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A 94-year-old survivor of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz death camp gave his testimony in court on Thursday, face to face with a former guard, who is charged with helping in the murder of at least 170,000 people.
Leon Schwarzbaum, who lost 35 family members during the Holocaust, calmly recalled the camp's horrors and when he had finished he directly addressed the accused, Reinhold Hanning, also 94, on the first day of his trial.
“I want to know why millions of Jews were killed and here we both are,” Schwarzbaum said, his voice beginning to tremble.
“Soon we will both stand in front of the highest judge – tell everyone here what happened, the way I've done just now!”
Hanning avoided eye contact throughout, showing no reaction to Schwarzbaum's account. He had shuffled slowly into court and sat hunched and motionless in what is is likely to be one of Germany's last Nazi war crimes trials.
The former guard was 20 in 1942 when he joined the SS Death Head Unit at the concentration camp in occupied Poland, where more than 1.1 million Jews were killed.
The international media frenzy surrounding the case forced authorities to move the trial from the court house in Detmold, a small town in western Germany, to a bigger venue in the suburbs.
There was a heavy police presence around the building with a squad of officers on horseback, as Hanning walked in, wearing black glasses and a brown tweed jacket and looking at the ground. The session was limited to two hours due to his age.
Prosecutors said Hanning had joined the Death Head Unit, the Nazi organization overseeing death camps, voluntarily at the age of 18 and fought in eastern Europe in the early stages of World War Two before being transferred to Auschwitz in January 1942.
He is accused by the prosecutor's office in Dortmund as well as by 40 joint plaintiffs from Hungary, Israel, Canada, Britain, the United States and Germany.
Hanning will not speak himself but his lawyer may read out a statement once all the witnesses have testified, defense lawyer Johannes Salmen said after the session ended.
Germany's Nazi war crimes office in Ludwigsburg has established that Hanning served in Auschwitz until at least June 1944.
He has admitted to having been a guard in a statement to the prosecution, but has denied involvement in the mass killings.
Investigators say he also served at Auschwitz's Birkenau sub-division, where about 90 percent of more than 1.2 million killings in the camp were carried out in four gas chambers.
Prosecutors maintain that the Nazis' machinery of murder hinged on people like Hanning guarding the prisoners, and accuse him of expediting, or at least facilitating, the slaughter.
“The final decision over life and death was made by the SS men,” prosecutor Andreas Brendel said, after recounting the selection process of victims when they arrived at the camp.
Old and sick people, pregnant women, children under 13 and parents not letting go of their children were separated from their families and immediately sent to the gas chambers.
More witnesses are expected to testify in the trial, which is expected to go on until the end of May.
A precedent for charging former death camp employees as accessories to murder was set in 2011 when death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk was convicted.
Last year, 94-year-old Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, was sentenced for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people in Auschwitz.
Three other former death camp workers in their 90s – two men and one woman – are due to go on trial in the next few months.
Because of their age, their hearings will also be restricted to two hours per day, assuming they are fit to face trial.
But Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, responsible for war crime investigations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that age should not be an obstacle to prosecution.
“When you think of these cases, don't think of frail, old, sick men and women but of young people who devoted their energies to a system that implemented the Final Solution and aimed to obliterate the Jewish people,” he said, referring to the Nazi's plan for the systematic extermination of the Jews.
Both 94, Auschwitz survivor faces camp guard in German court Read More »
Clara Berk died Jan. 16 at 94. Survived by cousins Sheli (Jay) Friedman, Leonard (Rebecca) Friedman, Rae Friedman. Mount Sinai
David Lieb Berman died Jan. 3 at 81. Survived by cousin Andrea Easton O’Connor. Hillside
Raymond Chapman died Jan. 14 at 89. Survived by son Steven (Sue); daughter Marlene; 3 grandchildren. Hillside
Ann Cohen died Jan. 16 at 78. Survived by son Steven; daughter Alison Cohen Rosa; 2 granddaughters; sisters Mollie Shad, Alice Pinhas. Mount Sinai
Raya Fast died Jan. 13 at 82. Survived by sons Irwin (John Jameson), Bill, Barry (Wendi); daughter Barbara (Dean) Robinson; 3 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Norman Freedman died Jan. 16 at 84. Survived by daughters Barbara (Haim) Gavrieli, Lori (Dave) Myers; 5 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Mark Morris Frisman died Jan. 13 at 92. Survived by daughters Bonnie Diane Brigham (James), Jayne Robin Ruane (Michael); son Dennis Michael (Robert Lauri), 5 grandchildren; 1 great-grandchild; sister Blanche Schachter; nieces and nephews. Groman Eden
Benjamin Golbin died Jan. 15 at 36. Survived by wife Anchesa Bunyasi; mother Sheri (Stuart) Kessel; father Joel (Susan Rose); sister Carli (Israel) Nemany. Hillside
William J. Hirsty died Jan. 12 at 83. Survived by wife Marilyn; sons Ronald, Gary; daughters Linda Fiori, Nicole (Benjamin); 5 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Sam Jaffe died Jan. 14 at 84. Survived by wife Lola; daughters Sharon Dall, Beverly Schneider, Margo Barber; brother Louie. Westpark Cemetery, South Africa
Phyllis Kahn died Jan. 13 at 78. Survived by daughter Cynthia (Shane Lewin); son Bob (Cathy); 3 grandchildren. Hillside
Ernest Kendi died Jan. 13 at 97. Survived by daughter Klara (Martin) Shandling; 2 grandchildren. Hillside
Barbara Kessler died Jan. 11 at 86. Survived by daughter Marilyn (Victor Larenas); son Jim (Susan Kidd); 4 grandsons; 2 greatgrandchildren. Mount Sinai
Annabelle Latzer died Jan. 9 at 94. Survived by husband Ken; son Michael (Para); daughter Lynn Shapley; 6 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren. Hillside
Bernard Levins died Jan. 16. Survived by wife Harriet; daughters Mindi (Robert) Pfeifer, Jennifer; 2 grandchildren. Hillside
Doris Lowry died Jan. 14 at 92. Survived by sons Brett (Liu), Brian (Jennifer); daughter Cathy (Michael) Diem; 4 grandchildren; 2 great-grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Shulamith Neumark died Jan. 10 at 85. Survived by husband Alexander; daughters Lesley (Lannon) Tanchum, Jessica (Toni) Baer; son Johnathan (Rosina); 7 grandchildren; 1 great-grandchild. Hillside
Murray Oldman died Jan. 14 at 94. Survived by wife Doris; son Marshall (Phyllis). Hillside
Susan Babette Rothman died Jan. 12 at 64 Survived by husband Michael; daughters Jaime (Mike) Garnett, Jodie (Todd) Joel; 3 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Sylvia Sabot died Jan. 14 at 100. Survived by daughter Linda (Jerold) Goldstein; son Kenneth; 5 grandchildren; 6 great-grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Marjorie Shapiro died Jan. 11 at 95. Survived by daughter Janet. Hillside
Sol Shenker died Jan. 10 at 102. Survived by daughter Marilyn; 2 grandchildren; 2 greatgrandchildren. Groman Eden
Geoffrey Shlaes died Jan. 14 at 64. Survived by wife Susan; daughter Rachael (Jason) Liberman 1 grandchild; mother Jaquelyn Littlefield; sisters Melissa Abehsera, Lucy Farmer. Hillside
Judith Helen Singer died Jan. 15 at 60. Survived by sons Casey Everett Mitchnick, Cory Bennett (Stephanie) Mitchnick; 1 grandchild; brothers Howard, Barry. Mount Sinai
Rose Stoffer died Jan. 13 at 90. Survived by sons Martin (Sharon), David (Janice); 4 grandchildren; 1 great-grandson; sister Miriam Feder. Mount Sinai
Barbara A. Taub died Jan. 14 at 78. Survived by son Richard (Lana) Hirschfield; daughter Pam (Earl); 7 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Gabriel Testa died Jan. 14 at 87. Survived by daughters Pamela (Barry) Josephson, Simone Marshall; sons Robert (Joanie), Harry; 8 grandchildren; 4 great-grandchildren. Hillside
Claire Evelyn Ungerleider died Jan. 14 at 82. Survived by husband Arthur; daughter Michele Seipp; stepdaughters Sharon (Steve) Solomon, Judy (Jen) Hennessey, Beth; sister Gyl Blaven; brother Lawrence (Bernice) Stern. Mount Sinai
Norman Weinhouse died Jan. 10 at 90. Survived by wife Rochelle; daughter Donna (James) Lerner; sons Larry (Sharon), Stephen, Michael; 5 grandchildren; 9 greatgrandchildren. Mount Sinai
Ted Wolff died Jan. 11 at 88. Survived by daughters Eileen Beer, Sue (DC) Snyder; son Larry; 5 grandchildren. Mount Sinai
Lee Stein Wood died Jan. 12 at 78. Survived by husband William; son Michael (Sharon) Stein; 3 grandchildren; brother Barry Tesh. Mount Sinai
Obituaries: Week of February 12, 2016 Read More »
The Weimar Republic, Germany's flawed experiment in democracy in the 1920s, has become today's paradigm for the failure of state and society. By the end of Weimar, the government seemed to have lost control – vigilantes from the political extremes claimed they were keeping the streets safe while beating up vulnerable minorities, above all Jews. So it is shocking when citizens in Germany and France – and elsewhere in Europe – increasingly cite Weimar when discussing their society today.
The European Union now does sometimes resemble a replay of Weimar's combination of institutional perfection with violent and nationalist forces aimed at tearing down the “system.” Though Germany's 1919 constitution, written in the city of Weimar, was widely viewed as a model document, throughout the 1920s the constitutional dream seemed ever more disconnected from public life.
The political leaders of France and Germany today deplore anti-Semitism and make striking gestures of solidarity with their country's Jewish population, but the gestures seem helpless. The number of anti-Semitic incidents, as tracked by such bodies as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, is on the rise. Many Jews in many European countries, but above all in France, are contemplating leaving because they believe their homelands have become so unsafe. The political establishment tries to reassure them with the argument that the parallels with 1933 are really too much of a stretch.
To a degree, the reassuring voices are correct. Many of the most prominent recent European incidents are not the outcome of an old-style anti-Semitism in France or Germany. Indeed, the right-wing French National Front under Marine Le Pen has distanced itself from its older positions – as articulated by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial after calling the wartime Nazi occupation of France “not particularly inhuman.” In fact, today's National Front sometimes refers to Israel as an ally against Islamism. In the new grass-roots anti-immigration movement in eastern Germany, PEGIDA, the explicit target is “Islamicization,” and Israeli as well as Russian flags were prominently displayed in some of its early rallies.
At the beginning, Weimar's political institutions were skillfully designed to be as representative as possible. Most Germans viewed their society as remarkably tolerant. German Jews in the 1920s often emphasized that they lived in a more inclusive society than France's, which was still riven by the legacy of the Dreyfus case, when the army and the church prosecuted an innocent Jewish officer for espionage, or than the United States', where prime real estate and universities were often not open to Jews.
This misconception about German stability lasted a long time, indeed extending for a time after Adolf Hitler became chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. Right up until April 1933, when the regime launched a “boycott” of Jews, many German Jews refused to accept that anti-Semitism could be politically serious.
Today, the most obviously violent threats clearly come from Islamic terrorism, from groups affiliated to or imitating Islamic State. That is the story of the attack on the Jewish supermarket in Paris, where four were killed last January, which came in the wake of the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It is also cited to explain the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, or of some of the many synagogue attacks. The Agency for Fundamental Rights even tries to register incidents separately and attributes some of them to “foreign ideology,” meaning radical or jihadist Islamism.
Yet the jihadist incidents are – in numerical terms – a minority. There is, however, an intellectual contagion, in which native far-right radicals often use anti-Israel and anti-American slogans that proliferate in the Middle East as part of their anti-Semitic arsenal. In France and Britain the “quenelle,” a version of the Hitler salute, popularized by the French comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala has become popular with the racist right.
In addition, arguments about anti-Semitism have spilled over into the discussion of the refugee crisis confronting Europe. For some, the large-scale inflow of more than a million refugees in one year, from the Middle East and North Africa, is bound to lead to an inflow of actual terrorists, who can easily conceal themselves in the crowds of migrants. But it is also being blamed for a possible influx of terrorist ideas. Anti-Semitic texts such as Mein Kampf or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are widely available in the countries from which migrants are moving; and anti-Semitism, usually linked to anti-Israelism, is a natural ingredient of the social and cultural milieu that is moving into Europe.
Critics of large-scale immigration use the supposed anti-Semitic culture of many migrants as an argument against migration. They then make a case about the superiority of their native or indigenous culture – which can also, paradoxically, include hostility to aliens. So Jews feel vulnerable on two fronts: vulnerable because of who is attacking them, and vulnerable because of who is defending them.
The classic liberal answer to the new threat is that the state has an absolute and unconditional duty to protect all its citizens. That is the position that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls insistently, and rightly, defend.
But many people will also ask whether the state can really offer so much security. It is increasingly obvious that the police are overstretched. That was true even before the flood of refugees. A long trial currently under way in Munich, Germany, has highlighted the way in which the intelligence service that was dedicated to “protection of the constitution” Verfassungsschutz) against right-wing terrorists was for a long time blind to the threat. Instead, it had undermined its efforts by engaging members of far-right-wing groups as informers. Dealing with the new kinds of threat demands a far greater security presence, as well as new methods of surveillance.
As more and more incidents demonstrate police ineffectiveness, new groups will mobilize for self-protection. The incidents on New Year's Eve in Cologne and in other German cities, in which criminal groups, composed largely of migrants from North Africa, stole from and sexually harassed women, have led to the formation of citizens' patrols. In many cases, the personnel of these patrols come from the far right and its sympathizers.
That brings the story back to Weimar. In the last years of the republic, German streets were controlled not by the police but by paramilitary groups, of the left (the communist Red Front Fighters' League) as well as the right (the Nazi Stormtroopers). Then, even the parties of the center believed that they, too, needed their own defense organizations, and built up their own leagues. When the government tried to ban the Nazi Stormtroopers, the army objected on the grounds that it believed it could not effectively fight all the different leagues simultaneously.
One lesson of Weimar is that it is very dangerous for the state to give up its legal monopoly of violence. One key feature that makes modern life civilized is precisely that we don't take the law into our own hands. But the existence of threats, real or imagined, creates a great deal of pressure for “self-defense.”
There is a second, related lesson. Violent and ostensibly antagonistic ideologies may be quite capable of fusing. Sometimes in Weimar, the far right and far left just fought each other; on other occasions, they joined together in attacking the “system.” Today in Europe, there are the same curious blends, sometimes of jihadism with traditional anti-Semitism, or anti-jihadism and anti-immigrant populism with traditional anti-Semitism.
The fusing of dangerous ideologies makes members of small groups vulnerable. They are additionally vulnerable when the state promises protection that it cannot actually deliver. That is why Europe's Jews are so worried.
Harold James is the Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies and professor of history and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of “A German Identity,” “Making the European Monetary Union” and “The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews,” among other books. The opinions expressed here are his own.
There are good reasons why Europe’s Jews are so worried Read More »
While the Knesset Ethics Committee decided to ban three Arab MKs from parliamentary activity earlier this week following a meeting they held with families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis, the silence of the country's 1,800,000 Arab citizens was deafening.
There have been a couple of notable exceptions to the Arab Israeli citizenry's opting out of assuming any responsibility for the outrageous behavior of its chosen representatives.
In late 2015, Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam shouted at Israel's leading Arab Israeli politician, Ayman Odeh, to leave the city since his party's MKs are 'ruining coexistence' between Jews and Arabs.
Then there's Arab-Israeli newscaster Lucy Aharish, whose blunt criticism of her Arab-Muslim brethren included an on-air tirade against Arab-Israeli leadership and the culture of victimhood.
Neither of these two Progressive voices deny the existence of legitimate Arab-Israeli grievances against the Israeli government.
However, Salam and Aharish represent a painfully small minority of Arab-Israelis who believe that the best way to solve a problem is to speak up, not silently acquiesce to attacks on Jewish men, women and children.
While a debate rages within Israeli society as to the causes of this widespread sense of alienation, no one can deny that it exists. In response, the Israeli government unanimously approved a five-year plan to invest NIS 15 billion in the development of Arab municipalities in the fields of education, transportation, employment and housing.
However, most Arabs citizens continue to view themselves as colonized Palestinians, repeatedly voting in parliamentarians who work off the same propaganda playbook as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority.
And Arab Israelis face a myriad of problems. A report recently released by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) stated recently that low rates of employment for Israeli Arab women were harming Israel's overall economic performance. And a report published in December 2015 by Israel's National Insurance Institute found that 52.6 percent of Arab families live in poverty.
Why do Arab-Israelis allow their leaders to get away with cheap displays of populism at the expense of serving their constituents?
Israel leadership is partly to blame. Citizenship confers many benefits and requires equally important responsibilities. By not demanding that Arab Israeli elected leaders stop subverting Israel's right to exist and support the nation's rule of law, the message that's sent to Arab
Israeli citizens is that fomenting violence is a legitimate form of expression.
More disconcerting is that supporting Israel as a nation whose citizens are united by the shared values of freedom and equality is considered an act of betrayal among large swaths of the Arab Israeli populace.
Similar to corrupt mayors that Israel's courts have removed after being charged with acts of moral turpitude, parliamentarians who use the power vested in them to undermine Israel's sovereignty should be indicted on charges of incitement to violence. If found guilty, they should be expelled from the Knesset.
Such strong measures will permanently deny the likes of Haneen Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka access to the bully pulpit.
Without parliamentary power and legitimacy, their guerilla chic appeal will rapidly diminish.
Once the demagogues have been banished, Israel's largest minority group will be compelled to take their destiny into their own hands.
While Arabs are entitled to first-class citizenship, they're also responsible for preserving this nation's democratic character so that future generations of Israelis can experience it.
Ultimately, Arabs who view Israeli citizenship as a badge of honor and not a mark of Cain will make for good, loyal citizens.
And every good citizen adds to the strength of a nation.
Indict, expel, repeat: How Israel can create a loyal Arab citizenry Read More »
I work installing HVAC in Topanga Canyon, and I go to Pasadena City College. I’m taking classes to get my contractor’s license. My days are long, and I know I work hard, but that’s the only way to accomplish what you want in life.
Today is my last day of school before winter break. I’m on my way to a final. I definitely need my afternoon coffee.
James Stewart Avenue to Marion Avenue
#myLAcommute is a project of Zócalo Public Square
#myLAcommute My days are long and I work hard Read More »
The United States blacklisted three people on Thursday for working for Islamic State, including the militant group's most prominent ideologue and a senior oil official.
Turki al-Bin'ali was sanctioned for helping Islamic State recruit foreign fighters, the U.S. Treasury said in a statement.
Bin'ali, 31, was an early supporter of Islamic State and authored a frequently cited biography of the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Experts said the preacher's writings helped lay the religious legal groundwork for Islamic State to declare a “caliphate,” which it did in 2014 in parts of Syria and Iraq it controls.
Bin'ali is believed to be the group's chief religious authority, and has written a text that traces Baghdadi's lineage to the Prophet Mohammad, said Cole Bunzel, an Islamic State expert at Princeton University.
Bin'ali issued a treatise that rallied militant Islamists to the cause and has denounced Islamic State's many Muslim critics. Bahrain revoked Bin'ali's citizenship in 2015.
Sanctions are unlikely to have any impact on Bin'ali, who comes from a wealthy Bahraini family, Bunzel said.
“He's the most ideologically committed person to this movement that I know,” he said. “To him, this is very much not about money.”
A Treasury spokeswoman said Thursday's actions were the first U.S. sanctions to target Bin'ali. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets the men might have and prohibit Americans from dealing with them.
While they have little immediate practical impact, the sanctions have a “naming and shaming” effect and allow for follow-on actions against people connected to Bin'ali, said Matt Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury official now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Another man sanctioned on Thursday was Faysal Ahmad Ali al-Zahrani, from Saudi Arabia, who the Treasury Department said is responsible for Islamic State's oil and gas activities in areas of northeastern Syria.
Treasury said Zahrani for a time answered directly and transferred funds to top Islamic State financial official Abu Sayyaf, who was killed in a U.S. Special Operations Forces raid last May.
A U.S. Treasury official said this week that U.S.-led coalition air strikes targeting Islamic State's oil and cash storage sites, have helped force the group to cut its fighters' pay by up to 50 percent.
Husayn Juaythini, born in a refugee camp in Gaza, was also sanctioned and was trying to establish a foothold for Islamic State in Gaza, the Treasury said.
U.S. blacklists prominent Islamic State preacher, two others Read More »
Iran gained access to about $100 billion in frozen assets when an international nuclear agreement was implemented last month, but $50 billion of it already was tied up because of debts and other commitments, a U.S. official said on Thursday.
Stephen Mull, the State Department's coordinator for implementing the agreement, also told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee there was no evidence Iran had cheated in the first few weeks since the deal was implemented.
Mull and John Smith, acting director of the Treasury Department office that oversees sanctions, faced heated questioning from some members of the committee, where some Democrats joined Republican lawmakers in opposing the nuclear pact reached in July.
Republican Representative Chris Smith asked whether Tehran ally Russia, which has taken Iran's enriched uranium, could be trusted with it. He asked where the material was, and Mull said he did not know. “That's a Russian government responsibility to decide where it goes,” Mull said.
Smith said that was a “flaw” in the agreement. “We don't even know where it is,” he said.
Many lawmakers worry that Iran would cheat on the deal and use unfrozen funds for action against Israel or to support Islamist militants elsewhere in the region.
“Of that amount, a significant portion of it, more than $50 billion, is already tied up,” Mull said.
It was the first such congressional hearing on the nuclear pact since Jan. 16, when world powers lifted crippling sanctions against Iran in return for its compliance with the agreement to curb its nuclear ambitions.
“We seem to be in many instances talking tough about Iran,” said U.S. Representative Eliot Engel, the panel's top Democrat, a deal opponent. “In reality, our actions are far away from our rhetoric and that's a worrisome thing. We want to make sure that Iran's feet are held to the fire.”
Many members of Congress, where every Republican and a few dozen Democrats opposed the agreement, have been calling for legislation to impose new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and human rights record.
House Republicans have been pushing legislation to restrict Democratic President Barack Obama's ability to lift sanctions under the nuclear pact. One measure passed the House on Feb. 2, but the Senate has not taken it up and Obama has promised a veto.
Iran’s windfall from nuclear deal cut in half by debts, U.S. official says Read More »
In a way, their relationship began like so many others: a workplace romance.
Gabriella Karin, 85, was a docent at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH); Robert Geminder, 80, who goes by Bob, was on the museum’s board of directors.
His wife, Judy, died four years ago. Her husband, Ofer, passed away two years later. Neither one expected to love romantically again, but both seemed to understand that their long and fruitful marriages marked them as romantics.
“Is the pope Catholic?” Bob said. “I didn’t stay married for 52 years and she didn’t stay married for 64 years for no reason.”
Both are Holocaust survivors, deeply committed these days to a post-retirement career transmitting their stories to young people.
“We were trying to make menschin [upright citizens] out of young people,” he told the Jewish Journal. “We spoke in schools all the time — I did, Gabriella did — way before we even knew we existed.”
On Feb. 17, they’ll celebrate their first anniversary as a couple, on a speaking tour in Baltimore.
It started innocently. The two have known about each other for half a decade. They got to know each other a little better on the March of the Living, the annual youth pilgrimage to Poland and Israel, listening to the other’s stories of surviving the war.
(Both of their life stories have been recorded by Jane Ulman in the Journal’s Survivor series and can be read in full at jewishjournal.com/survivor.)
Soon, they began to notice each other at LAMOTH events they both attended.
“He asked me to save a place next to me when we went to some meeting, so I saved a place,” Gabriella explained. “Next time, he saved a place.”
Then came the act of fate.
At the 2014 annual LAMOTH Chanukah party, E. Randol Schoenberg, then the chair of the museum’s board, persuaded Gabriella to buy a raffle ticket. Sure enough, she won: two tickets to an opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles.
“I sit down with the ticket, and I ask him, ‘You want to go with me?’ ” she said. “He said, ‘Let me see.’ So he looks in his phone. ‘Yeah, I have time this day. Good!’ So he says, ‘OK, you have tickets, I’m taking you out to dinner.’ ”
The dinner at Bottega Louie on Grand Avenue was the first in a series of dinner dates leading up to Feb. 17, the day of their first kiss.
Since then, they’ve been visiting each other a couple of times a week or on the weekends. Mostly, he drives to her place from his home in Palos Verdes — where he walks his dog past the golf course he says is too expensive to play on but nice to look at.
She lives in the Fairfax neighborhood, close to LAMOTH’s home in Pan Pacific Park on Beverly Boulevard. They have no plans to move in together, instead cherishing the space and time they each need for their busy lives: “It’s great this way,” she said.
Last year, they traveled as a couple to Poland and Israel with the March of the Living youth trip, and they are going back in May for this year’s pilgrimage. They intend to go a week early, so each can tour the areas where the other rode out World War II.
Over a recent Saturday lunch, each waited patiently while the other dutifully shared stories of the Holocaust. Each has done this umpteen times.
Bob clammed up and stared fixedly at his lap while Gabriella told her story. She recounted in soft, accented English how she hid first in a convent and then in a one-bedroom apartment in Slovakia with her mother, father, aunt, two uncles and two family friends — across the street from the regional Gestapo headquarters, miraculously escaping notice.
While the Nazis and their collaborators thinned the ranks of Bratislava’s Jews, Gabriella watched her mother commit acts of daring for the Slovakian underground, accompanying her to warn Jewish families when their names appeared on deportation lists.
Bob cautions against drawing parallels between survivor stories, saying that each is unique.
But he also played eyewitness to his mother’s intuition and courage that mark her as the hero of his story. She sneaked him out of the ghetto on the way to work by hiding him under her skirt, while his brother scampered underneath her girlfriend’s skirt.
“Nobody saw that there were a couple of extra feet under the skirts,” he said.
Another parallel emerges: In both stories, a young couple proves a pivotal agent of survival.
The cramped one-bedroom apartment where Gabriella quietly hid for nine months belonged to her aunt’s boyfriend, Karol Blanar, a young lawyer whom she later successfully nominated to receive Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations award. Blanar brought food for the family and books for Gabriella to read so she wouldn’t fall behind in her education.
For Bob, it was a man who his widowed mother met in the ghetto who proved integral to arranging a place to stay in occupied Warsaw. Emil Brotfeld would later become Bob’s stepfather when he married Bob’s mother at a displaced persons camp in West Germany after the war.
Neither Bob nor Gabriella put much stock in the idea of fate, or in things turning out as they were somehow meant to.
Bob prefers instead to refer to luck: It was luck, he says, that resulted in his being at the back of the crowd at the Jewish cemetery in Stanislawow (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) during the Nazi mass murder of Oct. 12, 1941. If he had been in the front, he might have been among the 14,000 who were assassinated, rather than the 6,000 who lived.
“We were in the first trucks — who knows why?” he said. “It’s not that we were smart to get on the first few trucks — we were pushed on.”
Bob is the talkative one of the two. Gabriella chimes in intermittently to add a detail or to gently correct him, and he treats her graciously.
“I never want to take more time than Gabriella,” he said. “When we speak together, she always gets the extra two minutes.”
“He’s just polite,” she said.
Bob has a curious habit of interspersing his survivor story with jokes. Describing how he scavenged raw eggs to survive while stowed away at a farm near Krakow, he pointed to his full head of hair that, despite his age, has not thinned out.
“Usually at this point I try to find a guy in the audience who’s bald-headed and say ‘See? Raw eggs,’” he said.
He doesn’t joke around to make light of his story, but rather to make it easier for his listeners to stay tuned in.
“It’s such a tense, terrible story for both of us,” he said, before launching back into the recollection. “Not that I want to add humor — I just want to add relief, so people can breathe and listen again.”
If he’s the funny one, she’s the creative one.
Gabriella had a career as a fashion designer before turning to sculpture and illustration, focusing her artwork on themes related to the Holocaust. (Her work can be found at gabriellakarin.com.) She dressed for lunch in a gossamer blue blouse with matching pants and a necklace of her own making.
The two are not affectionate in public, but Bob seems to enjoy doting on her. When somebody set down a bowl of strawberries in front of the two, he turned to Gabriella.
“You don’t want any of these, I know,” he said.
“I’m allergic to strawberries,” she explained.
Later, he tried to pick the marzipan truffle from a box of chocolates to share with Gabriella but picked the caramel one instead.
“That’s not marzipan, Gabriella, I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll put this one back. I didn’t eat it.”
On the second try, he successfully picked the sweet and split it with her.
Gabriella and Bob don’t exactly buy into the idea of a soul mate. But others who know them aren’t so skeptical.
Samara Hutman, executive director of LAMOTH, waxes poetic when talking about the new couple. She played a key role in their introduction.
“My mother always taught me there’s a lid for every pot,” she told the Journal. “They’re just the perfect lid for each other’s pot — just a perfect fit.”
She admits to getting a little warm and fuzzy about Gabriella and Bob’s relationship. For her, it speaks to the possibility of a second chance at love. But on a personal level, she’s proud of the museum’s role in bringing them together.
“Every time I see them together, my heart smiles like I’m an old lady, like they’re my kids,” she said.
In fact, Hutman was the architect of the raffle that first brought them together for dinner. (“Everything’s better with a raffle,” she said.)
She had known Gabriella for years, because Gabriella got involved with Hutman’s Righteous Conversations project, now under the LAMOTH umbrella, which brings together young people and survivors.
She remembers watching Gabriella care for her late husband when he took ill, after he had for years enthusiastically supported her work as a survivor-storyteller.
“He was as excited about her second career as she was, and when I would go there to visit, he would always give me a flower and a smile,” Hutman recalled. “He was just one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known; their relationship was just so beautiful.”
Hutman hadn’t known Bob all that well until he offered to drive her to the airport on her way to Jerusalem for work.
During that car ride, he unburdened himself to her about how his five-decade marriage had left him a student of loving devotion toward “a really special person,” and to keep her eye out in case she might come across such a person.
“He was kind of putting his soul out to the universe, to me on this drive,” she said.
Hutman is careful not to take too much credit for the relationship. But she said LAMOTH provides a loving community built around Holocaust education that contributed to their meeting. She wouldn’t say if she’s heard of other couples that have met through the museum.
“Are you asking if we’re running a dating service at LAMOTH?” she joked. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
Bob and Gabriella emphasize it was their shared mission of education, of teaching kids about resilience and respect for their fellow humans, that first bound them to each other.
A retired electrical engineer, Bob earned his teaching credential at the age of 70 and now teaches math as a substitute in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He recalled a moment when a student in his math class at a southeast L.A. high school told him he’d heard Bob’s story before in another classroom.
“He’s sitting in class, and he shows me a picture of he and I two years ago,” Bob said. “Do you think he’s going to remember algebra?”
When the lunch wound down, Bob stepped outside and escorted Gabriella to his car, a silver 2016 Corvette Stingray with the dealer plates still on.
“A present to myself for my 80th birthday,” he said.
Bob held the door as Gabriella slid into the passenger seat of the two-door convertible. They waved and then, with a roar of the engine, tore off under a cloudless Los Angeles sky.
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