The Gelsenkirchen Survivors

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Holocaust survivors meet, try to reestablish old ties

Erika Michel Breslauer of Pembroke Pines and Ruth Heymann Fiergang of Coconut Creek stood inches apart, searching for a sign that their hunch was right. "I remember you," Breslauer exclaimed. "Yes, yes!" Now in their 80s, they were schoolgirls in the northwest German town of Gelsenkirchen before World War II began in 1939, destroying their families and much of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

Sixty-five years after the war's end, such moments between Holocaust survivors are rare, but the hope of reestablishing any connection with a past that went up in flames remains strong. That's why - despite competing needs in dire financial times - Jewish Family Service of Broward County hosted its sixth annual Café Europa on Tuesday. The luncheon, underwritten by JFS, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and private donors, drew more than 900 survivors - Broward residents and snowbirds - to the Signature Grand catering hall in Davie. "This allows us to give the opportunity for aging survivors to come together to dance, to sing, to celebrate, and maybe to find lost loved ones," said JFS Executive Director Ken Moskowitz. "For as long as we can, I'm committed to doing this."

Jewish Federations of North American defines "Holocaust survivor" as any Jew born in Europe before 1946 and who lived in a Nazi-controlled country between 1933 and 1945, and/or was forced out of such a country by Nazi occupation. By that definition, the group estimates 122.000-142.000 survivors remain in the United States. Broward County, with 4.000 to 5.000, has among the highest survivor populations in the country. Café Europa - an event also held in Miami-Dade County - brought together men and women representing every permutation of the survivor definition. Among them: Gary Naftaniel of Coral Springs, born in Berlin in 1935. His family fled to Shanghai just after Kristallnacht, the Nazis' November 1938 violent rampage that destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and institutions across Germany. They left behind a home, a business and loved ones. He and his parents boarded a ship in Italy and spent nine weeks at sea before arriving in Japanese-controlled China, said Naftaniel, 75. They remained for 10 years in a colony of 20,000 Jewish refugees before immigrating to the newly formed state of Israel. In 1953, they continued on to New York. Many in his extended family perished.

Though he remembers nothing of his early years in Europe, the retired travel agent nonetheless feels that "we are part of this. If we had stayed in Germany, we wouldn't be sitting here. I'm here to honor the ones who were in the camps." Of whom there was no shortage. Elaine Lefkowitz, an 86-year-old New York snowbird, was born in Czechoslovakia and lost most of her family at the Auschwitz death camp. She made it out alive, endured horrible conditions in several concentration camps, then a death march. She attends Café Europa every year. "It's gratifying that there are still so many of us," she said. "We have won the war after all." The event program included a list of attendees, their countries, hometowns and women's maiden names. About half came from Poland. Every few minutes, volunteers projected a message on a screen: "Herman Neudorf - a friend is looking for you." "Anyone from Radziejuw-kuj, a friend is looking for you." Betty Schagrin and Bernice Maltz met for the first time, then traded stories about the man who saved them both: Nazi industrialist Oskar Schindler, the subject of Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning film, Schindler's List. Schagrin, of Sunrise, survived with two sisters. Maltz, a Hallandale Beach snowbird from Montreal, survived with a brother. Maltz described horrors witnessed that time will never erase: A boy torn apart by attack dogs. A baby pitched from a second-floor window. Deaths by gunshot and hanging. On the dance floor, couples twirled to a spirited tango. Maltz paid no attention. Said the 81-year-old: "These things, they stay in my mind."

By Elinor J. Brecher, Miami Herald, Mar. 03, 2010.

Ehemalige Bürger und Bürgerinnen jüdischer Herkunft besuchen die Stadt Gelsenkirchen

In den Jahren 1996 bis 2001 besuchten ehemalige jüdische Bürger und Bürgerinnen, eingeladen von der Stadtverwaltung die Stadt Gelsenkirchen und konfrontierten in verschiedenen Veranstaltungen auch die heutigen Bürger mit ihren Lebensgeschichten und mit ihren Verfolgungsschicksalen.

1996 - Besuch ehemaliger jüdischer Gelsenkirchener und Gelsenkirchenerinnen, Eintragung in das goldene Buch der Stadt Gelsenkirchen. Bild: Stadtarchiv Gelsenkirchen

Chaim Baruch Haeusler, ca. 1939/40

Grabstätte von Chaim Henry Haeusler in Minnot, North Dakota, USA.

Andreas Jordan, August 2008. Nachtrag Juli 2011. Nachtrag zu Henry Chaim Baruch Haeusler April 2016

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