In March 2001, The “1939” Club mourned the loss of Leopold Page, one of the Club’s founding members and a past president. Page, born in Cracow in 1913, was 87 at the time of his death.

Leopold Page (Poldek Pfefferberg) was Schindler’s List survivor No. 173. He never forgot his debt to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who plucked him from a concentration camp and protected him, his wife Ludmilla and 1,300 other Jews in his factory for the duration of the war.

After coming to California in 1950, Page helped found The “1939” Society. He also pleaded with countless authors who entered his leather goods store in Beverly Hills to tell Oskar Schindler’s complex story. No one responded until October 1980, when Australian writer Thomas Keneally stepped into the shop in search of a new briefcase. Hours later, Keneally left with Page’s files to consider writing a book about Schindler.

Keneally’s prize-winning Schindler’s List became a best seller. He dedicated it to the memory of Oskar Schindler and to Leopold Pfefferberg, “who by zeal and persistence caused this book to be written.” He later pestered Steven Spielberg’s to do a film about Oskar Schindler. He promised him an Oscar for his Oskar. The result was ‘Schindler’s List’ the 1993 film based on the book. It received seven Academy Awards, including best motion picture and best director.

Steven Spielberg generously donated his portion of the film’s profits to establish the Righteous Persons Foundation, which gives grants to many causes, including programs that promote tolerance and inter-group relations. The Righteous Persons Foundation funded a multi-year lecture series to honor the memory of the late Poldek Page. Continuing a partnership that links the generations in understanding the Holocaust, Chapman University and The “1939” Club inaugurated this new public lecture series on the Chapman University campus.

Upon learning of the establishment of the lecture series, Page’s widow, Mila, said, “My family and I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Steven Spielberg and the Righteous Persons Foundation for funding the lecture series at Chapman University, honoring the memory of my husband. My husband would have been very pleased to know that the lecture series will perpetuate the memory of our beloved Oskar Schindler, as well as all those other individuals, who risked their lives, trying to save our people during World War II.”

The lecture series entitled “The ‘1939’ Club’s Leopold Page Righteous Rescuers Lecture Series” has honored individuals whose actions saved lives during the Holocaust.
“As the last of the Holocaust survivors reach the end of their lives, it is more important than ever to hear as many first-hand accounts as possible of this horrific period in world history,” explained Chapman’s Marilyn Harran, Stern professor of Holocaust Education and director of the university’s Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education.

“What kept Holocaust victims motivated to live?” Harran continued. “What motivated the rescuers? This significant grant helps assure that these kinds of questions will be answered, with the hope of creating a world free from hate and intolerance. This lecture series honors a survivor who was relentless for 40 years in bringing to light Holocaust tragedies and triumphs.”
Our president, William Elperin, explained, “This is a most fitting tribute to Paul Page, who championed the cause of Righteous Rescuers, particularly Oskar Schindler, his entire post-Holocaust life. We are proud to continue our partnership with Chapman University which started with The “1939” Lecture Series and the annual Holocaust Writing Contest. We are grateful to Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation for recognizing the contribution of Leopold Page to Holocaust history.”

The Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman University is dedicated to educating and preparing young people to become knowledgeable and inspiring witnesses of the Holocaust to new generations.

Acting to Survive

As a respected character actor, Curt Lowens has
mastered the art of taking on another identity. Yet this
profession was actually thrust upon him out of necessity. For
Curt, a German Jew, taking on an assumed identity, that of a
Dutch gentile schoolteacher, became a matter of survival.

Born on November 17, 1925, in Allenstein, East Prussia
(now Olstyn, Poland), Curt Loewenstein spent his childhood in
a home filled with music and laughter, feeling loved and
protected even after Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933 brought
an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitism. Yet, not even the most
devoted of parents could shield their children from the
growing hatred. Curt and his older brother were singled out
for abuse at school and their father, whose services as an
attorney were once in great demand, now became the “Jew
lawyer” with no clients.

In 1936 the family moved to Berlin, hoping to find safety
in the large Jewish community there. But conditions worsened
daily, and with Curt’s brother Heinz safely in England, the
Loewensteins began making plans to immigrate to the United
States. At last, after months of waiting and red tape, the family
received their visa, leaving Berlin for Rotterdam, where they
were to board the SS Veendam, bound for America and a new
life.

But the day before the family was to leave, May 10, 1940,
Germany invaded Holland. Curt’s father was able to secure a
position with the Jewish Council in Amsterdam which meant a
temporary reprieve from deportation. But in June 1943 the
family was caught in an unexpected roundup and sent to
Westerbork, a transit camp, before deportation to Auschwitz.
Luck intervened and the family was miraculously released.
They wasted no time in going underground.

Curt was the first to be taken into hiding by the student
resistance. He received a false identity card and the new name
“Ben Joosten.” In January 1944, with his mother dead and his
father safely hidden in the countryside, “Ben” himself became
an active member of the resistance, carrying false documents,
helping to hide Jewish children, and even saving two downed
American pilots from capture. In the vortex of danger, the
17-year-old showed courage and ingenuity far beyond his
years. Liberated by the British, Ben’s knowledge of English and
Dutch proved invaluable, and he was offered a chance to join
the British Eighth Corps as an interpreter. In a twist of fate
beyond fiction, “Benny” served as the interpreter for two British
officers of the Military Government Detachment who placed the
leaders of the Nazi government under house arrest. Not yet 20
years old, Benny stood face to face with Grand Admiral Doenitz,
Hitler’s successor. No longer did he have to hide his true
identity.

In 1947, Curt, his father and stepmother immigrated to
the United States. Curt found a job, and explored his love of
acting with night classes at New York’s famed Berghoff Studio. It
was there he met Katherine Guilford, his scene partner, and
later his wife. Now, in America, he was free to choose the roles
he would play, from Broadway to film and television.

From Holocaust Survivors: The Indestructible Spirit project. Text Copyright Chapman University 2007.

The fourth of seven children, Leon Weinstein was born on May 13, 1911 in the shtetl of Radzymin, Poland. His extended family numbered almost 90 members. Hasidic Jews, the Weinsteins had lived in Radzymin for generations. Yet, at the age of 12, without telling his parents, Leon left his home to seek work in Warsaw. While his daring venture into a gentile world worried his parents, Leon’s paternal grandfather, whose wisdom made him a trusted confidant of the Rabbi of Radzymin, supported him, saying that Leon represented the future of Jewish life. At the age of 99, his grandfather called Leon to his deathbed to receive his blessing. In the grim years that followed, Leon held fast to the blessing and his grandfather’s prophecy.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Leon fought on the front lines. Captured, he managed to escape, walking 500 miles back to Radzymin. In the Radzymin ghetto, he joined the underground, smuggling arms to the resistance. Alerted by a German soldier’s offhand remark to impending doom, Leon fled with his wife, Sima, and infant daughter, born in 1940, Natasha Leya (Natalie), just before the ghetto was liquidated and its Jews sent to the death camp Treblinka. Of the Weinstein family, only Natalie and Leon would survive the war.

The couple now focused all their efforts on saving their child. A gentile, paid handsomely to hide Natalie, refused to risk his own family’s safety in the face of ominous Nazi threats. Homeless and with no money, Leon and Sima devised a bold plan, abandoning their daughter to save her. They dressed Natalie warmly and placed around her neck a cross and a sign proclaiming her the daughter of a war widow unable to feed her. Then they left her on the steps of a police station, waiting nearby to make sure that she was discovered.

While Sima went into hiding, Leon returned to the Warsaw ghetto, fighting in the heroic uprising. He was among the few to escape through the rat-infested sewers. He would never learn what happened to his wife, Sima.

At war’s end, his single hope was to find his child. For six months Leon traveled across Poland on his bicycle, searching one convent orphanage after another. He met hundreds of children, but none was his Natalie. And then at last, he saw a tiny, hollow-eyed little girl whom he immediately recognized.

Her father’s presence brought Natalie, now 4 ½ years old, security and love. Yet, confusion and fear remained. Should food be hoarded for a day she might be hungry? Was she Jewish or Christian?

A few months later, Leon met Sophie, a survivor of Auschwitz, whose tenderness toward his daughter touched his heart. They married and in 1952 came to the United States. Natalie grew to adulthood, married, had children of her own and became a psychotherapist. In 1990, with six other child survivors, she celebrated her Bat Mitzvah, making her great-grandfather’s prophetic words a reality, the Jewish people continue.

From Holocaust Survivors: The Indestructible Spirit project. Text Copyright Chapman University 2007.

For more info on Leon Weinstein’s family, click here

A Boy On Schindler’s List

Leon Leyson was born Leib Lejzon, the youngest of six
children, on September 15, 1929, in Narewka, a small town in
northeastern Poland. In the summer, Leon and his friends ran
barefoot in the meadows and swam in the river; in the winter,
they had snowball fights and skated on the river.

In 1938, Leon’s parents moved the family to Krakow,
some 350 miles away, where Leon’s father had a job. Life in the
big city was exciting for a country boy—streetcars, indoor
plumbing, electric lights. But his freedom to explore ended with
the German invasion in September 1939. His father lost his job,
and Leon was prohibited from attending school. The family was
ordered into the overcrowded ghetto where they shared a
bedroom with two others.

Life in the ghetto meant constant hunger. Leon ran
errands for elderly people, always giving his mother the slice of
bread he earned so she could divide it into tiny portions for all
the family. Yet the Leysons were better off than some because
Leon’s father, Moishe, and brother, David, were hired by Oskar
Schindler, a Nazi businessman who had come to Poland to make
his fortune. Although they received no pay, father and son could
leave the ghetto for work and smuggle back in their pockets a
bit of food or a piece of coal to fuel the stove.

The family faced the constant danger of deportation. In
one Aktion (round up), Leon’s 17-year-old brother, Tsalig, who
could build a radio from scratch and was his younger brother’s
hero, was seized along with his girlfriend. By chance, Schindler
spotted him on the train and offered to get him off, but he could
not do the same for his girlfriend. Tsalig refused to abandon her.
Both were murdered in the Belzec death camp. Leon’s oldest
brother, Hershel, who had fled Krakow for Narewka, was killed
with all the town’s Jews in August 1941. He was 21 years old.

Sent to the Plaszow labor camp, run by the sadistic Amon
Goeth, the family survived only because Schindler placed them
on his “List” and moved them to his camp. Schindler treated his
workers as people, pausing to talk with little Leon, who had to
stand on a box to reach the controls of the machine he operated,
and afterwards, ordering that he be given an extra bowl of soup.

The Leysons were among the 1,200 Jews Schindler saved
by bringing them to his new factory in Brunnlitz,
Czechoslovakia where they were liberated on May 8, 1945.

Leon and his parents spent three years in a displaced
persons camp in Germany. There Leon resumed the education
that had ended when he was ten. In 1949, he and his parents
immigrated to the United States. Working days and attending
school at night, Leon earned a high school diploma and college
degree. He taught for 39 years at Huntington Park High School.
He married, became the father of two and the grandfather of
three. Since 1993, when the film Schindler’s List appeared, he
has spoken to dozens of schools, universities, and
organizations, inspiring thousands by his story and that of
Oskar Schindler.

In 1965 Leon was among the “Schindler Jews” who
welcomed their rescuer to Los Angeles. Twenty years had
passed and Leon was uncertain if Schindler would remember
him, but Schindler looked at him, shook his hand and said,
“You’re little Leyson.”

From Holocaust Survivors: The Indestructible Spirit project. Text Copyright Chapman University 2007.

Leon Leyson’s memoirs The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler’s List was published in August, 2013.

For more info on Leon Leyson’s family, click here

Dr. Sam Goetz, who passed away on October 24, 2013, was a past president and education chair of The 1939 Society. He was the person most instrumental in establishing The 1939 Society Chair on Holocaust Studies at UCLA. It was the first such chair in the country.

Sam was liberated from Ebensee Concentration camp when he was 16 years old. He had been searching for his liberator for 60 years. Finally, he found him in 2005. The 1939 Society reunited them at its 53 Anniversary celebration which coincided with the 60th Anniversary of Liberation.

Dr. Goetz wrote his memoirs entitled I Never Saw My Face because he literally didn’t see his face while in his formative years in concentration camp. Here is his description of his day of liberation followed by Robert Persinger’s, his liberator, description of that day.

“Sunday, May 6, 1945. My day of liberation; a day that will always live with me; a day forever etched in my memory. For the first time in almost three years, I was not awakened by the screams of either kapo or block leader, my body did not receive any blows, I did not have to take part in roll call. How did I look this morning? I really don’t know. I had not seen my face for three years. There were no mirrors in the concentration camps.

My eyes registered an unbelievable sight. A tank moved slowly up the road. Some distance behind it, I saw another tank. The first tank made a sharp right turn to face the gate of the Ebensee concentration camp.

The gate opened. A figure in an olive brown uniform emerged from the tank.

Overwhelmed by the events transpiring around me, I stood in silence, watching the crowds of emaciated humans surrounding the American GI. They kissed his hands and touched his uniform, as if touching saint. Each of us wanted to make sure that the man was real, that the tank was real, that this was neither an illusion nor a cream created by our anxious minds.”

Sam Goetz

Ilan Ramon was a colonel and fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. His mother was a survivor of Auschwitz. He was part of the mission that bombed the nuclear reactor in Iraq. Ilan was Israel’s first and only astronaut. He was aboard the STS -107 Columbia on a 16-day flight for science and research before it crashed upon landing. Although a secular Jew, Colonel Ramon sought to follow Jewish observances while on his flight. He insisted on kosher meals and recited the Kiddush. As a son of a Holocaust survivor, he brought with him into space a sketch made by a boy in Auschwitz and a miniature Torah scroll which survived the Holocaust. He also brought with him a barbed wire mezuzah given to him by The “1939” Society as a symbol of the Holocaust. We honored him at an event titled “From Auschwitz to Outer Space in One Generation.”

His mission ended abruptly when Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew perished during re-entry, 16 minutes before scheduled landing. Ramon was survived by his wife Rona and their four children, who were in Texas at the time of the accident. To compound the Ramon family tragedy, his eldest son, Captain Asaf Ramon, died on September 13, 2009, aged 21, during a routine training flight while piloting his F-16-A-3 months after graduating from the Israeli Air Force flight school as the top cadet in his class.

Thirty seven pages from the diary Ilan was keeping while in orbit miraculously survived the crash and were returned to his widow, Rona who has worked tirelessly to ensure his legacy.

Ilan Ramon is a symbol of the greatness of Israel, the Jewish people and the children of Holocaust survivors.

Dr. Tashbih Sayyed was honored by The 1939 Society on February 4, 2007. Dr. Sayyed was a historian, current affairs expert and specialist on Islamic, Western and South Asian affairs. He has written extensively on issues concerning the Middle East, India-Pakistan relations and the struggle between Islam and the west.

Dr. Sayyed had been on the forefront of the fight against the increasing influence of extreme wings of Islam among Muslims and its impact of world peace. He has spoken on the growing Islamist threat to world peace and Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s contribution toward its spread.

Dr. Sayyed has been a frequent target of Islamists and Muslim fundamentalists for his favorable views on Israel and Jews and the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading religious extremism in the world. Extreme Islamists had been running a campaign to silence him for a number of years. Sadly, Dr. Tashbih Sayyed died in 2007.

“Jews, throughout their history, have been the symbol of intellectual
freedom and have therefore represented the highest level of openness.

Their love for knowledge, their penchant for debate, their urge to learn by questioning and their refusal to submit to any dogma has always posed a challenge to the establishment that depends on the blind following of the masses.

Nobody could succeed in confining them in intellectual ghettos. Despite their relatively small numbers, they always remained an overpowering influence on thoughts and ideas.”

Dr. Tashbih Sayyed

Visas and Virtue

The “1939” Society celebrated 45 years together at its Anniversary Dinner Dance Celebration at the Grand Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Guests attending the event including dignitaries from the Japanese American Community. The “1939” Society bestowed its Humanitarian Award upon the film makes of the movie “Visas and Virtue”.

Over the years, The “1939” Society has conferred a Humanitarian Award to those who have made a significant contribution to the understanding of the events of the Holocaust. Past recipients have included the TV mini-series “Holocaust” and the Academy Award winning “Anne Frank Remembered”.

The Humanitarian Award was given to the film “Visas and Virtue”, developed by three talented young men, Tim Toyama, Executive Producer, Chris Tashima, lead actor, and Chris Donohue, the producer. Accepting the award was Tim Toyama with most of the cast present. Over 90 volunteers gave their artistic and technical talents toward making this film and funding was provided by over 270 donors. The film debut recently and was shown throughout the United States, telling the important story of a courageous man and woman who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

The film “Visas and Virtue” is inspired by the humanitarian efforts of Chiune “Sempo” Sugihara, who in 1940, as a 40-year-old consul general from Japan to Lithuania, granted over 2000 transit visas to Jewish families attempting to flee the Nazi onslaught. Mr. Sugihara continued to issue the visas, risking his diplomatic career, even after being ordered to stop doing so by the Japanese government.

Chiune Sugihara and his wife Yukiko Sugihara, decided, based upon their ethos of the Samurai teachings – to help others in need – to use their diplomatic position to help the Jews. The Samurai virtue of “gambate” – internal strength and resourcefulness – was the power that provided a light for both Sugihara and the people he helped.

Working night and day, Mr. and Mrs. Sugihara issued over two thousand visas to Jewish families. After he was ordered to leave Lithuania and go to Berlin, thousands more visas were forged through the use of a rubber impression of the consul’s stamp that he left behind.

The evening was a terrific success with Israeli dancing, music from the Ruben Berci Orchestra, and a special treat from concert artist Hershey Felder. Special guests included the eldest son of Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara – Hiroki Sugihara, the Special Assistant to the Consul General of Japan Etsuko Yoneda, the President and the Executive Director of the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center Minoru Tonai and Gerald Yoshitomi, the Director of Public Programs of the Japanese American National Museum Cayleen Nakamura, and the former Prime Minister of Canada and former Consul General of Canada – the Right Honorable Kim Campbell.

The evening included a viewing of a clip from the movie “Visas and Virtue”, and with an animated dance of the Hora by The “1939” Society members around all of the “Visas and Virtue” guests along with Mr. Hiroki Sugihara.

In March 1945, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion arrived in Europe. It became a roving battalion, supporting nearly two dozen army units across Germany. The 522nd was comprised of Japanese born in the United States (Nisei). They were the only Nisei group to fight in Germany. Scouts from the 522nd were among the first Allied troops to release prisoners from a sub camp of Dachau.

“As we came around the way, there were a lot of Jewish inmates coming out of the camp, and I heard that the gate was opened by our advanced scouts. They took a rifle and shot it. I think it was a fellow from Hawaii that did that. I think it was a Captain Taylor, Company B was one of them, but another person from Hawaii, he passed away. They opened the gate and all these German, I mean, Jewish victims were coming out of the camp.

“Then, when we finally opened the Dachau camp, got in, oh those people were so afraid of us, I guess. You could see the fear in their face. But eventually, they realized that we were there to liberate them and help them.”

“They were all just skin and bones, sunken eyes. I think they were more dead than they were alive because they hadn’t eaten so much because, I think, just before we got there the S.S. people had all pulled back up and they were gone. But, we went there, and outside of the camps there were a lot of railroad cars there that had bodies in them. I had the opportunity to go into the camp there, but you could smell the stench. The people were dead and piled up in the buildings, and it was just unbelievable that the Germans could do that to the Jewish people. I really didn’t think it was possible at all actually.”

The only thing the Nisei could really do was give them clothing and keep them warm. Nisei soldiers began to give the Jewish inmates food from their rations but were ordered to stop because the food could overwhelm the digestive systems of the starved inmates and kill them.

“No, my first encounter was these lumps in snow, and then I didn’t know what they were, and so I went and investigated them and discovered that they were people, you know. Most of them were skeletons or people who had been beaten to death or just died of starvation or overworked or whatever. Most of them I think died from exposure because it was cold.”

On the 55th anniversary of D-Day- the Allied invasion of Europe at Battalion. If it had not been for the sacrifices and bravery of the invading forces, many of our members and their children and grandchildren would not be alive to celebrate. While their families were confined to “relocation” camps in the United States, they were fighting in the European theater and participated in the liberation of Dachau. The “1939” Club was privileged to honor these brave soldiers. A film clip from “Witness: Our Brothers’ Keepers” was shown and Dr. Takeo Susuki and George Ishihara of the 522nd addressed the audience. Afterwards Club members and guests from the Japanese American community danced the Horah together. Major General William A. Cohen was the featured speaker.

“Near the end of the war, we had advance to a small mountain town in the Alps. It was Ebensee, Austria. A troop of the 3rd squadron discovered a Concentration camp approximately two miles up in the mountain, out of the town. I was the platoon sergeant of the 3rd platoon of F company, 3rd squadron. I was given orders to take my tank along with another to advance to the gates of the concentration camp and to report the conditions we saw. The date was May 6, 1945, a beautiful warm day with sunshine.

As we approached the camp, you could see swarms of prisoners dress in their prison garments which were mostly rags, standing behind the barbed wire fences. We stopped at the gates. I remember at that time I reached down from the turret of my tank and took a rifle from the guard and broke it over the gun barrel of the tank. There was a tremendous roar from the prisoners when this happened. We drove into the open area which was the roll call square. We looked down upon this mass of humanity. Their starving look was so evident they looked like human skeletons. And her they were singing and crying, and so were we. They were so glad to see us. They wanted to get on our tanks and reached out for us to show their appreciation. They were so thin, and of course very dirty. We hesitated to have them approach and touch us buy they did. The shock to us from seeing such a sight was more than one could comprehend.”

Robert Persinger