Jerusalem – The Massuah Institute for the Study of the Holocaust will present, for the first time, a series of 36 short video interviews with Holocaust survivors – and is inviting them and/or their relatives to take part in the event.
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The films will be shown on January 25, two days before International Holocaust Day. The original interviews were filmed some 20 years ago, and the fate of many of those interviewed is not known. Their names are hereby being released, and they and their relatives, are invited to contact Massuah ([email protected]).
The names are: Michael Yitzchaki, Irit Romano, Ari Terasi, Helena Birnbaum, Aliza Baruch, Shlomo Perel, Orna Birnbach, Anushka Friedman, Gavriel Dagan, Yehuda Maimon, Jacques Stromza, Ruth Eliaz, Heleh Shiffer Rofeisen, Yaakov Greenshtein, Naftali Lavie, Rivka Cooper, Shimon Serevnik, Emanuel Ressin, Marek Shpitinsky, Tzipora Vardi, Dov Freiberg, Uziel Lichtenberg, Simcha Rotem-Ratheiser Kazhik, Eitan Porat, Menachem Ofan, Sara Shaner, Shevach Weiss, Eliezer Lidovsky, Aharon Carmi, Fella Finkelstein, Leon Blatt, Bronca Kalivansky, Jack Klinger, Shlomo Volkovitz, Meir Bussak, and Shlomo Shafir.
Some of the survivors provided 15 to 20 hours of taped testimony, which have been pared down to just a few minutes for each one. Massuah has released some of the films for early viewing, and they can be viewed as follows:
Jack Klinger (with English subtitles). He served as a clerk in Auschwitz, and was sometimes able to save Jews by changing the numbers of those destined for the gas chambers to those who had already been killed.
Leon Blatt (with English subtitles). Before being sent to Auschwitz and surviving the Death March, he helped organize resistance and rescue efforts in Hungary, saving many youth movement members and their families.
Eliezer Lidovsky (with English subtitles). He established a partisan unit and fought against the Germans.
Rabbi Menachem Ofan (no English subtitles). Rabbi Ofan tells of his experiences in several concentration camps, including the trauma he underwent when he was sent to Bergen-Belsen. He was able to keep his tefillin with him, and wear them every day for two years, despite the dangers and hardships. He recalls how he and nine of his friends were caught conducting a Yom Kippur prayer service, and were then beaten and given impossibly hard work – and were then offered a hearty meal. A discussion ensued amongst the ten as to whether to eat it or not, and a majority voted against – leading to astonished admiration amongst the Nazi guards.
Massuah Institute
The Massuah Institute, located in Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak, between Ra’anana and Netanya, was created nearly 50 years ago as a living memorial to members of Zionist youth movements and victims of the Holocaust. Among its founders were survivors and children of survivors who sought to build an institution that would stimulate interest in the Holocaust among students and young adults from Israel and throughout the world.
The name “Massuah,” meaning “beacon”, was chosen to emphasize its purpose as a guide to the past, a warning for the future and to shed light on the darkness and ambivalence associated with the Holocaust