Who Stood With the Orphans When the Nazis Came?

Meet Doctor Henryk Goldszmit who refused to leave the Jewish orphans to face the Nazis alone.

Janusz Korczak, in the yard of the orphanage, the Ghetto Fighters' House Archives

Warsaw, Poland, the interwar period.

Doctor Henryk Goldszmit makes his way to the Jewish orphanage he founded on Krochmalna Street. As he passes through the gates, he is greeted with the joyous cheers of excited children, happy to see the kind doctor return once again.

In the Polish landscape of the early 1900s, this orphanage was considered atypical compared to other orphanages of the time. Dr. Goldszmit, an advocate for children’s rights, created a system wherein the orphanage was governed by a children’s parliament and courthouse. The parliament set the rules that everyone, including the staff, had to follow. Every child was also fully entitled to summon to court any resident of the orphanage who had injured or harmed them in any way – including the warden and the doctor himself.

Beyond having administrative and judicial power equal to their caretakers, the children in this orphanage received special attention from the institution. This included a higher level of medical treatment, proper nutrition, and most importantly, they were treated warmly and humanely, their dignity and rights were upheld and they were treated with remarkable understanding and patience for their emotions.

Janusz Korczak at the orphanage. Photograph by A.Y. Poznansky, 1930. From the From the Abraham Schwadron Portrait Collection at the NLI.

Doctor Henryk Goldszmit was not just a successful and well-regarded doctor; he was a war veteran, an accomplished philosopher, storyteller, author, lecturer, host of a popular radio show, and the founder and editor of a popular newspaper written entirely by children. He was also a well-respected researcher and educator. Despite his many accomplishments and achievements, few know his true name. Most people know him only by his pen name: Janusz Korczak.

In 1937, as the flames of anti-Semitism spread across Europe, Korczak was forced to give up his many high level positions and end his involvement in the Polish orphanage that he ran alongside the Jewish orphanage. He penned a letter expressing his desire to leave Poland and move to the Land of Israel: “I have made a decision: I would like to live out my final years in the Land of Israel, for the time being in Jerusalem. There I will learn the Hebrew language in order to move to a kibbutz after a year.”

His vision for the future never came to fruition despite having visited Israel several times. Korczak remained forever faithful to the children of the orphanage and thus, remained in Poland.

Zrubavel Gilad, an Israeli author and poet, visited the orphanage in Poland in 1938 where he had the chance to experience the unique atmosphere the doctor had created for the young orphans. “When we entered the home we were greeted by loud cheers from the joyful children- the standard exuberant welcome for the beloved doctor,” Gilad recounted.

In 1940, the Jewish orphanage was forced to move from its comfortable and familiar home on Krochmalna Street to the Warsaw Ghetto. The orphanage became crowded and cramped as the number of orphans in the small residence nearly doubled. There, in the shadow of poverty, hunger, desolation, and the spreading plague of typhoid, Korczak fought daily to ensure his children at the orphanage had enough food to live a decent life in as much as the circumstances allowed.

Inside the walls of the ghetto, Korczak continued to run the orphanage with his unique philosophy, producing cultural events and special activities such as concerts and plays to keep the children busy, entertained and happy.

Janusz Korczak with the children of the orphanage.

On the 5^th of August, 1942, Korczak was forced, along with 192 children and the 10 members of his staff, to leave the safety of the orphanage and march to the main square of the Warsaw Ghetto where they were to board the train to the Treblinka death-camp.

The well-renowned and beloved doctor was offered an escape, a chance to save himself from the inevitable death that faced the passengers of the train. Instead, Korczak marched, head held high, alongside the orphans, as they drew closer to the final ride of their lives.

With a child on each side, and a child in each arm, Korczak marched towards the train, refusing to leave behind the Jewish orphans. They marched together, the children and their greatest friend and advocate.

The witnesses of this scene who survived to share the experience expressed a feeling of unbearable sadness, despair and complete helplessness at the sight of the innocent children and their teacher as they were led to their deaths. They described the doctor, leading the crowd, proud and dignified. One of humanity’s gentlest and most noble figures was ultimately murdered, during that dark and cruel chapter of human history.

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The true story of the mysterious owner of the Philosopher's Stone...

Stefan Litt | 22.03.18

Isaac Newton מרגש סודות כתבי היד העבריים

The cover of the Hebrew version of the book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", published by Miskal, Books in the Attic

In 1407, an underground passageway was built next to a large mass grave in Paris’ central burial ground, known as “The Holy Innocents’ Cemetery” (Cimetière des Saints-Innocents). The upper section of the new passageway was decorated with a group of statues featuring the typical Christian iconography of the time.

The statues depicted Jesus, surrounded by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, as well as by the couple who donated the underground passageway: Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. Under these figures are several plates portraying traditional early 15^th century Christian symbols.

A picture of the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery by Charles Levi-Bernay (1786)

Very little is known about Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel. Were it not for the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery, Nicolas Flamel would undoubtably have been forgotten by the residents of the city within a few decades of his death. The statues were destroyed towards the end of the 18^th century, but Nicolas Flamel’s name outlived that destruction as well.

During the Renaissance period, many people attempted to decipher the deeper meanings of the Middle Age Christian symbolism displayed in the statues, among them several alchemists. One of these, Robert Duval, immediately identified two dragons featured on one of the plates placed below the statues as an alchemist symbol for the creation of metals.

From this point forward, the plate drew a great deal of attention from those familiar with various secret teachings, and the cemetery became a site of pilgrimage for alchemists and other dabblers in the occult and the hidden sciences.

Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel praying next to St. Paul, from an 18th century French manuscript preserved in the British Library

As early as the late 16^th century, a legend spread that Flamel owned an old and mystical book from which he studied occult teachings. The esoteric information in the book’s pages helped Flamel to crack the secret of the creation of gold and silver by means of a “philosopher’s stone”. The legend was recorded in a French text known as Le Sommaire Philosophique (“The Philosophical Summary”), which includes a description of pictures similar to the figures displayed in the cemetery statues.

It seems that turning Nicolas Flamel into a mystical sage was not sufficient and an autobiography attributed to Flamel himself was suddenly discovered in the early 17^th century. This book was given the mysterious name “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures” (Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques) and relates a classic tale in the field of alchemy: one day, while working as a registrar of estates of the deceased, Flamel encountered a book bound in a gilded copper binding whose 21 pages were made of tree bark.

A picture of the group of statues in the Parisian cemetery printed in the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures”, attributed to Nicolas Flamel

The book was written in what appear to be Greek letters, which Flamel did not know how to read, and was replete with unusual illustrations. According to the title page it was authored by “Abraham the Jew”, a prince, Levite, astrologist and philosopher. Flamel bought the book and managed to decipher its contents but was unable to understand the hidden symbols in the illustrations. Flamel, therefore, traveled to Spain, where he hoped to find a scholar able to explain the true meaning behind the images.

According to the tale, in Spain, the Parisian scholar found a Christian doctor with Jewish origins named Canche, who managed to decipher the message hidden in Abraham the Jew’s mysterious book. The doctor claimed that the illustrations contained the secrets behind the creation of metals. Canche died on their journey back to Paris, but after his return, Flamel managed to create high-quality strands of silver and gold in alchemical experiments based on Canche’s interpretations of the images. This discovery, the autobiography tells us, improved Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel’s financial standing to such an extent that they could make large donations to welfare institutions in Paris.

The autobiography also notes that the mystical drawings in Abraham the Jew’s book were evemtually reproduced in the aforementioned underground passageway in the Paris cemetery.

It is important to note that the original manuscript of Flamel’s book was never discovered. Abraham the Jew’s book was also never found. Historical research has proven that the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures” was written by a 17^th century author and alchemist. The autobiography contains language typical of that time, and mentions people not yet born during the lifetime of the historical Nicolas Flamel.

The qualms about the background and history of the supposed autobiography did not prevent it from enjoying a long and fruitful shelf life. After its publication in French in 1612, the text was translated into other languages (English in 1624, and German in 1681). One of the enthusiastic readers of the autobiography was none other than Isaac Newton (1643-1727), the father of modern physics. Newton summarized the book by hand and even copied out the picture depicting the group of statues in the Paris cemetery, including the mysterious plates which have been referred to as hieroglyphics. This manuscript can be found, together with Newton’s other alchemistic writings, in the Sidney M. Edelstein Collection at the National Library of Israel.

https://blog.nli.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/4-Newton-on-Flamel-1.jpg — Isaac Newton’s drawing in his summary of the book “Exposition of the Hieroglyphical Figures”, from the Sidney M. Edelstein Collection at the National Library of Israel.

Copies of the fantastic autobiography attributed to Flamel can still be found today. The last edition we are aware of was printed in 1996 in Spain under the name El libro de las figuras jeroglificas. The figure of the supposed author, Nicolas Flamel, was also brought back to life in contemporary literature. In J.K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (published in the U.S. under the name Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), Flamel is described as a man who is hundreds of years old, a friend of Albus Dumbledore the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the owner of the Philosopher’s Stone.

Flamel also makes an appearance in Dan Brown’s popular book The Da Vinci Code, and the Irish author Michael Scott even dedicated an entire six-book series to the imaginary Flamel: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel. Needless to say, all these literary works are unconnected to the historical Nicolas Flamel.

So who was the historical Nicolas Flamel?

To the best of our knowledge, Nicolas Flamel was born around the year 1330, not far from the French capital. In 1370 he married a widow named Perenelle and spent most of his life as a transcriber of manuscripts, an author and low-ranking legal clerk – positions from which he made a living. He later became a manuscript merchant in the service of the University of Paris.

The funds which helped him and his wife become patrons of a series of small churches, hospitals and other welfare institutions should be attributed to his wife – she appears to have been in possession of significant financial wealth when she was married to Nicolas, which she inherited from her two previous deceased husbands.

All the above information can be found on a 600 year old tombstone currently found in a museum in Paris (Musee de Cluny) which, together with several of the couples’ original documents, tell the story of the man immortalized both among lovers of secret teachings and readers of modern fantasy literature.

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The Haggadah That Brought the Nazis to the Seder

A glimpse into a Haggadah written for the residents of the displaced persons camp in Munich, illustrated by a Holocaust survivor.

Chen Malul | 21.03.18

Haggadah Passover The Holocaust סודות כתבי היד העבריים

For many of the residents of the displaced persons camp in Munich in April, 1946, the upcoming Passover Seder symbolized more than the Jewish people’s historical redemption; it was the reality unfolding before their eyes. Many of the survivors clustered together in the displaced persons camp had hoped that they would celebrate Passover of 1947 far from the land where their loved ones had been slaughtered, far from the land in which the Nazis and their collaborators aimed to destroy them and the entire Jewish nation. Those in the know spoke about that Passover night as the “Seder of the exodus from Europe”.

Yosef Dov Sheinson, a resident of the camp, wanted to express this sentiment in a Haggadah which he wrote for the Seder in the displaced persons camp. The excerpts in Hebrew and Yiddish which Sheinson added to the traditional haggadah are accompanied by woodcuts by the Jewish-Hungarian artist Zvi Miklos Adler, who signed his name in the Haggadah as “Ben Binyamin”.

Depicting the horrors of the Holocaust which he himself experienced during the war years, Adler’s harsh drawings complement the text of the Haggadah. In an illustration corresponding with the well-known sentence “for not only one has risen against us to destroy us” we see a soldier shooting several wretched looking prisoners, while another soldier leads a group of stooped prisoners toward an unknown destination. The picture gradually fades away as the prisoners move away from the center of the event.

“For not only one has risen against us to destroy us”

The intertwining of traditional text and modern pictures illustrates the way the creators of the Haggadah grasped the historical moment in which they lived: in each and every generation a person must see himself as if he left Egypt, but it is not in every generation that a person undergoes horrors which darken his world and dwarf the suffering experienced by his ancestors.

“For Pharaoh only made decrees against the males, and Laban wished to uproot everything”

The need to talk about and deal with the terrible topic is tangibly and explicitly expressed in the Haggadah in an illustration which is hard to look at, and under which is written, “Therefore we are obligated…”

While this excerpt in the Haggadah is usually dedicated towards praise and thanksgiving to God for redeeming us from Egypt, the expression on the face of the survivor at the bottom of the picture shows quite the opposite.

“And they oppressed us and imposed hard labor upon us”

Passover Seder in the U.S. Army

A copy of this haggadah reached Rabbi Avraham Klausner, an American army chaplain who was in the midst of preparing for a Seder of the U.S. Army forces stationed in Munich. He decided to conduct the Seder according to this haggadah, making a single change – he added an introduction addressed to soldiers in General Eisenhower’s army (whom Klausner compared in his introduction to a modern-day Moses).

Rabbi Klausner’s introduction is in the same vein as Sheinson and Adler’s work, equating Hitler with Pharaoh and the suffering the Jews endured in Egypt with what the Jews went through in the concentration and death camps.

The invite list to the Seder conducted by Rabbi Klausner in the Munich Theatre, held on the same night as the Seder of the displaced persons camp in Munich, is preserved in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People. The list shows that only a few of the five hundred participants of the Passover Seder conducted by Rabbi Klausner were Holocaust survivors. The majority were soldiers in the U.S. armed forces.

A partial list of the invitees to the Passover Seder of the U.S. Army in Munich

The letter A was stamped on the title page of Rabbi Klausner’s private copy, indicating it belonged to the U.S. Army. On the same title page is the date and the location of the Seder at which the Haggadah was used: Munich, Germany, April 15-16, 1946″.

Rabbi Klausner’s personal copy is currently stored in the Haggadah Collection of Aviram Paz. It was lent to the National Library for its “Next Year We Will Be Free Men” exhibition – an exhibition of unconventional Passover Haggadot from the years leading up to the founding of the state.

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Melody Barron | 18.03.18

Haggadah Passover סודות כתבי היד העבריים

“Next year in Jerusalem!” cry the multiple voices of Jews around the world when they finally reach the end of the Seder, the ritual meal of Passover. It is during this never ending meal that Jews recount the road out of slavery towards liberty. This is when parents tell their children that in every generation, every Jew, must consider themselves as though they had been freed from the bondage of Egypt.

Except in Soviet Russia, where a special Haggadah was written and distributed in which the cry for revolution, not Jerusalem, was brought to the table. “This year a revolution here; next year – a world revolution!”

The communist Jews of the early Soviet Union put together special propaganda Haggadot in which the old Jewish traditions were decried and the new communist ideas were embraced. One of them was the Komsomolishe Haggadah, published in Moscow in 1922 by Moshe Altshuler.

Cover of the Komsomolishe Haggadah, 1922

One way in which Altshuler portrayed these new ideas was in using the language of Passover to show how communist ideals have and will continue to spread throughout the world. For example, one of the traditions prior to the celebration of Passover is the removal of leavened bread and products made of wheat in general from the home.

They are then gathered in a pile and set on fire so that they can be destroyed. This is called in Yiddish bdikes-khomets, literally meaning, “checking for chametz “, the remnants of bread and wheat products in the home. Altshuler interprets this bdikes-khomets in this way:

“Five years before the first Komsomol Pesach all Russian proletariat and peasants performed bdikes-khomets in the land. They removed all remnants of the rule of the bourgeoisie and landowners, gained power in their hands and defeated the enemy on all fronts.

In the fire of Great Socialistic Revolution they burned kolchaks, yudeniches, vrangels, denikins, pilsudsskis, petlurs, chernovs, gotzs, dans, martovs, abramoviches and said the brokhe: “All landowners, bourgeois and their minions – Mensheviks, SRs, CaDets, Bundists, Zionists, Poale Zions, Tsaire Zions and all other counter-revolutionists, nuisances, ne’er-do-wells and parasites should be burned in the fire of the Revolution. Those who were already burned, shall never rise again, and as to those who will remain, we will sacrifice them and hand them over to the State Political Directorate.”

Removing the bourgeois *chametz*, Komsomolishe Haggadah, 1922

What else is there to say?

Altshuler wanted to show the younger generation that the old bourgeois ideas were as bad as khometz during Passover. By using the colloquial language, Yiddish, and the older traditional form of the Haggadah, he made the Soviet revolution accessible to every Jew living in Moscow and beyond.

The Haggadah is chock-full of examples where Altshuler appropriated the religious activities and made them communist for the proliferation of communism. Like the splitting of the matzah (Yechatz – יחץ) in which the revolutionary Proletariat split the control of the means of production from the capitalist bourgeois, the wrapping (Korech – כורך) in which the revolution consumes the bosses and oppressors of the working class, and the sacrifice itself, (Korban Pesach – קרבן פסח), which looks shockingly traditional.