Grapevine January 25, 2023: Pause to remember

• Published date: 25 January 2023

Many Jews served in the Red Army, and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jewish Red Army veterans came in large numbers to Israel. More recently others also came, as well as Holocaust survivors from Ukraine

Some Red Army veterans who came to Israel are still living. According to the Authority for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors, there are currently 150,600 Holocaust survivors in Israel, mostly in their mid-eighties and upward.

Among the commemorative events throughout the country this week, will be a gathering of heads of diplomatic missions at the Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, which is located at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, on the Coastal Plain southeast of Netanya. US Ambassador Tom Nides will be among the speakers at the official ceremony, after which there will be a discussion among diplomats moderated by Gil Haskel, the chief of State Protocol. The event, which is by invitation only, will take place on Friday.

Yad Vashem and Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust

■ YAD VASHEM has gone to great lengths to recognize Righteous Among the Nations ־ namely, non-Jews who risked their lives and those of their families in order to save the lives of Jews. But for some odd reason, Yad Vashem for many years ignored Jews who saved Jews.

This lacuna has been partially amended by the Jerusalem-headquartered B'nai B'rith World Center, working together with the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers. Since 2011 they have awarded citations in public recognition of the heroism of Jewish rescuers.

But there are still so many untold stories. In Hungary, for instance, in addition to the amazing efforts of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and some of his colleagues from other embassies, there was a Jewish underground movement, which rescued some 45,000 Jews, but very little is known about its members. This is something the offspring of the rescuers cannot understand, given the volume of published Holocaust history research by numerous organizations and individuals around the world.

The rescuers disguised themselves as Christians, prepared false documents, smuggled people to safe houses and across borders, and when they procured train tickets for Jews, they also sent bodyguards to protect them in case of trouble. These train travelers were escorted mostly from Budapest to isolated villages. The rescuers also managed to save some 5,000 Jewish children whom they placed in 50 houses which bore plaques stating that they were under the custody of the Red Cross.

After the war, the rescuers did not speak of what they had done, but some, in the twilight of their years, shared their stories with children and grandchildren.

One of them, David Gur, now 97, father of three, grandfather of 10 and great-grandfather of eight, was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist youth group and a leading underground figure, who was tasked with forging documents. After the war, he was involved in organizing illegal immigration of survivors to the Land of Israel, and came himself in 1949. He joined Kibbutz Ga'aton, studied engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, and subsequently became a project manager.

Another member of the underground still living is Sarah Epstein, 97, who is a member of Kibbutz Brenner. She also has three children and is a grandmother to nine and great-grandmother to 24.

She was among the over 1,600 Jews on the famous Kastner train that left Budapest for Switzerland via Bergen-Belsen. Pregnant when she arrived in Bergen-Belsen, she was under great pressure during her brief stay there to abort, but she refused.

The train, which consisted of 35 cattle cars, was named for Rudolf Kastner (the grandfather of Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli), who negotiated the transport with Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, who sent so many Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Kastner was able to acquire a huge ransom from a wealthy Orthodox Swiss Jew by the name of Isaac Sternbuch, who with his wife, Recha, was involved in various rescue operations and gave shelter in their home in Switzerland to Jewish refugees.

Poland and helping Jews in the Holocaust

■ TOO OFTEN, when the subject turns to Jews and Poland, whether in conversation or in essays, the word "antisemitism" creeps in. Former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir used to say that Poles imbibe antisemitism in their mother's milk.

But that's far from the truth. Poland is credited with the largest number of Righteous Among the Nations. Some people attribute this to the fact that there were more Jews in Poland than in most...