The untouched remains of a pre-Holocaust Jewish schoolhouse

By MADISON JOHNSON, The New Republic, June 23, 2016

Click for entire report from The New Republic including video

.Slovakian photographer Yuri Dojc, 69, insists that he doesn’t believe in miracles, and doesn’t consider himself a particularly religious man. Nonetheless, he describes his Last Folio project as the result of a series of “miracles” that began with his father’s funeral, where he met Mrs. Vajnorska, an Auschwitz survivor who became Dojc’s “second mother.” She showed him around Slovakia and introduced him to other survivors, whom he photographed. That, in turn, led to his discovery in 2006 of an abandoned Jewish schoolhouse, synagogue, and ritual bath in eastern Slovakia that had remained largely undisturbed since the day in 1942 when everyone was deported to concentration camps.

“So what inspired me?” he asks, repeating my question. “Life. Circumstances and coincidences.”

Yuri Dojc

Schoolroom, Bardejov 2006

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Last Folio has toured the world as an art installation, been the subject of a documentary short produced by Katya Krausova, and twelve of its photos have been selected for the permanent collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Now, this June, Random House’s Prestel division has published Last Folio: A Photographic Memory: a book of Dojc’s photos of books.

I interviewed Dojc recently about his nearly decade-old project. Here’s how he described it:

Yuri Dojc

Schoolroom, Bardejov 2006

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Yuri Dojc: Most photographers who do art projects usually, they figure out what is hot now, what is in, or what is what they’d like to do, what they can get the most mileage from. They plan the map and they go for it. None of that happened here. Once we entered that school we could not leave. I was hypnotized. Hypnotized by the sheer beauty of the books. Some people say they look horrible. To me they were absolutely stunning. Many people lately—I know this because I’m very involved in the art world—are fascinated by abandoned buildings. People go to destroyed and abandoned buildings, People go to Chernobyl and photograph abandoned buildings. But people know what they’re getting into. We did not plan to find an abandoned building.

Yuri Dojc

Torah Scroll, Košice 2007

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We are actually uncovering cultural memory here. There are levels and levels of life which were destroyed during World War II, and destruction is still going on. And then to have the privilege of coming upon this situation, decades after the war. Trying to visually, I wouldn’t say preserve it—visually sort of mark it so there’s some kind of memory of this time. For me it wasn’t an abandoned building, it was part of a heritage, it was part of my heritage that I didn’t know anything about. I left Czechoslovakia when I was a young man who was not questioning or wrestling with that kind of thought. You’re a young guy, you’re a teenager, your interests are, you know, girls and motorcycles. You don’t think about memory, about culture, about what was lost. But you’re 50 and you think about those things totally differently.

Yuri Dojc

Gravestone Fragments, Huncovce 2007

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We found out that many of the books had a stamp which tells you that each book belongs to somebody, and 99 percent, 99.9 percent of those people died in concentration camps. People didn’t most likely have a grave. So this book is the last proof of [their] existence. Another miracle happened when we came to another town, we found 5,000 books or something just lying there. Picking it up book by book and opening a book wherever there was a stamp. And the stamp will tell you: “name, profession, city where the owner was from.” Mostly craftspeople, there would be bookbinder, tailor, cook, plumber. Basic, basic professions.

Yuri Dojc

Bookshelf, Bardejov 2006

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[Katya] comes to me and says, “You never told me about your family. Your grandfather, what was his name?” I said, “Why do you want to know this?” She said “I’m just curious.” I said “Jacob.” “So what was his profession?” I said “He was a tailor.” She said “What kind of tailor?” I said “Why are you asking me this?” “Tell me.” “He did women’s clothing.” “And which town was he from?” And then she gives me a little book and says “Look what I found.” My grandfather, I never met him. All I remember is one photo my father gave to me that is my grandfather during the war. He has a Star of David. That was all I had of him, physically. Now I am standing in a room full of books holding the only thing my grandfather touched in his life, this book. Is there miracles or not?

Yuri Dojc

Bardejov 2007

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They’re all distressed old books, but in each picture I tried to do something unique. I like to give a personality to each book. So if there’s no name of the owner at least the viewer will realize that his book belonged to somebody. I treated them as people. I treated them as gentle as I could.

Yuri Dojc

Schoolroom, Bardejov 2006

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I think in the world and in Europe especially, I am photographing something that happened 70 years ago. I am petrified. Things like that cannot happen again. I know we hear all these slogans, “Never again,” and I am feeling skeptical. I am trying to preserve something that was destroyed and I ask myself: Is the same thing happening again and the world is putting their heads in the sand? I would like to add something to the present time. Because people have very short memories. There are horrible things happening every day. If I don’t show the past then how will people understand the present? This book is not going to be a best seller by any stretch of the imagination. But if a few people can learn something from it, well. I am an artist, we only can do so much in our life. Many people ask me, “Did you try to preserve the books?” I am not really a preserver of the books; I am a chronicler of what’s passed.

©Yuri Dlojc

Bardejov 2008

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When we went to the Library of Congress, the chief librarian asked if the books were valuable, were they just ordinary praying books. He’s a very imposing guy, Dr. [James] Billington, and Katya’s very tiny and she looks up at him and says, “You preside over the largest library in the world and you have the first edition of all the great books. But in a little town in Slovakia these books were the only books these people possessed. So were they valuable? They were properly valuable to the people who owned them. But do they have monetary value? Probably not.” And he was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, you’re absolutely right.” It was a very touching moment, because it’s not about books, really. Of course I cannot preserve them. First of all, they are beyond preservation. They are full of bugs; many times I had to wear gloves and a mask. But every time I put a mask and gloves it lasted about two minutes. I just cannot do that. I need to be physically close to them. The book of my grandfather I have here, with me.

By the way, the project is still on. I cannot stop it, honestly. It’s kind of inescapable.

Manya Perel speaks to visitors at USHMM

More than 50 educators visit US Holocaust Memorial Museum on HAMEC tour

More than 50 teachers and educators had a great visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday on a professional development trip lead by Program Director Phil Holtje, with featured lecturers Dr. Polly Zavadivker of the University of Delaware, and Holocaust survivors Dave Tuck and Manya Perel. This professional development trip is an annual event and one of the many teacher trainings that HAMEC does throughout the year.

Our guest lecturer Dr. Polly Zavadivker giving a talk on The German Invasion of the Soviet Union and the Beginning of Mass Murder, June 1941-November 1942 and then screened the film “Ladies’ Tailor.” — at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Manya Perel addresses educators

A guide gives introduction to permanent exhibit

 “Most of the group in front of USHMM after a great day of learning!” — at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Nazi Propaganda Left Life-long Mark On German Children: Study

 By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press, June 15, 2015, From The Huffington Post

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BERLIN (AP) — Anti-Semitic propaganda had a life-long effect on German children schooled during the Nazi period, leaving them far more likely to harbor negative views of Jews than those born earlier and later, according to a study published Monday.

The findings indicate that attempts to influence public attitudes are most effective when they target young people, particularly if the message confirms existing beliefs, the authors said.

Researchers from the United States and Switzerland examined surveys conducted in 1996 and 2006 that asked respondents about a range of issues, including their opinions of Jews. The polls, known as the German General Social Survey, reflected the views of 5,300 people from 264 towns and cities across Germany, allowing the researchers to examine differences according to age, gender and location.

By focusing on those respondents who expressed consistently negative views of Jews in a number of questions, the researchers found that those born in the 1930s held the most extreme anti-Semitic opinions — even fifty years after the end of Nazi rule.

“It’s not just that Nazi schooling worked, that if you subject people to a totalitarian regime during their formative years it will influence the way their mind works,” said Hans-Joachim Voth of the University of Zurich, one of the study’s authors. “The striking thing is that it doesn’t go away afterward.”

But members of the group, which was systematically indoctrinated by the Nazi education system during Adolf Hitler’s 1933-1945 dictatorship, also showed marked differences depending on whether they came from an area where anti-Semitism was already strong before the Nazis.

For this, the researchers compared the survey with historical voting records going back to the late 1890s. They found that those from areas where anti-Semitic parties were traditionally strong also had the most negative opinions of Jews.

“The extent to which Nazi schooling worked depended crucially on whether the overall environment where children grew up was already a bit anti-Semitic,” said Voth. “It tells you that indoctrination can work, it can last to a surprising extent, but the way it works has to be compatible to something people already believe.”

Benjamin Ortmeyer, who heads a research center on Nazi education at Frankfurt’s Goethe University, said the study’s conclusions were “absolutely plausible.”

“The significance of this kind of propaganda hasn’t really been exposed,” said Ortmeyer, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Compared to the brutal deeds of the Nazi mass murderers this area of crimes, the brainwashing, was largely ignored.”

One reason, he said, is the difficulty of getting older Germans to talk about their experiences of the Nazi period. While Jews who survived the Holocaust vividly recount the abuse they suffered in school and at the hands of fellow pupils, non-Jewish Germans mostly describe their school years as peaceful and fun.

Ortmeyer said Nazi educators wove anti-Semitic propaganda into every school subject and extra-curricular activity, even giving students “projects” that included scouring church records for the names of Jewish families that had recently converted to Christianity. These were later used to draw up lists of Jews for deportation to concentration camps, making students unwitting accomplices in the Holocaust.

There were some exceptions, said Ortmeyer, such as the ‘White Rose’ in Munich and the ‘Edelweiss Pirates’ in Cologne — youth resistance groups that formed despite the overwhelming Nazi propaganda.

“Those are important examples for young people these days,” he said.

The study also noted that Germans born in the 1920s held only slightly more anti-Semitic views than those born in the ’40s — even though some in the older group would have gone to school during the Nazi era, while the younger group didn’t. The authors suggested that those with extreme views might not have survived the war, falling victim to their own enthusiasm for Nazi ideology.

“We can’t prove it, but it seems likely to us based on the patterns in the data, that these were the cohorts that weren’t drafted but by the end of the war they could volunteer for the Waffen SS. And they had an incredibly high casualty rate,” said Voth.

On the tragedy in Charleston

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
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Dear Museum Supporter,

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While none of us could have prevented the tragedy in Charleston, I was struck by an observation made by Bob Woodward on one of the morning talk shows.  He suggested that if only one of the many bystanders who had to know about this young man’s over the top expressions of hate had spoken up–and had not been a bystander–perhaps this could have been avoided.

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We should all be proud of the fact that in this school year alone, over 45,000 students received our strong message of the dire consequences of hate, from our survivors, our liberators and our facilitators.  We will never know precisely how many and which young people we have positively impacted with our amazing programs.  But we all sleep well at night knowing that we are doing all we can and that we have pro-actively affected hundreds if not thousands.

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Thank you for your continued support and please be proud of OUR Museum’s contribution toward making this a better world.

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Chuck Feldman

President,  Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center

Gunter Hauer addresses Anne Frank Elementary School

On Friday June 12th, Gunter Hauer shared his testimony with more than 1,300 students and adults at the Anne Frank Elementary School in Philadelphia.

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In each grade level, the students were presented awards by the Principal, Mike Tauber, who best demonstrate and embody the beliefs and thoughts of Anne Frank.

The Daily Beast: A stark new Munich museum reveals the roots of Nazism

Christof Stache/AFP/Getty

By Jeremy DeBroekert (a psuedonym), the Daily Beast, June 14, 2015

Click for entire report

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There are no artifacts at a new museum in Munich tracing the rise of Nazism—and the stark words and images make a powerful impact.

A visit to Munich finds a pleasant town of tradition; clean neo-classical buildings, ornate churches and noble parklands animated by people riding bikes, walking dogs and occasionally actually wearing lederhosen.

So it’s striking to turn a corner at the Königsplatz (Kings Square) and see a starkly modern cube of a building quietly defy its stately neighbors.

A brilliant white in the occasional sun, interrupted only by clusters of slender narrow windows, the newest addition to Munich’s Kunstareal museum quarter uses its bright futuristic design to invite you into Munich and Germany’s darkest past.

This is Munich’s brand-new museum of the history of the Nazism, the “Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism,” and this place means serious business.

Opened on May 1, exactly 70 years after the US liberation of Munich and Hitler’s suicide, at a cost of 28 million euros ($30 million), the mission is, according to its website, “a place of learning and remembrance… the origins, manifestations and consequences of the Nazi dictatorship.”

And that’s exactly what you get.

There is a single door, and a small lobby where your money is politely waved away (“Free until July”). Your audio guide is the size of a 1980’s CD Walkman.

A small elevator takes you to the 4^th floor, marked simply “Exhibition,” where the elevator opens on a narrow area and the first exhibit three feet in front of you, which is a clean display panel of words and pictures—then another, then another, punctuated by horizontal table displays of words and pictures, and sparingly some old film footage projected on the walls.

Initially, it all seems small and old-school.  Conspicuously absent are artifacts. There are no displays of actual Nazi uniforms, Hitler podiums, flagstaffs or emblems.

Don’t expect to move quickly in this museum. The history of atrocity is built on a thousand points of fright, and you are invited to intellectually understand each one.

Nothing catches the eye and that’s clearly the intent; even the walls and floors are simple concrete grey that leave you no choice but to face the first display and read the words (in German or English, with the audio guide available in many languages).

So let the learning begin, and it’s clear, and it’s fascinating.

The museum goes out of its way to give a neutral, linear perspective on the “how’s” and the “why’s” of Nazism.

Quickly, you realize you will be able to handle it, as the hugeness of the horror is broken down to understandable interlocking pieces: the pain that Germany felt after its defeat in World War I and the society’s flailing in the first year of its aftermath: a revolution against its leadership; an assassination of the new leader; counter-revolution; a zinging between left and right, communists, anarchists, intellectuals, racists, and that’s just 1919.

The audio guide is hosted by a pair of calm voices, one male and one female, punctuated occasionally by brief audio of expert commentary or vintage news coverage.

You can get by without the audio guide but you will miss some intriguing color, like the voice of a then-young eye witness to the 1919 assassination of the Premier Kurt Eisner describing his father trying to stop the assassin.

Don’t expect to move quickly in this museum. The history of atrocity is built on a thousand points of fright, and you are invited to intellectually understand each one.

Exhibit after exhibit guide you through a complex stew of cultural, political, historical and economic turning points and the methodical growth of far right wing sentiment. Both ultimately coalesced behind the German Workers’ Party that became the Nazi party.

One particularly striking photo captures the sheer joy in the faces of early-teen Hitler Youth and we know a thousand kids like them, thrilled to be riding motorbikes with their friends.

As rich the information, it remains conspicuously nagging that there are no artifacts beyond photos and a little film.

I had paid a visit to the then-new Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and vividly remember the train car on display as an example of what would carry victims to concentration camps; of victims’ hair used to stuff mattresses; of piles of victims’ shoes.

And other Munich museums I visited were rich with physical pieces.

Try the Pinakothek der Moderne and its amazing design exhibit featuring 1960’s typewriters and radios, and the painstakingly restored Residenz, the massive former palace of the Bavarian monarchs, which features a room crammed with jewel-encased religious relics. These include a mummified child believed to be from Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, and what is labeled as John the Baptist’s skull.

So the question is begged, here in the birthplace and capital of Nazism, why so simple a museum?

Reportedly, the curators are painstakingly avoiding sensationalizing Nazism to modern-day sympathizers. The lack of artifacts also reduces the shock and horror of the place, the easier to understand the lessons with an intellectual distance. But it puts a lot on the visitor, to connect with small photographs, particularly the brief biographies of key players.

These mini, but many, exhibits explain the rise of the Nazi party and it’s largely a tale of political strategy, propaganda and fundraising.

Brutal propaganda cards include one depicting a black man as threatening beast. An audio description of an early Hitler rally attended by thugs and unemployed is juxtaposed with a picture of a later Hitler rally attended by a ballroom full of wealthy families as if at a modern charity fundraiser.

Through wins and losses, advances and setbacks, the party grew by popularizing messaging that the pure German was superior, would have won World War I if it wasn’t for bad leadership, and should never have to apologize for World War I, let alone pay reparation costs.

The party stoked racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism and propounded that violence was appropriate (World War I uniquely taught the youth of the era that violence is a legitimate means for settling political disputes), and that Order trumped the Rule of Law.

As you wind your way clockwise down the four levels of the exhibit, more space is dedicated to the “how” and the “why” than the “what” of Nazi rule, but the history lesson does continue through the cold, quick clicks of the Nazi plan unfolding after Hitler assumed dictatorship.

A large concrete wall features large simple text showing three years of rule after rule for Jews (“November 15,1938: Jews are forbidden from attending German schools”; “July 19, 1940: Jews are forbidden from using telephones”; “March 13, 1942: Jews must identify their flats with a black Jewish star on the front door”).

Pictures show Nazi soldiers blocking doors to Jewish businesses and covering storefront shingles with the single word “Jude!” (“Jew!”), young women biking past a checkpoint required to extend their arm in the Nazi salute or suffer consequences, and pictures of Nazi-defined “degenerate art” being hauled away and books burned.

Then the war itself, and Germany’s loss. A particularly striking silent film projected on a wall shows the incredible destruction of Munich from Allied air strikes, including a pile of rubble by the Parliament building easily 100 feet high where today tourists, this one included, cheerily record the Glockenspiel on their iPhones.

It’s here in this “War” phase, when Nazism reaches its singularity and Germany passes its point of no return, that the museum pivots away from its carefully curated neutrality and starts to make its point: that this could all have been stopped, because individuals have that power.

One display titled “Everyday Life: Ignoring, Gawking, Participating” gently shames Munich citizens who looked the other way in exchange for their own good life; a series of pictures show them having tea across the street from the Gestapo headquarters, aware of the torture within.

Another display applauds the courageous individual clergymen and lay people who spoke out, but condemns the Christian and Catholic Church all the way up to the Pope for complicity.

One hallway profiles a dozen significant objectors including a newspaper editor, a lawyer, and a union leader. Great praise is heaped on one Georg Elser as “an example of the remarkable courage of an individual who heeded only the voice of his own conscience,” even though his assassination attempt on Hitler ultimately failed.

The museum issues a stern rebuke to all of Germany on one prominent panel, blaming “the German electorate’s proclivity toward authoritarian attitudes, and especially its willingness to submit to a “strongman” and his promises of salvation in times of crisis”…  “the Nazi Party’s path to power was not an inevitable triumphant march… the Weimar Republic failed because people didn’t oppose extremism vigorously enough.”

Today, Germany seems open to the message. On this Tuesday afternoon, the museum was crowded by Germans of all ages.

This era is paying attention, important as those who witnessed first-hand World War II die out, and as the building blocks of extremism so carefully described by the museum are increasingly bubbling up in today’s world, illustrated in a final punch just outside the museum where video screens rise up from the earth juxtaposing modern images with historical phrases.

You walk away from the building exactly as Hitler would have, less than a lifetime ago, for the museum is built on ruins of his Nazi headquarters, Das Braune Haus (Brown House). The Führerbau (Fuhrer building) still stands, just to your right, dingy and fading.

The Nazi parade grounds, where thousands of jack-booted soldiers “Sieg Heil”-ed in clockwork precision, is now a broad, minimally tended stretch of grass and concrete before you.

History is behind you, but it’s all around—the most powerful artifact that the Museum curates is its setting.

Three days later, returning home in a New York City subway car, I see that familiar sign which says “See something, say something.” After my visit to the museum, it strikes an even more profound chord than simply being aware of unattended luggage.

The writer is using a pseudonym

HAMEC Summer Music Festival slated for August 2 at KI

Summer Music Festival
Sunday August 2nd
1pm – 4pm
Keneseth Israel
8339 Old York Rd, Elkins Park

Headliner: Bobby Block Klezmer Trio
Also performing: The Shpielers

Admission
$10 in advance
$15 at the door

Vendor Fair: ceramics, gift items, jewelry, home baked sweets
Book sales – Raffle

Refreshments for sale: coffee, hot dogs, knishes, soft pretzels, baked goods, soda, water

A wonderful afternoon – bring the whole family!
RSVP to info@hamec.org or 215-464-4701

When Christopher Lee Hunted Nazis

Image: Getty Images

Sir Christopher Lee, who died on Sunday at 93, was an amazing actor.

By ANNE COHEN, the Forward, June 11, 20115

Over the course of his half-century career, he played Count Dracula nine times. He starred as a villain in a Bond film (“The Man With the Golden Gun”). Younger audiences may remember him as Saruman from “Lord of the Rings.” (Or, Count Dooku from “Star Wars Episode II: The Clone Wars,” but we don’t talk about that.)

But beyond his acting prowess, it turns out Christopher Lee was a pretty amazing human, period. According to family lore , he was a descendent of Charlemagne on his father’s side, and of the infamous Borgias on his mother’s side. He sang on multiple heavy metal albums in his 80s and 90s. He served in the Special Operations Executive during World War II (also called Winston Churchill’s “Secret Army”).

Click for the entire report from the Forward

Unpacking ‘Suitcase’ Opens Young Eyes to the Holocaust

By JAN L. APPLE, Jewish Exponent, June 10 , 2015                                                                          C

Anne L. Fox was just 12 years old when she stood at the train station in Berlin awaiting the arrival of the Kindertransport that would take her to London — far away from the hatred, the unthinkable acts of the Nazis — and the only home she had ever known.

That day, Dec. 28, 1938, remains seared into her memory. With a small suitcase in hand, Fox held tight to her parents, Marta and Eugene Lehmann. In the wake of Kristallnacht — the name given to the night of anti-Semitic atrocities committed six weeks earlier — they registered her for this life-saving mission sponsored by the British government. Her best friend, a gentile girl named Dorit, was also there to say goodbye.

Fox, who still vividly recalls how, for days after Kristallnacht, the city’s synagogues continued to burn — including the one her family attended for High Holidays — was one of about 100 children under 17 to board that day’s transport; in all, 10,000 children would be saved through the Kindertransport program. She did not know this was the last time she’d ever see her “Mutti” and “Vati,” as she affectionately called her parents.

Fox, now an 89-year-old Haverford resident, relived these memories last month as she sat in the Elkins Park Middle School auditorium with 350 sixth-graders to watch a performance of My Heart in a Suitcase, an adaptation of her 1996 memoir of the same name. The show, which she has seen many times with audiences the same age as she was when fleeing Berlin, was staged by ArtsPower (artspower.org), an educational theater company in Cedar Grove, N.J., and Manhattan that produces original, literature-based musicals and dramas. A grant obtained by one of the school’s social studies teachers, Lise Marlowe, made the local performance possible.

Now in its 10th season, My Heart in a Suitcase, which traces the young Anne’s life from the summer of 1938 through an increasingly fraught time in Berlin, culminating in her fateful departure, has been performed in 33 states. “The actors have become my family,” Fox said during an interview following a talkback session at the school. “I’ve gotten very close to them.” She feels the same about ArtsPower’s founding co-directors: identical twin brothers Gary and Mark Blackman, and artistic director/resident playwright, Greg Gunning.

Over the years, “the response to the show has been overwhelming,” said Gary Blackman, who contacted Fox in 2004 for permission to adapt her book. “We had been searching for Holocaust literature when we found Anne’s story.”

Gunning initially discovered another book, Ten Thousand Children, which Fox co-authored with Eva Abraham-Podietz. Gunning worked closely with Fox as he wrote the adaptation of My Heart in a Suitcase, which was chosen because it revolved around her story — Ten Thousand Children told multiple first-person tales of Kindertransport children.

“We knew there was a great deal of love within the Lehmann family,” said Blackman. “Anne’s closeness to her mother and her mother’s optimism were of interest to us. We also identified with her father’s frustration and feelings of desperation.”

As the sound of broken glass — signifying Kristallnacht — intensified and the synchronized pounding of marching soldiers echoed throughout the theater, the students were silent. Some shed tears, watching the Lehmann family huddled in their apartment as the world outside shattered around them.

“I was about 7 when Hitler came to power,” said Fox, a mother of two and grandmother of four, during an interview. Her father lost his job as an international banker because of Nazi laws forbidding Jews from being employed in many professions like finance. “Jews couldn’t own businesses, they couldn’t go to the movies or swimming pools.”

One day, when Fox went to school, her teacher was wearing a Nazi armband and told her she was no longer welcome there.

“My father lost an arm in World War I fighting for the German army,” said Fox. But not even passionate loyalty to his fatherland and a bloodshed-earned Iron Cross could outweigh his Jewish heritage.

Fox recalls the telegram from her brother, Günter, urging her parents to “get Anne out of the country as soon as possible.” Günter, nine years her senior, had been in England on a student visa.

Fox lived with several English families before and during the war, and attended a boarding school in Shropshire along with other Kindertransport children. “A girl needs her mother,” Fox replied to a student’s question after the performance about what it was like to live with strangers. Some families were warmer than others, she recalled, but none could replace her parents.

She held out hope that she’d find her parents. After the war, she scoured a Red Cross list of survivors, but didn’t see their names. Ultimately, she discovered that her father died in Theresienstadt; her mother was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz; she, her brother and one aunt were the only members of their entire family to escape the Holocaust.

In September 1945, Fox was working at a public library in Cardiff, the capital of Wales. “One day, this handsome American soldier walked in looking for a book,” recalled Fox. Three months later, she and Frank Fox of Philadelphia were married.

“The show really hit home,” said Roberta Jacoby, social studies teacher for gifted students. For her students, she added, knowing Fox was in the audience truly brought history to life.

“I felt Anne did something very bold,” said Molly Cohen, 12. “All the children were brave. I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

For Alec Lempert, 12, whose great-grandfather survived the Holocaust, the performance also struck an emotional chord: “If I had been in the same circumstance, I would have refused to leave my parents. It would be too difficult.”

Petra Morffiah, 12, empathized with Fox, revealing that she lost a sister: “I feel really sad that Anne had to leave her family. I don’t know why anyone would do that to someone else.”

And Jaden Sky Greenbaum, 12, found the show eye-opening: “It really makes me think how lucky we are to live here in Cheltenham Township. In Nazi Germany, if you weren’t the perfect Aryan, you could just be killed. This could happen today if we don’t learn from these mistakes.”

Click for report from the Jewish Exponent