91热爆

The attached script is an indication of the programme content for reference and may contain mistakes, producer notes, or other unspecified errors.

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JW 鈥� Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

DW 鈥� Daniel Wittenberg

AW 鈥� Amos Wittenberg

Readers: Soshana Hoffman and Susanna Gunner

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MUSIC: Kaddish Alain Jamot QMFME1561703 190374689878

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Words from Ellie Wiesel 鈥楩rom the Kingdom of Memory p105 (reader Susanna Gunner) Schocken Books; Reissue edition (31 Jan. 1995) ISBN-10 鈥� : 鈥� 0805210202 ISBN-13 鈥� : 鈥� 978-0805210200

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JW: Good morning, I'm Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, and this morning I'm inviting you to accompany me on a journey.听 A journey into my family's history, from here in Holesov in Czechia, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where our ancestors from this town were ultimately taken and murdered.听 With me is my nephew Daniel, who in his working life is a journalist with the 91热爆, and will be asking questions inspired by our own family's story.

My son Amos is also here with us, and will be singing some of the prayers and chants so key to Jewish religious life. , we are on a deeply personal journey of discovery and rediscovery.听 An intergenerational conversation to remember the impact of the cataclysmic events which took place in this part of Europe over 80 years ago,听 as the Nazis invaded and imposed what they called the Final Solution, first on the Jewish population, and also on many other marginalised groups. Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day, and the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.听 There's hardly a Jewish family in the UK who did not lose relatives or friends in the death camps.听 We begin our family's story beside a grave in Holesov.

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MUSIC:

2 M茅lodies h茅bra茂ques, M. A 22: No. 1, Kaddish

ALBUM: Ravel: Sh茅h茅razade; 5 M茅lodies Populaires Grecques Victoria de los 脕ngeles Maurice Ravel Warner Classics DURAND EDITIONS,RICORDI G AND CO (LONDON) LTD

TRACK>9

ISRC>GBAYC0501682

CATALOG_DB0>529e67e1-5ee6-4d3e-8c1a-92b40472a46f

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JW: So we're here in the Jewish cemetery in Holesov.听 Here is the grave of my great-grandfather, HaRav Yaakov Bar Avraham Chaim Freiman, Rabbi Jacob's son of Abraham Chaim Freiman.听 He wrote a number of books, he taught Jewish children to read, and he was a teacher.

He taught Torah in important congregations.听 He died on the 19th of the month of Tevet, that was the December 23rd, I believe.听 Here he lies at peace.

He died, perhaps it was a merciful death, he was just 70 years old though.听 And he was spared the horrors and the travails that his wife and his children were to undergo just shortly afterwards.听 And Gregina describes how she came here regularly, once a month, once she was here from Berlin.

And when she was in Berlin, Zofi, their daughter, said,听 these are blue flowers I picked next to our beloved papa's grave.听

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LETTER EXTRACT: Jonathan Wittenberg: My Dear Ones 鈥� One Family and the Final Solution听 - WilliamCollinsbooks.com; ISBN: 978-0-00-915806-4 pp100-101 (Reader Soshana Hoffman)

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DW: And I'm right in saying that this gravestone was all that was left of our family in central Europe in 1945.

JW: I think you are right in saying that of all the family, they had six children, all of whom were thriving.听 This is all that remains.听 Some were murdered, some managed to flee. Everything they had was taken away.听 And this gravestone really marks the family's residence in these places for, I don't know, a couple of centuries maybe.听 But it feels very moving to be able to be here, the three of us, and to be coming from London where there are lots of us now.

You notice in the daylight that this gravestone is carved in slightly rougher letters than some of the others,听 as if it was put up in haste in 1938, when really the threats to Czechoslovakia were gathering and getting stronger.听 And perhaps there was a growing insecurity about what Jewish life was going to be bringing.听 I think this gravestone was also a touchstone to the spirit of his family.

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AW: Chant:听 Adam Ysodo 鈥� JW (translation) 鈥淗uman beings are made from dust, and to dust they are destined to return.听 At the risk of their lives they win their bread.听 They are like pottery that shatters, grass that dries up, flowers that wither, shadows that pass,听 clouds that dissolve, winds that blow by, like drifting dust, like a dream that flies away.鈥�

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JW: It feels not just like a journey, we're making a bit of a pilgrimage as well.听 I think it is a pilgrimage, and for me, when I came across the letters from the family from 1938 all the way to 1948,听 and was able to put together some of what happened to different members of the family, that journey through those letters was also a pilgrimage.

And here it's brought us, we're all part of it, and the generations to come will be part of it too.

DW: And that's so special on Holocaust Memorial Day, that act of remembrance is something that we can do as a family. JW: Yes.

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MUSIC: TRACK: Kol Nidrei, Op. 47

ALBUM: Bloch, Dohn谩nyi, Bruch, Tim Posner, Berner Symphonieorchester, Katharina M眉llner

PERFORMERS: Tim Posner/Berner Symphonieorchester/Katharina M眉llner

COMPOSER: Max Bruch- Claves Records

TRACK2

ISRC CH1262407902 CD-3079 7619931307923 EAN

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JW: So we're in the old Shach Synagogue in Holoshov, and it was here that my great-grandfather,听 your great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Yaakov Freiman, came with his wife Regina close to the beginning of his career,听 and served this community for 20 years.听 Here his children, including my grandmother, were born.听 He would have begun his service of the community in this beautiful, beautiful old synagogue,听 with its wonderful panels, its decorated walls with prayers, its low, atmospheric roof.

Then he dedicated the new synagogue in 1893.听 It was utterly destroyed by the Nazis in 1941.听 There's an extraordinary YouTube film showing its destruction with people smiling around it.

And my great-grandmother, Regina, who came back to this town after her husband's death,听 she came to be with her daughter.听 They thought it would be safer here in the Czech lands than it would be to remain in Berlin.听 And she records in a letter to one of her children the solemn service in what she called the 800-year-old synagogue over the Days of the New Year, and the Day of Atonement, with its deep and heartfelt prayers.

And she didn't want to say it, but she was clearly referring to the utter destruction of the new synagogue.

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Corporate chant: Adonai, adonai, el rachum v'rachem sed yemet. (Translation: Reader Susanna Gunner) 鈥淥 God, O God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, filled with loving-kindness and truth,听 who shows kindness to thousands, forgiving and pardoning transgressions, sins and wrongdoing.鈥�

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JW: There is this verse from the Psalms,听 Out of the depths I called to you, God, with a sense of calling upwards towards heaven from somewhere low.听 And by each of the windows there's a quotation about God opening the doors of heaven and God welcoming the prayers of the people.听 It also perhaps is to do with why it survived, because whereas the new synagogue was quite magnificent and very public and very obvious, this had meanwhile been sold off into private ownership.

DW: It's almost hidden from the street, you go down some steps and it feels a bit like a cellar and that might have been one of the reasons why it was not destroyed by the Nazis. AW: What do we know about your great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather's life and work in Holoshev? JW:听 Obviously this is where he taught and preached for many years.听 I think we know that it was quite a good life.

He was very, very involved in Jewish publishing in a particular enterprise which was called Mikitsed Nirdamim, to bring back into circulation forgotten works of Jewish scholarship.听 He was regularly in touch with Berlin where he had studied and where he was later to complete his career.听 They had a garden and a vegetable garden.

He talked about the Rhenichlord plums which they had. DW: A vegetable garden, it reminds me of you. JW: Yes, well some things have gone through the generations of the family in a very real way.

And then his eldest daughter Zofie married here, in fact on the 25th of December and she stayed here.听 She married Josef Redlich who was the son of a liquor merchant who had a liquor factory here which he then inherited on his father's death and which the Nazis did not close down because it was the only liquor manufacturer in the region.听 One can imagine to what uses that liquor was put.

And we have the letterheads from the years of the Nazi occupation of the Protectorate.听 And at first I was mistaken when I looked at them. I thought, oh, it's under special management.

But of course what it was, it was under Nazi management which is Zofie's husband became an employee in his own business and all the profits were sequestered to Berlin.听 But it wasn't shut down. They were wealthy.

So they took their mother when she was widowed in Berlin, unable to get to Palestine.听 They brought her here in March 1939 thinking this will be safe.听 And just weeks later Hitler annexed Bohemia and Moravia.

The Nazis moved in. There's a picture of them in the village square with all their armoured trucks.听 And they made brave of it.

They're still able to correspond for quite a time with most of their family.听 Not with the three of their children including my grandmother, your great-grandmother who'd made it to Palestine because that was in the British mandate and therefore an enemy territory.听 They were able to correspond with their one son who made it to New York until Pearl Harbor when that again became inaccessible.

Their daughter Trude had had a terrible fate being deported to the Lublin region to a small place called Ostrov Lubelski very soon after the German invasion of Poland.听 But they were able to keep in touch with her.听 But eventually that was her life, her children, her grandchildren.

They were made brave of it. They said we can still help people from there.听 They were still able to send food.

It is possible that it was easier to access food in the country than in the cities.听 I don't know but their assets were gradually removed.听 Their movements restricted.

The very street they lived on was made inaccessible to Jews.听 They were informed that if they were on that street because they lived there they weren't allowed to loiter or walk slowly.听 They had to hand in all their warm clothes.

They had to hand in their radio.听 Their circle became narrower and narrower and narrower until they sent this final letter on the 18th of January 1943.听 We're going to be leaving this place next week.

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LETTER EXTRACT: Jonathan Wittenberg: My Dear Ones 鈥� One Family and the Final Solution听 - WilliamCollinsbooks.com; ISBN: 978-0-00-915806-4 pp273-4 (Reader Soshana Hoffman)

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MUSIC: TRACK: Kol Nidrei, Op. 47

ALBUM: Bloch, Dohn谩nyi, Bruch, Tim Posner, Berner Symphonieorchester, Katharina M眉llner

PERFORMERS: Tim Posner/Berner Symphonieorchester/Katharina M眉llner

COMPOSER: Max Bruch- Claves Records

TRACK2

ISRC CH1262407902 CD-3079 7619931307923 EAN

听cf57d516-3b8c-4b52-81d2-3d406e0e7d00

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DW: I find it very powerful to hear you talking about that transition.

The fact that our ancestor Yaakov had a congregation here to teach and preach to.听 That our family members had businesses.听 And now, many decades later, we're standing in an empty echoey synagogue that is a museum primarily.

JW:听 But the prayers on the walls, many written here, still retain their spiritual resonance, their power to move.听 And in fact, it was members of our community in London who came here in 2014 and held the first Shabbat service since probably 1942 in this building.听 One talks about the ruach, the spirit of a place. And that reminds one of the phrase ruach hakodesh, a kind of sacred spirit.听 And it definitely still inhabits this building.听 Our surviving relatives, they were trying to probe the silence when the war ended in 1945.

Who survived? Who lived? Who died?听 And they got a reply from somebody they knew who'd come back here saying out of 300 Jews deported, 20, 20 returned.听 That's less than 10%. Our family, not among them.

DW: And Mossie, you're going to pay tribute to that spirit that Uncle Jonathan spoke about.听 And it's going to be unusual that Mossie is singing to an empty synagogue. JW: Yes.

I mean, here we are in this very resonant building.听 But where are the people? They've gone.听 And normally the leader would sing who shall be born and who shall pass away.

But everybody would join in with those lines.听 On the new year it is written and on the day of atonement it is inscribed.听 You'd hear the whole congregation joining in.

And here probably men and women would have been separate.听 But in this place their voices would have come together and echoed and resounded together with the leader.听 There's a particular connection between the commemoration of the 80th year since the liberation of Auschwitz and this particular prayer.

Because it's attributed to Rabbi Amnon of Mainz who was martyred and returned in a dream to the prayer leader of the congregation.听 Who then sung this prayer as Rabbi Amnon's last words, last profession of his faith.听 And now Mossie is going to climb the stairs up onto the bima, what we call the pulpit, and sing that for us.

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AW: Chant:听 Rosh Hashana 鈥� JW (translation) 鈥淥n Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.听 How many shall pass away and how many shall be created?听 Who shall live and who shall die?听 Who by fire and who by fire shall be created?听 And who by water?

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MW: Those 20 who may have come back here, Abba, what would they have found? JW: I don't know what they would have found.听 In general one can say that people who returned to such places in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, found absence.

Everyone was gone. The life was gone.听 Some of them found resentment and hatred that they had survived and were returning.

There was a fear that they would want to reclaim their homes and their property and therefore some of them were threatened,听 if you stay around here you'll be killed.听 I don't know that this happened here, I don't think so, but they found absence.听 They found what was gone and what wasn't anymore.

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MUSIC: Bloch: Music for Cello and Piano; Raphael Wallfisch; From Jewish Life III: Jewish Song Nimbus Records 鈥� NI5943 ASIN 鈥� : 鈥� B06XG27DGJ听

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MW: What point are the stories starting to reach the rest of your family in Palestine?听 At what point are stories starting to come out that people realise the extent of the horror? JW: I mean that's one of the great historical questions because it's often said that survivors didn't want to speak about their experiences.听 That's disputed. I think the family became very aware of it by the close of 1945 and early 1946.

Your great grandmother, my grandmother Ella, wrote from Jerusalem to a surviving relative called Charlotte Tuch,听 who'd survived underground, she said her life had hung by a silken thread in bombed out Berlin,听 survived the Nazis, survived the bombing.听 And she writes that, you know, I received your letter but it took me some months to reply because I just didn't have the strength.听 I think that you ask about the fate that overtook the rest of your family, your mother, your sister Sophie, your sister Trude,听 I think they went with the rest of them.

Your mother had said, I think this must have been in Theresienstadt,听 despite everything my faith in God remains firm.听 They knew these things by 1946, 1947.听 They could infer them from the silence, they could infer them from who wasn't. And it was there to be known.听 Although the impact has deepened and changed over generations since.

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MUSIC: Weinberg: Symphony No. 21, Op. 152 鈥濳addish鈥� - I. LargoALBUM Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21Gidon Kremer/City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Kremerata Baltica/Mirga Gra啪inyt臈-Tyla Mieczys艂aw Weinberg Deutsche Grammophon (DG) TRACK 4 ISRC DEN961900641 13a5834b-f39e-438a-87db-0e1db216e96b

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DW: And it strikes me that if history had been different, you may have been the rabbi of this synagogue.

Who knows?听 The Jewish people, the Roma, other people, we like many now host refugees in our house from Iran, from Afghanistan,听 from Somalia.听 What does history hold for the future in an unstable world where horrors are perpetrated,听 where people are forced to flee for their lives, to begin again, like many Ukrainian families also, in an unknown land.听 Perhaps it's compassion for all those who undergo that fate that is one of the things we should be thinking of at this 80th anniversary.

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MUSIC: Weinberg: Symphony No. 21, Op. 152 鈥濳addish鈥� - I. LargoALBUM Weinberg: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 21Gidon Kremer/City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Kremerata Baltica/Mirga Gra啪inyt臈-Tyla Mieczys艂aw Weinberg Deutsche Grammophon (DG) TRACK 4 ISRC DEN961900641 13a5834b-f39e-438a-87db-0e1db216e96b听

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Find Masaryk Street if we can find it.听 Because although it's not clear and although the roads were renamed,听 Masaryk Street seems to be where they said they had left two houses in that last letter and where they seem to have lived.听 And this is the site of where the synagogue was. We're just seeing a sign, Synagoga.听 The film which came to light only really after the Velvet Revolution,听 of the destruction of the synagogue.听 At first there was some thought maybe it was taken secretly to record the events, but it's clearly a Nazi propaganda film.

DW: It's an extraordinary, very disturbing piece of testament.听 To me when I was watching it, I was struck by how almost routine it appeared to seem for them,听 that it was just some kind of demolition job that they were witnessing.听 Does that tell us anything about anti-Semitism even today and how it crops up and what forms it takes?听 JW: I think it tells us something about race hate, which is don't wait to speak out until you risk your life to do so. Speak out while you can, look at the signs of it, take them seriously.听 The tendency, the danger of hate is not foreign to the human heart unfortunately.听 It's terrible when any religious building is attacked out of race hatred. But there's also something for us as a Jewish community, there's an inherited trauma.听 It triggers a very deep sense of am I ever secure?听 Am I ever safe somewhere other than for a limited period of time?听 That sense that one has a suitcase packed, if not in one's hallway, in one's mind and in one's heart.听 And that these things return in history, they're not gone forever. The notion that humanity has moved on, it's not true.

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DW: So we've stayed up late to watch one of not very many trains passing through the tiny station here in Holoshov.听 What was going through your mind as you saw that train go past?听 Well it was from here by train that my great-grandmother Regina and her daughter Sophie and son-in-law Josef were deported.

They were taken in January 1943.听 They were aware that they were going to Theresienstadt.听 They'd been told what the Nazi propaganda machine told them, that this was a place for the elderly,听 that they would go to an old age home, that they hoped that they would meet up with relatives.

But who knows what they really knew and what they really thought and what they were really aware of at that time.听 I find this place haunting.听 The single track then goes out into the fields through the flatlands before the mountains.

It's a tiny station.听 Whether they were on the platform or whether, like so often, the Nazis hid them in a nearby factory so that the townspeople wouldn't see and so that they would be uncertain of what was coming, whether they were in carriages or cattle trucks.听 The place is in its kind of midnight emptiness.听 It's deeply resonant and deeply haunting and sometimes I wonder, and I know I should think the same at Birkenau, can one hear their voices despite the time? What were they saying to each I mean, I know people who won't go on trains in the continent where train tracks are felt to be so sinister.听 There was a point where it felt that all tracks lead to Treblinka or Majdanek or Auschwitz-Birkenau or Sobibor.听 It was in trains that people were overwhelmingly deported.

The sound of the trains, the people packed into the cattle trucks. 0:54 We'll see at Birkenau the siding built specially for the Hungarian Jews. 0:59 It wasn't actually ready when Zofi went to Auschwitz, but it was when Regina got there.

Built through that famous entrance, that iconic entrance into Birkenau.听 There's a kind of strange horror to the chugging of these trains.听 And what those trains would have meant to people who watched them being boarded, saw the people crushed into them, the shutting of the doors, those who tried to throw postcards out of the window, who even jumped from them as they went past.

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DW: And it could have been so different.听 So many families, including ours, wanted the destination of their journey out of their homes to be Britain or the United States or Palestine.

JW: They did.听 In a way, a telegram or a letter which Regina received in Berlin in 1938 from the Treuhandstelle, that was the organisation you had to go through to apply for visas to British Mandate Palestine.听 They sent her a telegram saying, If you belong to the limited number of places made available by the Mandate authorities, it will not for the seeable future be possible for you to receive a visa to enter Palestine.

That was in fact the first letter I found when I opened that suitcase, which she would have packed with her daughter in Berlin prior to coming to this place, and had sent on.听 It made it to Palestine.听 She never did.

That was the first letter I found, that telegram.听 And I looked at it and when that came, well, she then made decisions which in hindsight one might say were mistakes, but hindsight is just cruel.听 By the time papers did come through, the war had begun and it was impossible for Regina to avail herself of them to get to Trieste, to get to the boat for which she had tickets to Haifa.

She was stuck here until she was deported from this station or from right next to it in January 1943.

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MUSIC:

Ani Ma'amin (I Believe)

by Ryan Nowlin

Arranger :Judith Clurman/Ryan Nowlin

Composer : Maimonides

Publisher : Hal Leonard

Product ID :

463732

Genre : ConcertFestivalJewish听

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DW: I wonder if this is for the anniversary, they're building some media facility or something.

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MUSIC:

Ani Ma'amin (I Believe)

by Ryan Nowlin

Arranger :Judith Clurman/Ryan Nowlin

Composer : Maimonides

Publisher : Hal Leonard

Product ID :

463732

Genre : ConcertFestivalJewish听

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JW:听 So we're standing close to the end of the railway siding which brought hundreds of thousands into Birkenau.听 All around us are concrete posts which would have had barbed wire with live electricity flowing through them.听 Guard towers, tall, and right where we're standing, which is scarcely a hundred yards from the end of the railway spur, is crematoria three.

Shocking to look at.听 Elie Wiesel remembers that vividly.听 Parting from his mother.

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JW: Words from Ellie Wiesel 鈥楩rom the Kingdom of Memory pp102-104 (part) Schocken Books; Reissue edition (31 Jan. 1995) ISBN-10 鈥� : 鈥� 0805210202 ISBN-13 鈥� : 鈥� 978-0805210200

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AW: Chant:听听 Jewish Memorial Prayer for the Dead