant country and in English.
The project is being implemented by the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem. Project Steering Committee of leading researchers is chaired by Prof. David Bankier, and Chief Historian Prof. Dan Michman.
The following list of countries indicates material on Righteous Among the Nations and rescue operations available to Yad Vashem:
ALBANIA, ARMENIA, AUSTRIA, BELARUS, BELGIUM, BRAZIL, BOSNIA, BULGARIA, CROATIA, CHINA, CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK, ESTONIA, FRANCE, GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, GREECE, HUNGARY, ITALY, JAPAN, LATVIA, LITHUANIA, LUXEMBURG, MACEDONIA, MOLDOVA, NETHERLANDS, NORWAY, POLAND, PORTUGAL, ROMANIA, RUSSIA, SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, TURKEY, UKRAINE, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, YUGOSLAVIA (SERBIA).
However, the most important sources for Jewish genealogists are the Community Ledgers, the Pinkassim, which tell the unbroken story of the generations and centuries before the Holocaust. Family names and community descriptions are meticulously recorded. The numbers tell the storyŠ
Yad Vashem's massive project, spanning more than 25 years and involving hundreds of researchers and historians, projects the publication of about 30 volumes. It has already begun with publication in Hebrew of books arranged country by country, for example, seven volumes for Poland.
Now a concise version in English has appeared: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWISH LIFE Before, During and After the Holocaust. Each "pinkas," or ledger, was the public record of the number of Jews living in the community, dates, and fate of the residents. These records have now been combined and condensed into THREE VOLUMES IN ENGLISH, edited by prominent writers. Editor in Chief is Shmuel Spector, historian, writer and editor, former Secretary General of Yad Vashem.The late Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder served as editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Judaica and was co-editor of the award-winning Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, among many other projects. Nobel Prize Winning author, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, has contributed a moving essay as a Foreword.
The PINKASSIM represent a massive effort to collect and record the comprehensive histories of each and every Jewish community in Europe and in North Africa that was directly affected by the Holocaust. Each individual entry begins with the arrival of the first Jews to the particular location and then details that community's special history through the First World War, the inter-war decades, and the Holocaust, including its immediate aftermath.
THIS FORMS THE MOST COMPLETE RECORD OF THE RICHNESS, DIVERSITY and DYNAMISM OF JEWISH LIFE BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST.
The changes in governments and control of certain areas led to a dizzying confusion in place-names and variants, as many communities changed hands many times.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWISH LIFE includes an EXTENSIVE CROSS REFERENCE OF ALL NAMES, making it a more useful reference text for genealogists, historians and researchers.
THE BOXED SET of THREE VOLUMES in ENGLISH include alphabetical listing of communities (A-J; K-Sered; Seredina-Z) and a series of maps showing the largest communities, over a total of 1,824 pages and nearly 300 photographs. Each section is preceded by a short introduction describing the main events and background. Index of personalities, places, organizations and institutions.
Following is a sample of selections from the two Encyclopedias: JEWISH COMMUNITIES:
AACH Rhineland, Germany. Jews arrived in 1589, reaching a peak pop. of 77 (total 310) in 1843, which steadily declined due to emigration to 38 in 1933. A synagogue was consecrated in 1859. Most Jews were destroyed in the Nazi era. By 1938, five of the villages eight J. families had emigrated to the U.S. The synagogue was wrecked on Kristallnacht (9-10 Nov. 1938) along with J. homes. The last Jews were deported in 1942-43; at least ten perished in the camps.
BOCHEYKOVO Vitebsk dist., Belorussia. The J. population was 323 (total 722) in 1897 and 183 in 1923 under the Soviets. In 1925, seven J. families earned their livelihoods in agriculture. The Germans occupied the town in July 1941 and murdered in Feb. 1942 those Jews who had neither been evacuated nor succeeded in fleeing.
CRAIDOROLT (Hung. Kiralydraocz) N. Transylvania dist., Rumania. A J. community existed form the mid-19th cent.; most engaged in agriculture. The J. pop. in 1930 was 133 (5% of the total). In May 1944, the J. pop. Was transferred to the Satu Mare ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz.
DINXPERLO Gelderland dist., Holland. Jews settled in the 18th cent. And numbered 59 in 1854. The J. pop. In 1941 was 84 (total 3,948). The Jews were deported in the Holocaust; only four survived.
RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS:
Norwegian rescuer Ingebjorg Sletten
Rabbi Julius Samuel and his wife Henriette emigrated from Germany and came to live in Oslo, Norway. As the country's chief rabbi, Julius Samuel was arrested and sent back to Germany in October 1942. A few days later, the family received a telephone call from Ingebjorg Sletten - a neighbor and member of the underground. She left a brief, pre-planned message: "The night is very cold. Make sure your children are well covered." Henriette immediately prepared herself and her children for departure. An hour later, Ingebjorg arrived at the Samuels' home and transported the family, along with other relatives, to an empty apartment outside of Oslo, which was already populated with other fugitives. Ingebjorg saw to all of their needs. One night in early December, they were joined to a group of forty Jews being moved to the Swedish border in trucks carrying potatoes. From the border, they were smuggled into Sweden, and saved. The father, Rabbi Samuel, was murdered in a concentration camp
French Rescuer: Hautval, Dr. Adélaïde
Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was a psychiatrist who lived in a Vichy-controlled area of southern France. In April 1942, Hautval was told of the death of her mother, who had lived in occupied Paris. Wishing to attend her mother's burial, Hautval asked the German authorities for permission to enter the Occupied Zone. They refused and Hautval decided to risk crossing the Demarcation Line. The attempt failed, and Dr. Hautval was captured by German police and transferred to the prison in Bourges. In June 1942, Jewish prisoners wearing the yellow patch began to arrive at the prison. Hautval remonstrated with the prison guards about the deplorable treatment of the Jewish prisoners, declaring, "They are human beings just like we are." The guards replied, "From now on, you shall be treated like the Jews." Hautval sewed a yellow patch bearing the inscription "Friend of the Jews" on her clothing. In January 1943, after spending time in camps in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande and in prisons in Romainville, Orléans, and Compiègne, Dr. Hautval was transferred, with another two hundred French women prisoners, to the Birkenau death camp. Hautval, a devout Protestant, was housed with five hundred Jewish women prisoners, and was nicknamed "the saint." She applied her medical knowledge to treat Jewish prisoners who had contracted typhus, secluding them in a separate part of the block, in order to prevent contagion. Hautval, employed as a physician by the camp commander, refrained from reporting the prisoners' illness and thereby spared them immediate death. She treated Jewish patients with boundless dedication, and her gentle hands and warm words were of inestimable value to Jews in the hell of Auschwitz. "Here," she said, in words engraved on the prisoners' memory, "we are all under sentence of death. Let us behave like human beings as long as we are alive."
Eventually Dr. Hautval was transferred to Block 10 of the Auschwitz I camp, where medical experiments were performed. Dr. Eduard Wirth, a subordinate of Dr. Mengele, had her involved in identifying the early manifestations of cancer in women. Dr. Hautval quickly discovered that the project entailed inhuman experiments, performed without anesthesia, on Jewish women prisoners. She told Dr. Wirth that she would not participate in his experiments and added that no person was entitled to claim the life or determine the fate of another. When forced to assist in the surgical sterilization of a young woman from Greece, Dr. Hautval told Dr. Wirth that she would never again attend such a procedure. When Wirth asked Dr. Hautval: "Why can't you understand that these people, the camp prisoners, are different from you?" she replied, "Yes, many of the people here are different from me, and you above all." When she resisted Mengele's attempts to force her to participate in experiments on twins, she was sent back to Birkenau.
On May 18, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Dr. Adélaïde Hautval as Righteous among the Nations.
Yad Vashem will be exhibiting at the Jerwish Genealogy Conference at the Renaissance Hotel in Jerusalem, 4 - 9 July, 2004. Be sure to visit them and join your fellow authors, scholars and librarians at the Conference! http://www.jewishgen.org/jerusalem2004
Martha Levinson Lev-Zion, Ph.D. The 24th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy Jerusalem, July 4-9, 2004
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