expressions of the holocaust: storytellers

EXPRESSIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST:

NOVEMBER 11TH, 201418 CHESHVAN 5775

Mason Hillel Presents:

STORYTELLERS

Members of the Community, and Distinguished Guests,

It is my honor to welcome you to the Expressions of the Holocaust: Storytellers tonight at George Mason University. This is the second annual event dedicated to Holocaust education and remembrance. Last year, we hosted over 40 Holocaust survivors for an inspirational evening, Expressions of the Holo-caust: a dinner honoring Survivors. Tonight will be quite different. Tonight is dedicated to remember-ing and storytelling in many forms.

Before and afterwards, you will have the chance to see an exhibit Our Forgotten Neighbors featur-ing banners with the stories of Hungarian families from the town of Pápa before the Holocaust. Ambassa-dor Simonyi whose family is from Pápa is here with us tonight. Tonight’s program will feature a short documentary on Holocaust awareness , where you will hear from survivors, as well as insights from George Mason faculty and students. The film was produced by Delta Kappa Alpha, the film fraternity on George Mason’s campus. We are so grateful for their dedication to keeping their stories alive.

Our keynote speaker is Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits, a survivor from Derecske, Hungary. He is the founding Rabbi of Virginia’s largest Jewish congregation, Temple Rodef Shalom. Listening to his story is essential to our program. You may have seen videos or read memoirs about Holocaust survivors, but the power of hearing survivors tell their stories firsthand is uniquely powerful. If you have not heard a survi-vor speak before tonight, you are in for quite an experience. If you have a conversation with any of our survivors here tonight, cherish what you hear, and remember it.

The event will conclude with a one-act play telling the fictional story of Hungarian Jews hiding dur-ing the German occupation of Hungary. George Mason alumnus Aaron Sulkin ’14, wrote this powerful play. While the play is fictional, the plight of Hungarian Jews was very real. After the performance we will celebrate life across the hall where will have the dessert reception.

I would like to extend my personal welcome to the Holocaust survivors who have joined us to-night. Your presence represents tremendous courage. By sharing your stories, you are helping us begin to understand what this time period in history was truly like. In doing so, we can share your stories with the world in the hopes that no one of any race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status will ever have to face what you had survived. For your courage we applaud and thank you will all our hearts.

With Best Wishes,

Jordan Beauregard, Chair Holocaust Remembrance Student Executive Committee

Holocaust Remembrance Student Executive CommitteeJordan Beauregard, ChairTaylor Kreinces, Operations and Logistics ChairClaire Johnson, Education ChairStephen Guion, Financial ChairArielle Flax, HistorianTaylor Pigram, Head Student Volunteer

EXPRESSIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST: STORY TELLERS

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Welcome RemarksJordan Beauregard and Claire Johnson, Executive Planning Committee

National Anthem and Hatikvah performed by Noteworthy

Honoring the Survivors With Us Tonight

More Than A Memory: Preserving the Stories of Holocaust SurvivorsA documentary produced Delta Kappa Alpha Film Fraternity

The Boy Who Lost His BirthdayRabbi Laszlo Berkowits

Our Forgotten Neighbors and Introduction of UniformAmbassador Simonyi

Uniform A play written by Aaron Sulkin Class of '14

Closing Remarks

Dessert Reception


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Rabbi Laszlo BerkowitsViviane BloodworthMarcel and Ania DrimerJoan DasilvaMaria DworzeckaMorris ElbaumEtelka FettmanJanos GertlerPeter GorogAnna GroszAnne Herman

Dr. Albert LichtmanMichel MargosisClara MilesFelix NicinskiErika RobinsonMarianne RossHelen SchwartzJacques (Jack) WagschalIrene WeissMiriam Zuares


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Student Ambassadors

Amy DriessenAlexa CaputoBarbara BrophySam McCurryCarissa ShearerIdean MarvastianAquilla OssianNakia RidgewayCourtney MetcalfLynea WilsonAna TobarLaquasia LegrandeKathryn MooreGemma PearsonDana BlumenfeldSonam Ahluwalia

Sage JanulisDaniella TitoneHarley DoritySarah McQuadeAndy VoglDrisana SutchIsabella StromMaria CappelinaLauren WagnerHarley RothLauren DeveneyLindeu AbstonDustin YatesAnna Sullivan

Survivors In Attendance

Hungary joined with the Axis powers (Ger-many, Austria, and Italy) and thus annexed parts of Slovakia, Transylvania, Yugoslavia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia; most of these areas be-longed to Hungary, before World War I. By mid-1941, the annexation increased "Great Hungary's" Jewish population to 800,000.

The first massacre of Hungarian Jews took place in July 1941 when 20,000 Hungarian Jews were expelled from the Galicia region, in Kamentes-Podolski, where the SS and Hungarian troops killed them in the autumn of 1941. Also in 1942, Hungary's Prime Minister, Miklos Kallay, ordered that Jewish property be expropriated and he restricted the economic and cultural life of Jews. He proposed a "final solution of the Jewish question," calling for the resettlement of 800,000 Jews. The Arrow Cross party in Hungary was also responsible for anti-Jewish rhetoric, as well as for persecution.

By 1943, Jews were no longer involved in Hungary's public and cultural life; however, the Kallay government began holding secret talks with the allies and toned down its anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 because Kallay did not deport the Jews, which was seen as cooperation with the allies. By the time of the German occupation, 63,000 Hungarian Jews had been killed.

In April 1944, Adolph Eichmann ordered the removal of 400,000 Jews from the provincial towns, cities and villages around Hungary to ghet-tos. Deportation to Auschwitz began in May 1944. All communities besides those in Budapest were put in ghettos or concentration camps.

Two well-known individuals involved in sav-ing Hungary's Jews were Charles Lutz, a Swiss dip-lomat in Hungary, and Raoul Wallenberg, secre-tary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest.

The deportation process of Budapest's Jews began in October 1944. Death marches to Austria were ordered for the Budapest Jews and it is esti-mated that about 98,000 Jews from Budapest lost their lives in these marches by January 1945.

At the end of the war, 69,000 Jews re-mained in Budapest's central ghetto and 25,000 remained in the "protected ghetto." Approxi-mately 25,000 Jews came out of hiding in Buda-pest, a few thousand lived in Red Cross children's homes and others returned from labor camps, from the Soviet Union and from other regions. Of the original 825,000 Jews before the war, 260,000 Hungarian Jews survived and 565,000 perished. About 4,000 Jews from Debrecen sur-vived the war. The other survivors were mainly from Budapest; most of the Jews from the small towns were murdered.

Source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Hungary.html

BACKGROUND ON THE HUNGARIAN HOLOCAUST


5"Shoes Danube Promenade" by Nikodem Nijaki

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Hungary.html




Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits is the Found-ing Rabbi of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Virginia. Rabbi Berkowits served Temple Rodef Shalom from his ordination in 1963 to his retirement as Senior Rabbi in July 1998. A native of Hungary, he is a sur-vivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentra-tion camp. Rabbi Berkowits earned a Bache-lor of Arts degree at the University of Cin-cinnati; Bachelor of Hebrew Letters degree and a Master of Hebrew Letters degree, with a Doctor of Divinity degree at the He-brew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Throughout his distinguished career in Falls Church, Rabbi Berkowits has fo-cused his attention on religious, civic and

humanitarian concerns. He served as a member of the Virginia Advisory Commit-tee to the US Commission on Civil Rights and serves on the DC Chapter of the Ameri-can Jewish Committee. He is a former member of the Executive Board of the Cen-tral Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and past president of the Mid-Atlantic Region of that organization. From 1995-96, he served as president of the McLean Clergy.

Rabbi Berkowits is a founding mem-ber of the Fairfax County Community Ac-tion Project and of the Board of the McLean Choral Arts Society. He has served on the Board of the Health and Welfare Council of Falls Church and of Hospice of Northern Virginia. Rabbi Berkowits is a for-mer member of the Superintendent's Com-munity Advisory Council, Fairfax County School System. From 1965-1972, Rabbi Ber-kowits was a Visiting Lecturer in the De-partment of Philosophy and Religion at American University and the Defense Intel-ligence College in Washington, DC. He also lectures about the Holocaust in public schools in the northern Virginia area. Rabbi Berkowits recently authored “The Boy Who Lost His Birthday”, a story of one man’s journey from boyhood in rural Hun-gary to his triumph over oppression during the Holocaust and finally to a role as a spiri-tual leader in America.

RABBI LASZLO BERKOWITS, D.D.


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George Mason University’s Noteworthy is the university’s first and only all female a cappella group. Founded in 2009, Noteworthy strives to provide and use music as away to con-nect not only with the campus community, but the larger Fairfax community as well.

Performers:

Casey Marion

Julianne Holmbald

Hailey Barchick

Allie Royce

Tori Johnson

Areane Garza

Elizabeth Whitehead

Elena Wichers

Savannah Loebig

Keiona Jones

Sarah Liu

Elizabeth Purnell

Elizabeth Siebel

Delta Kappa Alpha Cinematic Arts Fraternity

The mission of Delta Kappa Alpha—a national, co-ed, professional fraternity for the cinematic arts—is to foster lifelong fraternal bonds and creative, collaborative storytelling. Such is the mission of Iota Colony, a passionate, dedicated group of George Mason University students and alumni. Since its inception just last year, Iota Colony has grown in more ways than its founders ever thought possible by welcoming new pledge members, forming bonds with GMU’s Film & Video Studies program, and col-lectively working on exciting and meaningful film projects.

Iota Colony is proud to introduce this collabo-rative effort: a haunting, poignant documen-tary that chronicles intimate interviews with Holocaust survivors. Motivated by the desire to tell these important stories, the members of Iota Colony have united their individual strengths and talents to create a documentary that they hope will move and inspire all who see it.


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Almost 18 months ago, I had the honor of meeting and listening to a Holocaust Survi-vor from Hungary share his experiences. He relayed the events of his childhood in Hun-gary, the blatant anti-Semitism and the loss of his father and family; meticulously trans-lating childhood memories into the present. The Hungarian Holocaust narra-tive is one that I had, at that point, not heard very much about. It was faster, dirt-ier, and more efficient. In 4 months, over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were put to death. In Uniform, three Jewish siblings are hiding in an evacuated town outside of Bu-dapest, Hungary. The play begins when one of them drags in an unconscious German soldier, confirming that more German sol-diers are searching for Jews in hiding. The German (Erik) wakes up and, after guessing their predicament, offers to help them es-cape. The entire story takes place in the basement of an abandoned building and deals with issues of trust, honor, and hu-manity. It highlights the tragedy of every-one’s situation and prompts the questions, “what would you have done?” and alterna-tively, “what could you have done?”

Cast BiosSam Taylor (Erik) is a Theatre Major at George Mason University and a Teaching Artist for AFYP. He is very excited to be re-visiting “Uniform.” See him next in the Ma-son Players Production of “Dido, Queen of Carthage.”

Brandon Herlig (Jacob) majored in Theatre at George MasonUniversity. He is honored to be participating in this event. See him next at Nextstop Theatre in “A Man for All Seasons.”

Eric Schlein (David) majored in Theatre and Psychology at GeorgeMason University. He is happy to once again be involved in “Uniform.” He is a reading specialist in Fair-fax, and a member of Big in Certain Coun-tries.

Cathryn Benson (Zsuzsanna) is a graduate of the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, George Mason University, and studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dra-m a t i c A r t s . R e c e n t c r e d i t s include: understudy (Stuart Little, Adven-ture Theatre), Elias (We are Samurai, Venus Theatre), Henry (Henry V, RADA), Caro-lynn (MALICE-the web series, Eagle Films), Gemma (Passaggio, GMU).

UNIFORM


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WRITTEN BY AARON SULKINDIRECTED BY ALEC HENNEBERGER

The Fela and David Shapell Foundation&

Hillel International for their support to bring this event from dream to

reality.

Tributes toward Holocaust EducationIn memory of Livia and Ignac Varkonyi, survivors from the

Hungarian Shoah.Irvin Varkonyi

Congratulations Ross Diamond and GMU Hillel on 2nd an-nual Expressions of the Holocaust event.

Joanne and Bruce Wyman

In support of Holocaust Education at Mason

Professor Marion F. Deshmukh

Jeff Dannick, Executive Director, JCCNV

Carol and Mark Weiss

Brooke and Adam August

Elizabeth Margosches and Don Melman

Mark and Debbie Weber

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS


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November 11, 2014 George Mason University Hillel Johnson Center 239H 4400 University Drive, MS 2C7 Fairfax, Virginia 22030

It is with a grateful heart that I write to express my thanks to George Mason University Hillel for sponsoring its second annual Expressions of the Holocaust – Storytellers. Preserving these stories honors the sacrifices of those who survived the Holocaust and honors and keeps alive the memories of those who perished in this terrible crime against humanity. Philosopher George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” God bless those who keep history alive so that we may learn.

The work of Hillel is incredibly important as our country debates how to confront modern day atrocities around the world. I want to personally thank the survivors tonight for sharing their stories and the students who are helping to educate others through theater, film, and advocacy.

Knowledge can be transformational. This summer, we took my daughter to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. for the first time. This simple act changed her life perspective forever. Thank you, Hillel, for working to transform lives.

With warmest regards,

David L. Bulova Member, Virginia House of Delegates 37th District


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COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

HOUSE OF DELEGATES RICHMOND

DISTRICT: (571) 249-3453 • RICHMOND: (804) 698-1041 • EMAIL: [email protected]

Eileen Filler-Corn POST OFFICE BOX 523082 SPRINGFIELD, VA 22152

41ST DISTRICT

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS: TRANSPORTATION MILITIA, POLICE, AND PUBLIC SAFETY FINANCE

November 11, 2014

Dear George Mason Hillel and the Greater GMU Jewish Community, Thank you for the opportunity to join you for this truly special evening, to honor Holocaust survivors and victims who have given us the privilege to meet them tonight. I am honored to be in the presence of these courageous individuals and hear their unique stories of survival against overwhelming odds. We of the Jewish faith know all too well the importance of the lessons they teach us, and we must always ensure that they are able to continue bearing witness to the unspeakable horrors they experienced. It is essential not only to our own culture but to all of society that the lessons of the Holocaust reach future generations throughout the world. We must always remember, in our minds and hearts, the enduring message of "never again" that resonates from this unthinkably tragic event. I am so gratified to see George Mason Hillel organizing tonight's event again so we may hear personal experiences directly from brave survivors. The GMU Hillel is an important resource for the Jewish community through its dissemination of information on our long and storied history as a people. As the first and only Jewish woman ever elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, I have drawn extensively on my own personal faith and ideals, and I am honored to serve as a voice for the Jewish community in the Virginia General Assembly. I believe deeply that we owe it to the world and the memory of the six million Jews and many millions of others who perished to keep the message of the Holocaust forever alive for future generations to come. We must never permit the so-called "Holocaust deniers" to detract in any way from the undeniable facts of this truly inhuman event. I strongly encourage everyone here tonight to reflect on the meaning of this event for us all. Again, thank you for allowing me to join you on this very special occasion. I deeply appreciate the opportunity to hear the experiences of our distinguished panel, and I hope that their messages continue to resonate well beyond this hall tonight. Sincerely yours,

Eileen Filler-Corn Member, Virginia House of Delegates

The last, the very last,So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing

against a white stone. . . .

Such, such a yellowIs carried lightly 'way up high.

It went away I'm sure because it wished tokiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found what I love here.The dandelions call to me

And the white chestnut branches in the court.Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.Butterflies don't live in here,

in the ghetto.

THE BUTTERFLY BY PAVEL FRIEDMAN


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Pavel Friedman was a young poet, who lived in the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Little is know of the author, but he is presumed to have been 17 years old when he wrote “The Butterfly”. It was found amongst a hidden cache of children’s work recovered at the end of the Second World War. He was eventually deported to Auschwitz where he died on September 29, 1944. http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/lesson_plans/poems_paintings.asp

We are sharing this beautiful poem to show that even in the worst of times, one can see beauty in small things. We commemorate this poem with Butterfly cookies you will receive at the end of the program.

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/lesson_plans/poems_paintings.asp




Executive Director, Ross DiamondPresident, Adam August

Vice President, Joanne Wilkenfeld WymanTreasurer, Neil SchlusselSecretary, Joshua Cantor

Rabbi Bruce Aft

Lance GebelHolly GebelJared Gold

Deborah KesslerAsher Kotz

Michael MedinaErez Cramer

Rabbi Michael RagozinNatalie Roisman Dvorah RichmanJohn RosenbergBernhard Saxe

David Schneider

Past Presidents Natalie Roisman

Scott BrownRabbi Bruce AftGeorge BillinsonArthur Goldberg

Richard Peet

MASON HILLEL BOARD OF DIRECTORS


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