For the Living and the Dead. Traces of the Holocaust

In this episode, Katharina Freise talks with Lidia Zessin-Jurek about some very special tefillin, which is the name given to two black leather boxes with straps which are put on by adult Jews for weekday morning prayers, and are worn on the forehead and upper arm.

During her research into Polish Jewish refugees in the USSR, Lidia came across the story of the Polaniecki family, mother and father and four brothers (between fifteen and four years old at the time of the war). She got into contact with Salomon (Sam) Polaniecki, who today lives in the US. This Polish-Jewish family managed to survive the Holocaust in the USSR, first in Siberia, later in Tajikistan. Lidia has talked to Sam and his older brother Joseph many times. During their forced exile in the Soviet Union, Joseph made the tefillin of Siberian birch bark. Until 2013, the tefillin were in the possession of the family, the only object, apart from a few photos, they took back with them from the USSR when they returned to Poland after the war. The tefillin are now in the collection of Yad Vashem.

Featured guests:

Lidia Zessin-Jurek is a historian, researcher of memory (Holocaust, Gulag) and refugee movements in Polish lands past and present (refugees on Polish-Belarusian, Polish-Ukrainian borders). As part of an ERC project "Unlikely refuge?" (Czech Academy of Sciences, Masaryk Institute and Archives, Prague), she's developing a book on the refugeeism of Polish Jews in 1939.

Podcast host is Katharina Freise.
Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14

In this episode, we focus on a stamp, printed on the inside jacket of a book donated to the National Library of Serbia in 1941. The stamp is remarkable not least because it belonged to a prominent Belgrade lawyer named Samuilo Demajo, whose family was murdered in May 1942 in a Dušegupka, a truck re-equipped as a mobile gas van. Though Demajo's life was abruptly ended, his legacy lives on in this and the approximately 200 other books that he donated in an effort to rebuild the public library.

Demajo was born in 1898 into a prominent Belgrade Jewish family, doing his Military Service after the First World War before studying law and becoming a lawyer. As an active member of his community, he was involved in social initiatives and local politics as well as a member of the Belgrade City Assembly. After the National Library of Serbia was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and its precious collections destroyed by fire between 6 - 9 April 1941, a public call was put out for donations to rebuild the library's collection. 6th April 1941 also marked the beginning of World War II in former Yugoslavia and the control of Belgrade as well as other parts of German-occupied Serbia by the "Militärbefehlshaber Serbien" (territory of the military commander in Serbia). Persecution of Serbian Jews began immediately, with strict laws and restrictions against their movement, rights, employment and citizenship. Nevertheless, in May 1941, Samuilo Demajo responded to the public call of the library and made the generous offer of a donation of 133 "works from all fields of science and literature". Due to the restrictive laws against Jews, it was prohibited for Demajo’s donation to be accepted, but the then-director of the National Library corresponded with the German authorities and an exception was made. Demajo later added around 60 bound volumes of newspapers and magazines, stenographic notes from the National Assembly, and collections of laws and decrees.

The stamp was found by Andreas Roth, who was doing research in the National Library of Serbia in 2014. The discovery led to Andreas conducting a research project with a teacher colleague and a handful of history students, to try to uncover the story behind the stamp and retrace the lost history of the Demajo family. Through their research, the group were able to identify the history of the family and uncover details about their lives in Serbia before the war, after the occupation and ultimately leading to their tragic murders in May 1942.

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14

​The object of our attention in this episode is a well-travelled letter of 21 pages, received in 1997 by Professor Albert Lichtblau, in response for an appeal for "unpublished biographical memoirs" of Holocaust survivors he had posted on behalf of the Institute for Jewish History of Austria as well as the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. The letter was written by Norbert Abeles, an Austrian living in Malawi, and its arrival prompted an exchange of further letters between Malawi and Austria, unravelling in the process the remarkable story of a young Jewish boy's escape from Nazi persecution and his journey across three different continents to find home.

Abeles was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923 to Siegfried Abeles, an author of Jewish children's books, and Sabine Abeles. Abeles's life was already marred with hardship even before the Nazi occupation of Austria, having experienced the traumatic suicide of his father in 1937, when his mother signed him up for the Kindertransport, an evacuation program for Jewish children in Nazi-controlled countries that took them to the United Kingdom. By the time he said goodbye to her on the platform in December 1938, he already knew it would be the last they ever saw of each other. Indeed, Sabine Abeles was deported to Maly Trostinec on the 6th of May 1942 and was murdered days later on the 11th.

Once in the United Kingdom, Abeles attended Hakhshara, an agricultural school intended to prepare young Jewish people for emigration to Palestine. This school was located in Stenton, East Lothian in Scotland at Whittingehame House, the former home of the Earl of Balfour. The house and the grounds were leased to The Whittingehame Farm School Ltd., a non-profit organisation which aimed to educate and train Jewish children in the range of agricultural skills. Students were instructed in agriculture and horticulture in a combination of English and Hebrew, and days were structured around a half work, half study routine.

Before the end of his time at Whittingehame, Norbert was one of a handful of refugees who were interned as “enemy aliens”. This, along with the trauma of being torn away from their parents and the vastly different backgrounds and beliefs of the children staying at Whittingehame made for turbulent years at the school, which according to Norbert was very much in a “disorganized state”.

After leaving Whittingehame in 1941, Abeles found work as a lock smith's apprentice whilst attending evening school for a Diploma of the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, which sparked the beginning of a professional career that would take him around the world.

He married his first wife in 1950, who had also emigrated to the UK from Austria. Together, they left the UK and emigrated to Africa in 1956, living in Nigeria. Norbert would go on to live in different places across Africa, taking various postings in the British Colonial Service, predominantly in the educational department and taking posts as a lecturer.

​Featured guest:

In this episode, we are joined by Albert Lichtblau, former Deputy Director of the Center of Jewish Culture History and the History Department, at the University of Salzburg in Austria.

Podcast host is Katharina Freise.
Music accredi

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14

In this episode, a lost letter tells the extraordinary story of Tommy Benford Junior, a baby boy born in Paris in 1939 and saved by the incredible bravery of a Dutch woman called Truus Wijsmuller. To look at, the letter is simple, and formally written, but it contains a father's desperate plea to save his son.

Tommy Benford Junior was born in Paris in 1939. His father was an accomplished American jazz drummer, and his mother, Sophia Mezzaro, was a dancer, singer and pianist from Vienna. Sophia died giving birth to their son in 1939, and Thomas Benford Senior was left unable to care for him and work to provide a living for them both. Poor economic conditions after the outbreak of war and the threat of fascism spreading across Europe meant that Tommy's father needed to return with his band to the US and couldn't take his son with him. Unwilling to leave Europe without knowing that his son was in safe hands, Tommy Benford Senior wrote to the American Consulate in Paris, which led to Tommy Junior being collected by Truus, who agreed to take 14-month year old Tommy Junior from Paris to Amsterdam, where she personally cared for him for 9 weeks.

Joining us to tell this story are Jessica van Tijn and Pamela Sturhoofd, directors of the documentary Truus’ Children, and founders of the Truus Wijsmuller Archives. Their documentary not only brings to light the incredible bravery of Truus Wijsmuller, who was leading the efforts of the "Kindertransport" that saved the lives of more than 10,000 children during the Second World War, but also captures the moment that Tommy Benford Junior read the letter from his father to Mrs Wijsmuller, and learnt the truth about the efforts that went into saving his life. In addition to speaking to Tommy Benford Junior, Sturhoofd and van Tijn were able to speak to 23 people who were saved as children by Truus Wijsmuller in the process of making their documentary. Since it’s completion, they’ve met a further 3.

Featured guests:

Jessica van Tijn and Pamela Sturhoofd, are directors of the documentary Truus’ Children , and founders of the Truus Wijsmuller Archives. Podcast host is Katharina Freise.

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14

In Life-Saving Linoleum, we talk about a seal forged out of linoleum by a man named Endre Káldori. We hear about how Káldori, with the watchmaker skills he learnt from his grandfather, a simple piece of linoleum, much luck, and an incredible amount of daredevilry, saved many family members and friends.

Hungary joined the Axis Alliance in November 1940 and eventually, together with Germany, entered the state of war with the Soviet Union in June 1941. Following the catastrophic losses at Stalingrad between 1942-43, the Hungarian regent tried to take the side of the Western Allies, but German troops occupied Hungary in March 1944.

The situation of the Hungarian Jews became increasingly difficult. Racial laws were passed between 1938 and 1941 and many Jewish men were forced into labour service. Initially, however, Hungarian Jews lived in relative safety as the Hungarian authority only targeted non-Hungarian Jews, but after March 1944, Hungarian Jews were also deported and killed, or isolated in special houses and ghettos. Endre did everything he could to save the lives of his family and those nearby. With a great amount of bravery, he forged documents and seals that helped people to get out of dangerous situations.

The seal is now part of the Endre Káldori Collection, a unique collection of written documents, photos and objects, in the archive of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. The collection consists of the hand-made linoleum seals, fake papers, blank forms of certificates, fake birth certificates etc. A unique object in the collection is a photo album. The album is full of photos and drawings prepared by Endre Káldori for his daughter Zsuzsanna and tells the story of the family's hiding during the Holocaust and the liberation.

Featured guest:

András Szécsényi is a research fellow in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security in Budapest and holds a Ph.D. degree from ELTE (Budapest). He has worked as Head of Collections in the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest between 2005 and 2017. Podcast host is Kevania de Vries-Menig.
Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
For the testimony: Holocaust Documentation Center and Memorial Collection Public Foundation, Budapest, Hungary

• Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
• Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14