Holiday Greeting from Ambassador Ron and Rhoda Dermer to Elie Wiesel

This document is a letter from Traian Băsescu, the President of Romania, addressed to Professor Elie Wiesel. Dated September 2008 from Bucharest, the letter congratulates Wiesel on his 80th birthday. President Băsescu expresses profound appreciation for Wiesel's dedication to humanitarian values, his courage in combating intolerance and hatred globally, and his impactful work as President of the Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, which has brought numerous benefits to Romania. The letter also extends warm wishes for the autumn holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, to Wiesel and his community, concluding with sincere thanks for his lifelong efforts and wishes for continued health and success.

This document is a faxed invitation from the Office of Protocol, US Mission to the UN, sent on February 11, 2000. It is an invitation from Richard C. Holbrooke and Kati Marton Holbrooke, representatives of the United States of America to the United Nations, to Mr. Eli Wiesel and Mrs. Marion Wiesel. The invitation is for a dinner honoring President Nelson Mandela and Ms. Graca Machel, scheduled for Saturday, February 26, 2000, at 7:00 p.m. at The Waldorf Astoria Towers, located at 100 East 50th Street, Suite 42A. Handwritten notes on the document indicate that the invitation was "Accepted" on February 14, 2000, but the "Dinner Cancelled" on February 18, 2000.

Rose Fine, nee Hollendar, was born in Ozorkow, Poland in 1917 to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father was a shochet. She briefly describes living conditions during the German occupation before and after the establishment of the Ozorkow Ghetto in 1941: health conditions, deportations, and her work in the ghetto hospital where children were put to starve to death. She refers to the behavior of the Volksdeutsche in Ozorkow and her mother’s deportation to Chelmno where she was gassed to death. She witnessed the old and infirm deported in chloroform-filled Panzer trucks in March 1941 as well as the public hanging of 10 Jews. She was transferred to the Lodz Ghetto in 1942 where she worked for Mrs. Rumkowski until she was deported to Auschwitz in August 1944. After one week, following a selection by Dr. Mengele, she was transferred to the Freiberg, Germany air‌ plane factory and later to Mauthausen in Austria, where she was liberated by the Americans in Spring 1945. She describes the birth of a baby girl (both mother and baby survived) just prior to liberation and help by a German farmer. After liberation Rose stayed briefly in Lodz and Gdansk. She describes life in Gdansk where she got married. She and her husband lived in Munich, Germany for four years where they belonged to Rabbi Leizerowski’s1 synagogue and she attended the ORT school. She and her husband emigrated to the USA in 1949 with the help of the Joint Distribution Committee. She recounts the story of the hiding of a Torah by a non-Jew of Ozorkow and his giving it to a survivor from Ozorkow to take to Atlanta, Georgia. See the May 4, 1981interview with Rabbi Baruch Leizerowski.

Samuel Flor1 was born in Czernowitz, Romania. He talks about experiencing antisemitism, his education, and his career as a composer, musician, and a professor at the university in Czernowitz. He describes life in Czernowitz first under Russian and then under German occupation. He explains why it was impossible to leave and how he and his wife, Gertrude tried to escape in June, 1941, but failed. He was part of a brutal roundup of Jewish men, and had to bury Jewish men who were machine-gunned to death by Germans near the River Prut. After being tormented by the Germans, the survivors, including Samuel Flor, returned home. In October, 1941 all Jews had to move into a ghetto until they were deported to the Ukraine under terrible conditions, including periodic whippings by both German and Romanian soldiers. He describes a particularly cruel incident involving Jews from Mogilev, a forced circular death march, and several atrocities committed by Ukrainian peasants. Mr. Flor worked as a slave laborer in a stone quarry in Ladesti on the Bugac and in Tulchin in a hospital. He relates a chilling vignette in which Sonderführer Fritz von Rohde explains why killing Jews is a service to humanity. As the Germans retreated Mr. and Mrs. Flor and about 66 other people hid in a hole they had dug previously for more than three days, until March 15, 1944. He describes how the 300 Jewish survivors tried to cope once the Russian army came, and his return to Czernowitz. His apartment had been nationalized so Mr. and Mrs. Flor joined the Czech army. He explains how they got out of Prague, emigrated to Barranquilla, Colombia, (South America) and then to the United States where Mr. Flor continued his musical career.

GeniaKlapholz, nee Flachs2, was born in 1912 in Wisnicz, near Krakow, Poland to a religious family. After the town was ghettoized, she witnessed her baby niece kicked to death by a German soldier. Genia and a younger sister escaped and paid a woman in a neighboring village who hid them for eight days. They had to return to Wisnicz and were then transported to the Bochnia Ghetto, where they worked in a uniform factory for one year, enduring terrible conditions. They moved next to the Szebnie transit camp, where they saw Jews from Tarnow burned alive. Genia reads aloud her Yiddish poem, “In Memory of My Sister, Serl, of Camp Szebnie.” (Included with the transcript are Yiddish transliteration and English translation of this poem. Also included are the Yiddish transliteration and English translation of another poem, “The Death March from Auschwitz.”) Genia worked for three months as a cleaning woman in a factory at Szebnie before deportation to Auschwitz in 1942, which she describes in detail. She discusses the brutal treatment during her two years in Birkenau. She worked in the ammunition factory from which four youngwomen smuggled gunpowder for the attempted explosion of the crematoria and she witnessed their hanging. She describes in detail a delousing procedure, when she had to stand in the snow, naked, for hours. She also tells of her foot operation, performed without anesthesia. Forced to leave Auschwitz on a death march in January, 1945, she managed to escape with two other women and they found shelter with a Polish woman and her family in Silesia. This family was recognized as one of the “Righteous among the Nations” by YadVashem in 1991. Documentation from YadVashem accompanies the transcript. Genia was liberated by the Russians, March 28, 1945, and returned to Krakow in search of her family. She was in Displaced Persons camps in Einring, Regensburg and Landsburg, where she met and married her cousin, Henry Klapholz. With their baby son, they immigrated in 1948 to the United States, where they bought a farm in Vineland, New Jersey. In 1955, they moved to Philadelphia.