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Jewish Journal

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May 17, 2001

Planning the Holocaust

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

Kenneth Branagh, dapper in his SS costume, his blond hair neatly slicked back, coldly spat out the words during production of the HBO film "Conspiracy": "Dead men don’t hump. Dead women don’t get pregnant. Death is the most reliable form of sterilization."

He was sitting on a soundstage that was an exact reproduction of the luxurious Wannsee villa where 15 high-ranking Nazis, over lavish food and drink, matter-of-factly planned the Final Solution on Jan. 20, 1942. Branagh, the Oscar-nominated actor-director, was playing SS Gen. Reinhard Heydrich, who led the brief, top-secret meeting like a ruthless CEO. His fellow actors sipped liquor and puffed cigars as Branagh, feeling revolted, completed the scene. "It was very claustrophobic, very smoky, because once those set doors were closed, all the actors were in there all the time," said Branagh, who is best-known for directing and starring in film adaptations of Shakespearean plays. "That meant that at the end of every take, you rushed out of the room, peeled off your SS uniform, and took a breather from that creepily atmospheric place."

Branagh, who suffered sleepless nights as a result of the material, actually fled the set in the middle of one scene. He was reciting the dialogue where Heydrich refers to the gas chambers and advises: "The machinery is waiting. Feed it."

"I had to go outside for a little while," he confided. "I just felt the cumulative weight of it all. At all times I was reminded that this happened: It was not a fiction. It happened in a room like this, and it took only 90 minutes, and this man, this fantastically intelligent man Heydrich, was at the heart of it. I just felt this underlying revulsion at what happened and at the man himself. I didn’t want to say the lines. It was the most disturbing experience of my 20-year acting career."

"Conspiracy" is the brainchild of &’9;director Frank Pierson, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "Dog Day Afternoon" and the director of HBO’s "Truman" and "Citizen Cohn." He labored for eight years to bring "Conspiracy" to the screen.

Though Pierson is not Jewish, he felt close to the material. As a scholarship student at a posh New England prep school in the late 1930s, he befriended two Jewish classmates who were refugees of Nazi Germany. The boys, who were outcasts at school, didn’t like to talk about their experiences. Pierson learned something of what they had gone through when he avidly read about the Shoah after the war.

Cut to the mid-1990s, when Holocaust refugee Peter Zinner, a film editor, gave the director a tape of the subtitled 1984 Austrian-German drama "Die Wannseekonferenz."

"I can’t say I enjoyed it," said Pierson. "But I watched it like I was seeing a terrible auto wreck. I couldn’t take my eyes away."

He hoped to remake the movie "to elicit in viewers a kind of tenderness for the thin veneer of civilization that keeps us all from savaging each other to death." He hired screenwriter Loring Mandel to write the script, based on the 15-page Wannsee "protocols" and meticulous historical research (see sidebar below).

Pierson’s goal was to engage audiences by "making them feel as if they were in that room at Wannsee, as if it were a live event," he said. To that end, he "kept the cameras always at eye-level, so viewers would imagine that they were sitting at the table." To allow the actors to feel they were really at Wannsee, he shot 10-minute takes at a time and used 16mm cameras, which are relatively small, so he could fit two on the set without having to pull out a wall.

During a Journal interview, Branagh, 40, confided that he had known no Jews while growing up in a working-class Protestant home in Belfast in the 1970s. He did know something about bigotry and ethnic strife; when he was 9, his family fled the strife between Protestants and Catholics by relocating to Reading, England.

There, Branagh’s thick brogue made him the object of taunts by school bullies; as solace, he lost himself in 25-cent paperback copies of Shakespeare’s plays. By the age of 24, he had been accepted to the Royal Shakespeare Company; over the years, he made his mark with film versions of "Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Hamlet."

But nothing quite prepared him for the challenge of playing Reinhard Heydrich in "Conspiracy," he said. Branagh accepted the role, he said, in part "because I felt myself to be reasonably well-informed about the Holocaust, but was shocked to discover I knew nothing about the Wannsee Conference." He dutifully visited Holocaust museums and read biographical material, only to find that Heydrich’s inner life remained an enigma. Screenwriter Mandel tried to help by typing up a psychological profile of Heydrich, a talented musician known for his brute courage and bullying manner. "We were looking for elements that would lend to an understanding of his behavior, whether it be a childhood trauma or some physical or mental disability, but nothing seemed to make psychological sense," Branagh said.

"My previous experience of playing somebody quite so dark and evil was Iago in [the Castle Rock film of] ‘Othello,’" he added. "And yet, inside that part are many motivations — sexual jealousy, thwarted ambition — that you might regard as human, however unappealing. But I didn’t find that with Heydrich. It was very difficult to discover what was human inside him."

In the end, the key to Heydrich "was just that he relished power, his ability to judge and be ruthless with people," Branagh said. "I didn’t even think he had any deep-rooted hatred against the Jews. I think that if he had been asked to get rid of 11 million tennis players, he would have done it with exactly the same efficiency and skill."

The casual tone of the Wannsee meeting was as shocking to Branagh as the concentration-camp photographs he perused while researching his role. To cope with the difficult subject matter, the cast played a movie trivia game between takes "with a mad zeal that I have never encountered before," Branagh said. "We threw ourselves at the banal and the silly and the superficial in a hysterical way."

At the end of the Journal interview, the actor said he was flying off to Greenland to live on an icebreaker while making a movie about legendary British Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. "He was a man who valued life and was awash with compassion," the actor said. "It will be healing to play him. He was the exact opposite of Heydrich."

"Conspiracy" airs May 19, 9 p.m. on HBO.

Planning the Holocaust Read More »

Recreating ‘Conspiracy’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

There were only 30 copies of the Wannsee Protocols, minutes of the top-secret meeting where Nazi leaders planned the Final Solution. Just one copy of the "heavily censored and sanitized document" survived the war, according to Dr. Michael Berenbaum, a Los Angeles-based scholar who frequently serves as a consultant on films about the Holocaust. No dialogue from the meeting was ever recorded.

So recreating the Wannsee Conference for the HBO film "Conspiracy" proved daunting for screenwriter Loring Mandel, a German Jew whose cousins died in the Shoah. He relied upon Berenbaum, the film’s historical consultant, and his own meticulous research to complete a script he describes as "informed speculation."

Berenbaum, past president and CEO of Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and the former project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, initially harbored concerns about the movie. "Generally, American filmmakers look for a happy ending or for a sense of the transcendent human spirit when they deal with the Holocaust, so I was worried that they might not present Wannsee in its starkness," he said. "But Mandel didn’t back down or back away from the subject."

Berenbaum was called upon to describe the language the Nazi leaders might have used during the conference, especially their euphemisms for genocide. He approved when Mandel decided to make the Wannsee note-taker a man, since the Germans would have regarded a woman as too emotionally frail to handle the subject. He also explained what was at stake for the meeting’s leader, SS. Gen. Reinhard Heydrich: "He was only three years younger than his boss, Heinrich Himmler, so if he was going to advance in the ranks of the SS, he needed to develop a specialty — the Final Solution," Berenbaum said.

"Conspiracy" depicts Adolf Eichmann, head of the SS Jewish Affairs office, as a tense bureaucrat who is so anxious about pleasing his superiors that he suffers a nervous stomach. "When Eichmann was on trial in Jerusalem, there was an attempt to portray him as this Superman who was completely responsible for the Final Solution," Berenbaum said. "But the movie reveals he was a man of limited abilities who could organize and structure but didn’t have a swiftness of mind, which jibes with my scholarship."

Berenbaum pointed out that a range of "Conspiracy" recreations would have been historically sound. "But I fundamentally agree with Loring Mandel’s version," he said. "I felt chills when I saw the movie. It was everything I had seen in my imagination."

Recreating ‘Conspiracy’ Read More »

Ask Wendy

Leave a Comment / Community /

His Cheatin’ Heart

Dear Wendy,

My best friend discovered that her husband has been having a long-term affair. First she wept on my shoulder, then she asked me what I thought she should do? Is there a right answer to that question? She and her husband have three small children whose lives must also be considered.

Friend Indeed

Dear Friend Indeed,

The only right answer for now is that, as her best friend, you will stay by her side and support whatever decision she makes. But once that moment passes, it’s time for her to pack her bags — period. Or his.

This may be an oversimplification, but I believe that people fall into two categories: those who cheat and those who don’t. Those that do tend to do so again — especially if their transgression was of the long-term variety. If the wronged party doesn’t lay down the law, the transgressor knows, consciously or unconsciously, that he can get away with it again. Anyone who has seen a 4-year-old in action is familiar with this axiom. At the end of the day, your friend needs to ask herself: Do I still respect and trust my spouse? There can be only one answer to that question. And a marriage without respect and trust is no marriage at all, even if the family is still intact.

Unkosher Gift

Dear Wendy,

We received a beautiful mezuzah and scroll as a gift. Our sofer (scribe) pointed out that although written on kosher skin, some letters were written backwards, several words were in the incorrect order, and the heksher on the plastic wrapping was counterfeit. We do not want to offend the gift-giver but we feel obligated to alert her and the synagogue that sold it to her that the parchment is not kosher. What do you suggest?

Perplexed

Dear Perplexed,

Would you worry about telling someone their tires had been found to have a defect and were being recalled? I suggest you choose your words carefully and remember to express your appreciation. Beyond that, your friend and her synagogue store should be grateful for the information. Someone should be ashamed of himself — or herself — and it isn’t you.

Women Pallbearers

Dear Wendy,

At every funeral I attend I see only men bearing the casket. Does Judaism prohibit women from being pallbearers?

Curious

Dear Curious,

If ever there is a time when people cling to custom and ritual, it is at the end of life. Part of the ritual of death is to follow traditions already in place; male pallbearers happen to be one of those traditions. (In Jerusalem, another such tradition is that children, no matter what their age, do not go to the cemetery when a parent is buried. Go figure.)

There is no halachic reason a woman cannot be a pallbearer. According to my rabbi, this minhag (custom) was likely established as a matter of muscle: women were not considered strong enough to carry the casket. But even among the Orthodox community, the long-held tradition is being uprooted, one piece at a time. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, founder of Ohr Torah Institutions and the chief rabbi of Efrat, has broken ranks and decreed that it is permissible for women to be pallbearers for other women. If you are a member of a Conservative or Reform community, you have most likely already witnessed this shift.

Ask Wendy appears on the third week of every month. Send letters to Ask Wendy at wbadvice@aol.com or 954 Lexington Ave. Suite 189, New York, N.Y., 10021.n

Ulterior Motives?

Dear Wendy,

My daughter was 10 years old when I married for the second time. My new husband never wanted to fill the role of stepfather; in fact, he paid very little attention to my daughter. But now that we’re divorced (after 17 years of marriage) he calls her frequently and lavishes gifts on her. Recently he bought her a car. What do you make of the alliance and what do you think I should do?

Worried Mom

Dear Worried Mom,

If he can’t have you I guess he’s decided to settle for your daughter. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

The good news is that you’re divorced from him and no longer need to give a second thought to your ex-husband’s motives. Even if they are rather transparent. Your daughter is another matter. It isn’t everyday that someone offers to buy you a new car. On the other hand, this may be your daughter’s way of getting back at you while getting what she never got from your ex when he was her father. Without making a federal case of it, ask your daughter what is going through her head. Talk to her about your concerns — are there strings attached here? — but don’t let the discussion turn into an argument. You are no longer married to this man. Don’t let him come in between you and your daughter; and, whatever you do, don’t let your ex draw you back in. You divorced him for a reason, didn’t you?

Ask Wendy Read More »

Briefs

Leave a Comment / United States, Worldwide /

UJC Taps Tisch for Top Post

The United Jewish Communities (UJC) offered its top volunteer position to the president of UJA-Federation of Greater New York, according to a member of the UJC nominating committee.

The source said James Tisch of New York was asked to replace fellow philanthropist Charles Bronfman as chairman of the board, but has not yet responded.

Other UJC officials declined to confirm the nomination, saying they have been talking to “a whole host of people to see who’s interested.”

Shoah Denier Denied Platform

A student group at Oxford has canceled a debate on freedom of speech that was to feature Holocaust denier David Irving.

The Oxford Union debating society decided to call off the May 10 event at the last minute after intense pressure from a range of groups including the Union of Jewish Students, the Association of University Teachers and Oxford’s own Student Union.

High-Speed Train to Serve Tel Aviv

Israel’s rail authority inaugurated a double-decker passenger train that will serve suburban communities surrounding Tel Aviv. The train can seat 505 people and reach speeds of 87 miles per hour.

Shoah Deniers Meet in Jordan

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned a Holocaust deniers conference held Sunday in Jordan.

The meeting, sponsored by the Jordanian Writers Union, was “yet another step in a systematic effort under way in the Arab world to deconstruct Jewish history,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the center’s associate dean.

Last month, Lebanon’s prime minister blocked Holocaust deniers from holding a similar meeting in Beirut.

Israel Nixes Panel Call

Israel rejected a portion of a United States-led commission’s report that called for the end of settlement construction.

Speaking last Friday after U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said he hoped the report could serve as the basis for an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, Israeli Cabinet member Danny Naveh said ending construction meant to accommodate a settlement’s natural growth was “impossible.”

On Sunday, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha’ath said the Palestinians will not return to the negotiating table unless Israel halts all settlement construction.

In a separate development, Powell said he has not ruled out the idea of appointing someone to replace Dennis Ross, who served as President Clinton’s special envoy to the Middle East.

But Powell said that given the current state of Israeli- Palestinian violence, he does not see a reason to have someone “shuttle back and forth on a constant basis” between Washington and the Middle East.

Briefs courtesy of Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Briefs Read More »

Righteous Rescuers Honored

Leave a Comment / United States /

Though certainly one of the most bitter memories of history, the Holocaust was also a time of true heroism and great humanity. On Sun., May 6, Mt. Sinai Memorial Park in Simi Valley dedicated a grove of trees to the non-Jewish heroes who risked their lives to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Lidia Furmanski of Pasadena, a rescuer from Poland, and Bert Lerno of Simi Valley, a Jewish Dane who was rescued, were guests of honor at the dedication ceremony.

"Mount Sinai’s mission is to provide solace and honor human spirit," said Arnold Saltzman, general manager of Mount Sinai Memorial Parks. "The Grove of the Righteous Rescuers is an eternal testimonial to the thousands of non-Jewish rescuers whose courage and respect for their fellow men and women set a high standard for us all."

The Grove of the Righteous Rescuers is the first of its kind in this country and consists of 20 olive and almond trees. An additional 18 Jerusalem pines were donated by the Jewish National Fund, best known for planting more than 210 million trees in Israel. Through the grove winds a path among stone plaques acknowledging each of the 38 countries where citizens, at their own peril, protected Jews. In addition to a commemorative plaque, the centerpiece of the grove is a fountain of water surrounding an eternal flame. Dr. Edward Kamenir noted that the "combination of fire and water represents two extremes that can live in harmony." Kamenir worked as a volunteer to develop the new cemetery and was inspired by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial, to create a memorial to the heroes of the Holocaust.

"In front of [Yad Vashem] is a grove of trees dedicated to the righteous gentiles of the world. It impressed me that they had a place," Kamenir said. "Wherever we memorialize those who were sacrificed by the Nazis there should also be a memorial for those who sacrificed themselves to save them."

Simi Valley Mayor Bill Davis spoke during the ceremony and worked with local school children to plant a few trees in the grove.

Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom, the ceremony’s keynote speaker, focused on the importance of remembering our history. "One thing is more powerful than death itself — memory," Schulweis, said, adding that "memory is a subtle art. You have to know how to remember."

Schulweis, the founder of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, noted that if you leave people with only a melancholy memory, that memory could turn to cynicism. "Remember evil and do not forget goodness,"he said.

Righteous Rescuers Honored Read More »

Special Needs Family Retreat

Leave a Comment / United States /

Families of individuals with special needs often feel a sense of helplessness and isolation from the community, as well as confusion about how to best help their loved ones. In an effort to give families the tools to cope with these issues, Etta Israel Center (EIC) will hold its second annual retreat May 20 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Shaarey Zedek Congregation in North Hollywood

Launched last year by EIC board chairman Aaron Bloom and his wife Ricky, the first retreat drew more than 20 families, according to organizers. This year’s event includes a keynote address by Dr. Jeffrey Lichtman on "Balancing the Needs of All Family Members" followed by workshops on "Religion as a Tool," "Community and Synagogue Inclusion" and "Religious Obligations" as well as discussions addressing more secular concerns such as social skills and working with Regional Center.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for Jewish families who have a family member with a special need to come together, meet one another, exchange ideas, learn from one another and forge new friendships," said Dr. Michael Held, EIC executive director.

Cost for the retreat is $10 per person, with a maximum of $50 per family. For more information call (310) 285-0909.

Special Needs Family Retreat Read More »

Laying Out Markers

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The Bush administration, determined to scale back U.S. Mideast involvement, is being drawn into the seething center of the conflict as Israeli-Palestinian confrontations rage.

But President George W. Bush and his foreign policy team, anxious to avoid the overinvolvement of their predecessors, are carefully calibrating their Mideast policies and pronouncements. The goal, according to sources here, is to make better use of the bully pulpit in Washington, while steering clear of day-to-day mediation.

So far, at least, the primary target of the administration’s barbs has been Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority — although Jewish leaders warn that this should not be seen as a green light for harsher Israeli retaliation.

The new, plain-speaking approach to Mideast diplomacy was increasingly evident this week as the administration tried to halt the worsening violence without jumping directly into the fray.

On Monday, U.S. officials expressed alarm at the killing of five Palestinian policemen. But in a CNN interview, Secretary of State Colin Powell also slammed Arafat for promising that Israel would pay a steep price for the roadside killings.

"That kind of language I don’t think is very helpful, especially during the time Israel is celebrating its anniversary," Powell said.

In the same interview, the secretary brought up an idea pro-Israel activists here had hoped not to hear — linkage between the worsening Israeli-Palestinian situation and other U.S. foreign policy priorities.

Asked if the new intifada was affecting his ability to bolster U.S. Iraq policy, he answered that "it has made it much more difficult."

The danger of widening diplomatic repercussions means that Washington is "gradually being pulled into an ever-more-intense involvement in the region," said Jess Hordes, Washington director for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The inexorable pull of the crisis, he said, is taking place before the new administration’s policies and personnel are fully in place.

The outlines of that new policy are becoming apparent.

David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the administration’s evolving policy is shaped largely by its desire to avoid what many see as mistakes made by the last administration.

"One of the lessons [the Bush administration] feels it’s learned from the Clinton policies is the price that is paid when the administration muffles its objections to policies and actions of the two parties," he said. "The net effect is an explosion down the road."

The Clinton administration held its fire when the Palestinians violated earlier agreements and when Israel took actions that inflamed Palestinian opinion, he said.

"That enabled the gaps between the two parties to widen. Both [Israeli and Palestinian] leaders were able tell their publics radically different things; what was missing was a third party that was doing correctives all the time," he said.

Providing such correctives through public and private statements is emerging as a central element in the Bush administration’s approach to the Middle East.

"It’s not evenhandedness for the sake of evenhandedness; it’s calling things like they see them, and not sweeping things under the rug for the sake of ‘the process,’" said an official with a major Jewish group here. "That’s a profound shift that is sometimes going to make our community happy and sometimes angry."

So far, at least, Jewish leaders have been supportive of the administration policy shift — in part because they welcome the new willingness to sharply criticize Palestinian actions.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said that many leaders in the umbrella group were concerned about Powell’s recent criticism of Israel’s military incursions into Gaza.

But in general, he said, "what we’ve seen from the White House has been pretty reassuring. It appears they are not trying to pressure Israel; they have been very strong in assigning blame for the violence on the Palestinians. And they have been clear that they will not invite Arafat to the White House while the violence continues."

A key measure of how this policy shift will impact U.S.-Israel relations could come next week when the administration formally responds to the Mitchell Commission report, which examined the causes of the new violence and offered sweeping — and controversial — recommendations for ending it.

Next week, Powell is expected to reveal the detailed U.S. position on the report — which included a recommendation for a complete settlement freeze in return for an end to violence by the Palestinians — in an official letter to Mitchell.

"The response to the report will be an important indication of how they are defining their role," said the ADL’s Jess Hordes. "Do they endorse the whole report or only some of the elements? And will they include a settlement freeze as part of their basic approach?"

Hordes, like many other Jewish leaders, believes the Mitchell report went too far by making recommendations about an issue — settlements — that was not part of earlier agreements.

But most observers believe the secretary will use the report as ammunition for new assessments about both sides — but not as the centerpiece of a major new U.S. initiative.

Laying Out Markers Read More »

The Circuit

Leave a Comment / Circuit /

In Memory of Meyerhof

The Otto Meyerhof Medical Center was dedicated last month at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Meyerhof was a pioneer biochemist who discovered the fixed relationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in muscles. Together with English physiologist A.V. Hill, Meyerhof won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for 1922. Forced to flee Germany during Hitler’s rise, Meyerhof moved to the United States in 1940. He was made research professor of physiological chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked until his death in 1951. Meyerhof’s three children — Dr. Geoffrey Meyerhof of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia; Dr. Bettina Emerson of Bellevue Hospital in Bellevue, Wash.; and Dr. Walter Meyerhof of Stanford University — spoke at the recent dedication.

Meyerhof’s grandson, Burbank resident David Meyerhof, an LAUSD teacher for 24 years, teaches at Nightingale Middle School in Highland Park. “I was very happy that my grandfather, who was Jewish, was being honored by the country that expelled him 66 years ago,” David Meyerhof said.

Steinberg to Speak at Gala

California Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg will address Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Center’s mid-year dinner May 31 at the Olympic Collection in West L.A. Gateways, which serves homeless emotionally disturbed adolescents and mentally ill offenders, has found a kindred spirit in Steinberg, who has crafted legislation dealing with the homeless mentally ill. For more information on the midyear dinner, chaired by Myles Weiss, contact Ken Weinberg at (323) 644-2000, ext. 263.

The Celebration Continues

Israel Consul General Yuval Rotem and his wife, Miri, hosted a Beverly Hills Hotel reception to mark Israel’s 53rd anniversary.

The normally exuberant celebration was dampened by continuing fighting in Israel, but, as Rotem noted, “The Jewish people have always lived with tragedy alongside triumph.” He added, “There is no alternative to eventual reconciliation between Jews and Arabs.”

Soprano Hila Plitman led a rousing rendition of “Hallelujah” by M.C. Mike Burstyn and Oshrat. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

Next Stop: The Laugh Factory?

Sen. Joseph Lieberman proved he lost none of his wit on the long campaign trail as Democratic vice presidential candidate when he addressed 400 supporters of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life at USC.

While delivering the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Distinguished Lecture, Lieberman designated as his favorite campaign slogan a hand-lettered sign held by a Latina that proclaimed, “Viva Chutzpah.” Runner-up slogan: “Lox and Load” for the Lieberman-Buchanan “ticket” in the mixed-up Florida election.

On a more serious note, the Connecticut senator accused the Bush administration of supporting a policy of what Lieberman called “unilateral disengagement” in foreign affairs and global environmental concerns. — T.T.

Virtual Becomes a Reality

Agnes and Rabbi Erwin Herman will help establish a virtual resource center at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). The center will be dedicated to the memory of their son, Jeff Herman, and will be committed to promote inclusiveness and sensitivity within the Jewish community to lesbians and gay men and their needs.

Marathon Man

Let’s give it up for “Marathon” Marty Lipstein, the Bronx-born, 80-year-old former marathon runner and health advocate who was honored with an “Eighty Plus One” public birthday party at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, sponsored by Los Angeles Alliance for Survival.

Putting the “Fun” in Fundraising

Jack and Blanche Howard will be honored at Israel Cancer Research Fund Goes to the Races, a Hollywood Park fundraiser that aims to fully fund the $25,000 Patty Franklin Fellowship established for outstanding cancer researchers. The fundraiser will take place June 10. Lou and Cathy Rosenmayer will chair the event….

Wilshire Boulevard Temple Elementary School and Mann Family Early Childhood Center will hold its annual fundraiser at Hollywood’s Garden of Eden on May 19….

“Laughing Matters,” a Los Angeles Free Clinic fundraiser hosted by Renee Taylor and including Cindy Williams, Sally Struthers and JoAnne Worley in a panel showcasing the trials and tribulations of comediennes, sold out, attracting 350 people to the event at the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel.

Transition, Transition, Transition

The Real Estate and Construction Division (REC) of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles honored Mark Weinstein of MJW Investments, who stepped down as the division’s chair after more than two years in the position. Brad Luster of Major Properties was installed as the new REC Division Chair.

Men of Honor

The Santa Monica Bay Area Region of the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) paid tribute to Dr. Stu Bernstein among the honorees at the human relations organization’s 41st Annual Humanitarian Awards. Bernstein has been an active champion of diversity and outreach within the Los Angeles school district and has served many organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Committee. He also co-founded LAUSD’s Multicultural Coalition of Administrator Groups and programs such as the Black/Jewish Youth Experience….

BSA Honor

Westside community leader Dr. Jerome Tamkin received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, one of the highest honors presented by the Boy Scouts of America, at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Tamkin, a longtime supporter of the organization, has funded the Handicapable Special Needs Program of Scouting since its 1990 inception. He has also contributed to various Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Home for the Aging, Bureau of Jewish Education, Vista Del Mar, Stephen S. Wise Temple and Milken Community High School….

Joshua Fellow

Daniel Greyber, a fourth-year rabbinical student at University of Judaism, was awarded the Joshua Ventura Fellowship for his entrepreneurial efforts launching Lisman, a six-week egalitarian summer yeshiva program for students ages 18-25.

A Fair to Remember

Kadima Hebrew Academy seventh-grader Michael Goldrich took second place in the physiology section of the junior division of the 51st Annual Los Angeles County Science Fair. Also garnering honorable mentions: the Woodland Hills’ school’s Jonathan Glicksberg, seventh grade, and David Levi, sixth grade. n



Honorable Mentions

Jona Goldrich, founding partner of Goldrich & Kest and prominent philanthropist, will be honored by Real Estate & Construction Division of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. The gala will take place May 31 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Stephen S. Wise Temple will honor Dafna Presnell at the Skirball Cultural Center’s new Ahmanson Hall. For more information, call Harriet Zolan at (310) 889-2232.

Bureau of Jewish Education’s Leyb Nathanson Torah Mitzvah Awards Committee will present its 16th Annual Student Recognition Awards program at Temple Isaiah’s Social Hall in Los Angeles. For more information, call (323) 761-8640 or visit www.bjela.org.

The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at University of Judaism will present the Rabbi Simon Greenberg Award for Lifelong Achievement in the Rabbinate to Rabbi Mordecai Waxman at its third annual ordination ceremony May 21 at Sinai Temple. The honor is in recognition of Waxman’s efforts on behalf of interfaith relations.

Exhibiting Sensitivity

From May 3 — July 4, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust will exhibit the winning entries of the Jay Shalmoni Holocaust Arts and Writing Exhibit, which enlisted students to creatively interpret their meeting Holocaust survivors. A reception for the artists will take place on the evening of May 22. For more information, call (323) 761-8170. For a list of winners, go to www.remembertoteach.com .

The Circuit Read More »

Fund for Survivors

Leave a Comment / Community /

A foundation to aid needy Holocaust survivors in California, funded through a $4.2-million check from three Dutch insurance companies, was formally established last week by state officials, Jewish organizations and survivors.

The California Humanitarian Foundation for Holocaust Survivors is believed to be the first of its kind funded by European insurers, who have generally dragged their feet in meeting their obligations to Jews who took out policies between the two world wars.

In presenting the check, representing contributions by Aegon USA, ING America Insurance Holdings and Fortis, Inc., California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he hoped the action by the three Dutch affiliates "will unleash efforts all over the world by insurance companies to overcome interminable delays."

He urged other European insurance carriers to step forward in meeting their obligations to Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust "as a matter of conscience."

Arthur Stern described establishment of the new foundation, which he chairs, as "a significant milestone for all survivors." Stern, like eight of the foundation’s 12 board members, is himself a Holocaust survivor.

He estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 out of 22,000 survivors in California are indigent and should receive payments "equitably, speedily" and with a minimum of red tape. The primary California survivor communities are in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.

Though appreciative of the Dutch gesture, survivor Jona Goldrich, who serves as Gov. Gray Davis’ liaison for Holocaust issues, commented that the $4.2 million represented "just a token of the money owed." He estimated that European insurers owe as much as $1 billion to survivors and their heirs.

The action by the Dutch companies is a humanitarian gesture and does not affect any insurance claims against them. Lockyer praised the three as "the best corporate citizens" among European insurers, in contrast to insurance giants Allianz of Germany and Assicurazioni Generali of Italy, which owe hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to their former policyholders, he said.

Initial announcement of the companies’ $4.2-million offer was made as long ago as November 1999 by then-state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush. However, he failed to collect the money, and some months afterward he became embroiled in corruption charges and eventually resigned.

Quackenbush’s interim successor, Harry Low, said he hoped to have all the money distributed to needy survivors by 2002, and Stern said he expected to send out the first checks this year by Labor Day.

The Jewish Community Foundation in Los Angeles will administer and distribute the funds without cost so that all the money will go directly to survivors in need.

Among those applauding the new humanitarian fund was survivor Fred Diament, 77, who lost his parents and three brothers in the Final Solution.

"After all the suffering, and now in the last years of their lives, [survivors] should live in a garage? That’s unacceptable and intolerable," he said.

Richard Mahan, the foundation’s executive director, advised those wishing further information to phone (888) 890-9911.

Staff Writer Michael Aushenker contributed to this article.

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Requiem for a Dream?

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Deanna Armbruster doesn’t pull any punches.

The Los Angeles-based executive director of a Jewish-arab cooperative village in Israel is used to promoting an often-controversial cause, but these days her job has become even tougher. “We have been greatly impacted, obviously,” she said the Los Angeles-based executive director of American Friends of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam. Neve Shalom, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has served as an ethnic-relations experiment for nearly two decades.

About 300 Jewish and Palestinian children attend the village’s School of Peace each year. The intent, of course, is part of a long-term investment to improve frayed cultural ties between both communities.

So it was dismaying for Armbruster last fall when, during a visit with the residents of Neve Shalom, she learned that violence had broken out between Jews and Palestinians just beyond what in English translates as “oasis of peace.”

“It was extremely stressful,” she recalled. “People were up all night watching their television sets. The mood was somber.”

The idealistic promise symbolized by this model village seemed to be collapsing all around them, reverting to bloody conflict.

What Armbruster wouldn’t realize until her return to Los Angeles was how uphill the effort to keep American Jews committed to her cause would become. As her organization and other nonprofit enterprises devoted to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence have discovered, the latest intifada in Israel has had a ripple effect on the morale and fundraising efforts of American organizations that support lofty mission statements of unity and peace. Neve Shalom’s L.A. headquarters, for example, was forced to drop plans for both its biannual fundraising events.

“In the past, we have had events bringing two sides together,” said Myer Sankary, director of Neve Shalom’s national board and chairman of the L.A. chapter. “We’re not doing any public events; the emotions are too raw. We’re going to foundations and individuals, but right now it’s getting hard to get individuals to get up and take the heat.”

“There’s been concern over the village and the school” among L.A. benefactors, Armbruster added. “Either friends have stood by and continued to support us more avidly than before, or they have stepped back and said that they need more time to understand the situation.”

American Friends of Neve Shalom is not the only group reeling from the situation in Israel. Others have also been feeling the pinch of skittish donors or have had to redirect their efforts as they adjust to the deteriorating situation overseas.

Melisse Lewine-Boskovich, who with her Palestinian counterpart, Rula Hamdan, directs Peace Child Israel in Tel Aviv, recently made a stop at Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Complex to talk about her program. While the work that Peace Child does — uniting Israeli and Palestinian 10th-graders in a yearlong, performing-arts-based cultural exchange — was inspiring, attendance at Boskovich’s West Coast appearance was underwhelming, drawing fewer than 10 people, including restless kids and a few adults who nodded off during the presentation.

“People are incredibly depressed,” said Boskovich, speaking of the mood back in Israel. “I don’t call it a setback. It’s an awakening.”

Evidently, that mood has dampened the fundraising spirit. Boskovich commented that four of Peace Child Israel’s 10 workshops closed this year, due to a lack of funding.

L.A. resident Judith Jenya founded and runs the Global Children’s Organization (GLO), which provides cross-community summer programs for children from conflict-torn environments. Since 1992, nearly 2,000 children have taken part in her camps, which include Protestant/Catholic programs throughout Ireland and a camp at a Bosnian/Croatian site. A day before she was due to fly to Bosnia to oversee the latter project (now in its ninth year), Jenya discussed with the Journal her organization’s one aborted mission. Originally slated for last November, “Children of the Red Sea” was supposed to have brought Israeli and Palestinian youth together. Unfortunately, parents from both communities made creation of the camp a logistical nightmare.

“It became very, very hard to get people to cooperate, from all sides. People were incredibly frightened about crossing a border,” said Jenya, 60. As a Jew and a Holocaust survivor’s daughter, she felt this disappointment very deeply.

“There’s definitely been a breakdown of communication” between Arabs and Jews, reported Jordan Elgrably, who, with Munir Shaikh, co-directs Open Tent, a local Arab-Jewish cultural coalition. For a decade now, the part-Moroccan, part-Jewish Elgrably has been on the forefront of working to remedy stilted relations between members of what he has tagged as “a dysfunctional family.” In fact, Open Tent will hold its latest forum at UCLA this weekend (see information on page 46), when progressive Jewish and Palestinian speakers will engage on panels discussing issues affecting both communities.

Elgrably believes that the need for forums such as Open Tent and the recent JUNITY conference in Chicago is more crucial than ever. As he sees it, the deterioration of ties between Arabs and Jews will continue as long as both sides avoid doing the real social interaction required — especially mainstream American Jews, who, he said, continue to view Israel as an underdog rather than an oppressor. From his experience, most Palestinians have made peace with the idea of a Jewish state.

“They’re not thinking we’re going to destroy Israel one day,” Elgrably said. “They just want to have their homeland and move on.”

Sankary echoed Elgrably’s sentiments regarding what he calls a ham-fisted Sharon administration and post-Oslo failures. But politics, he observed, are almost irrelevant.

“What about the people who have to live there?” he asked. “How would you feel living there? Have we done everything possible? Are we going to blame the Arabs for this situation, or are we going to do something about it?”

Some organizations supporting coexistence programs nevertheless maintain that recent violence has not dampened fundraising efforts.

The Shefa Fund, a national Jewish progressive grant-allocating foundation that invests in institutions such as the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development in Israel, will embark on creating a local presence beginning June 1. Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, who directs the Shefa Fund out of its Philadelphia national offices, told the Journal, “We really haven’t had much of an impact. They were contributing before, and they’re giving now. Our particular experience is that there continues to be a solid commitment toward efforts for peace and building bridges between Palestinians and Israel.”

Liebling noted that his nonprofit group raised $80,000 to publicize its Olive Trees for Peace campaign and recently ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times calling for Israel to end its West Bank occupation and for Palestinians to stop the violence. Liebling emphasized the importance of continuing to reach out to Palestinians and said he hopes to see Shefa’s effort to replant trees destroyed in Palestinian villages by Israeli tanks culminate next Tu B’Shevat with a formal West Bank ceremony.

Regional Director David Moses of Los Angeles’ New Israel Fund (NIF) chapter confirmed that, regarding funds at his organization, “some were reallocated internally, some externally, but we’ve had no decrease in contributions.” The mission of the group, a grant-making entity, is to promote pluralism and equal rights in Israel.

Then there was last month’s successful gathering at Stanley Sheinbaum’s Brentwood home, which attracted a nexus of high-profile people, including American Jewish Committee National President Bruce Ramer and OLAM’s David Suissa. Ostensibly, the draw at this private reception was Oslo accords negotiator Dennis Ross. Yet it was the pair of Israeli teenagers who followed, speaking in broken English, who made the biggest impact. Aviv Liron and Adham Rishmawi, both 18 and citizens of Israel, were on hand as ambassadors of Seeds of Peace, a neutral, apolitical program that each year brings 400 Israeli and Palestinian teenagers to an Otisfield, Maine, summer camp in an effort to put historical baggage aside and encourage social bonding.

Both Rishmawi, an Arab, and Liron, a Jew, held their audience spellbound with personal accounts of discrimination and suffering in Israel and testimony of the constructive work being done at Seeds. The teenagers’ impassioned endorsement apparently resonated with listeners. According to project coordinator Michael Wallach, Seeds of Peace has been able to sustain its annual $2 million budget, despite the events of the past few months, thanks to continued enthusiastic support from individual donors and small foundations. (Next week’s Circuit column will have more details on this event.)

If anything, say organizers, the events that have unfolded in the Middle East since Sept. 29 have added a deeper layer of meaning to causes bent on Jewish-Arab unity.

“We believe that coexistence is inevitable, and the sooner these issues are dealt with, the sooner these conditions will dissipate,” Moses said.

And key to bringing about the dissipation will be education and awareness.

“The attitude, from our perspective, [is that] there is more demand than ever before for coexistence programs,” Sankary said. “The hostilities and violence are the result of the failure to do what we’ve been saying — that is, to educate both sides.”

Locally, nonprofit arms of NIF, Neve Shalom, and other organizations have been countering their PR problems through a more vigorous dissemination of information and updates to prospective benefactors.

“On the one hand, we can look where we have to go. On the other hand, where we’ve come,” said Moses of NIF, which supports such enterprises as the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (Israel’s ACLU), Arab Women Leadership Training, and Lel-Khwarezmi, which assists college-bound Bedouins. “We need to continue to address these issues, to empower these people and advocate on their behalf, so they can be more productive members of Israeli society. If Arab kids have a stronger education, they are more likely to have higher education.”

Those involved in promoting coexistence ventures are understandably defensive about being portrayed as naive or idealistic.

“What we do is not naive,” said Wallach, the son of Seeds of Peace founder John Wallach. “My father was a reporter for 30 years. He wrote books on the Middle East. Not all of the kids that come through our program become best friends, but a good amount become very good friends. That’s real. That’s not fake, that’s not phony.”

Americans for Peace Now (APN) founder and policy director Mark Rosenblum insisted that, judging from past APN conferences between Jews and Arabs, “many relationships were forged from these dialogues. They put brakes on violence and incitement and stereotyping.”

“The sad fact is that peace advocates are lumped together as post-Zionists,” said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of UCLA Hillel and no stranger to Los Angeles’ progressive Jewish circles. “Coexistence is not a foreign term that comes out of the left as a critique or as a contrary force. It’s the very essence of Zion and of establishing and sustaining the State of Israel.”

Ultimately, those in the grass-roots trenches admit that they don’t have all the answers. Yet they are confident that they are raising the right questions and promoting the right actions.

To accusations of being Pollyannaish, Sankary responds that the 20,000 kids who have passed through Neve Shalom’s School for Peace over the years represent a good start in replacing the cycle of hate with a cycle of peace.

In fact, Neve Shalom supporters see plenty of reason to keep hope alive. In October, at the Neve Shalom village, something positive emerged during all of the tumult. For the first time, the community’s Arab and Jewish members took a proactive stand, organizing more than 200 people to demonstrate in Tel Aviv in the name of peace. And, as if by a miracle, the village of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam thus far has weathered the turmoil unscathed.

“Being there, it renewed my faith in the whole project,” Armbruster said. “People were coming together and dialoguing. I’m not trying to present the village as some sort of utopian vision — there was real pain and emotional conflict. But they were coming together and sharing their experiences, their fears, their worries.”

“It’s not easy to change people’s attitudes that they’ve harbored for a long time,” Sankary said. “It’s going to take a lot of commitment from people considered idealistic.”



Open Tent Middle East Coalition will host “The Israeli/Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future” at UCLA on Sunday, May 20. The event will feature roundtables, entertainers, and, among other speakers, Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian historian and director of the University of Chicago’s Center for International Studies, and former Knesset member Marcia Freedman. Americans for Peace Now, New Israel Fund, Workmen’s Circle, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and UC Irvine Center for Global Conflict are among the co-sponsors. For more information, call (323) 650-3157 or visit www.opentent.org.

The Los Angeles Chapter of New Israel Fund’s New Generations Young Adult Group will be hosting “Empowerment From Within: Building the Bedouin Community,” featuring personal reflections of young Bedouin activist Amal al Sana-Alhajuj, on May 22, 7 — 9 p.m., at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Bergamot Station, Santa Monica. For more information, contact Andrea Nussbaum at (310) 282-0300 or via nif@lanif.org or visit www.nif.org.

For more information on Americans for Peace Now, contact David Pine at (310) 858-3002 or visit www.peacenow.org.

For more information on American Friends of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam, call (818) 325-8884 or go to www.nswas.com.

For more information on Peace Child Israel, write to Peace Child Israel, P.O. Box 3669, Tel Aviv, 61036; or contact New Israel Fund at (310) 282-0300.

For more information on Seeds of Peace, call (212) 573-8040 or visit www.seedsofpeace.org.

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