Invitation from Charles Krauthammer to Elie Wiesel for Pro Musica Hebraica Concert

This is a letter dated November 7, 1989, from J. Michael Bishop, M.D., Director of The G. W. Hooper Research Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco, addressed to Elie Wiesel. Dr. Bishop acknowledges receipt of congratulations from Mr. Wiesel, expressing his admiration for Wiesel and his work over many years. He notes his role as a scientist and expresses a wish that he could act for humankind on a broader and more immediate stage, similar to Wiesel's contributions. The letter concludes with a thank you to Wiesel.

Harold Stern, formerly Helmutt, was born August 31, 1921 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, the only child of middle class Jewish parents. His father came from an Orthodox background and his mother was raised in a non-observant home; as a family, they belonged to a large Liberal Congregation, the West end Synagogue in Frankfurt. Harold describes the educational system and antisemitism pre- and post- 1933. He discusses the Kultusgemeinde, his Jewish education, upbringing, and his studies at the Philanthropin (a Jewish secondary school), which he attended in 1935 due to increased Nazism and antisemitism experience at the public Gymnasium. His mother continued the family business after his father’s death in 1930, but had to give it up (1937) as a result of the Nuremberg Laws. He describes the “aryanization” of a shoe manufacturing company and other businesses where he was apprenticed/employed. Despite having an early quota number, Harold’s attempts to emigrate with his mother to USA were thwarted because their affidavits were not accepted by the American Consulate in Stuttgart. In March 1939, Harold left for England through the aid of family friends in England and Bloomsbury House, while his mother remained in Frankfurt. He describes life in London, working as a factory trainee, residing among British (non-Jewish) working class, until June 1940 when he was picked up and interned in Huyten, a camp near Liverpool, with other German Jewish refugees. In July 1940, he volunteered for transport on the Dunera, a ship supposedly bound for Canada but re-routed to Australia. He discusses in detail the desperate conditions at sea, harsh treatment by British soldiers, and refugee behavior during the ten week voyage. From Sidney, he was transferred to a barbed-wire enclosed compound in the Outback, in Hay, New South Wales. He refers to the internal camp leadership which emerged, the development of cultural and educational activities. He details help given by the Australian Christian Student Movement (under Margaret Holmes), Jewish Welfare Board, and Jewish people of Melbourne. Later he moved to a camp in Tatura, Victoria that had better conditions. After 20 months of internment, he joined the Australian army, the 8th Employment Company, where he did transport of munitions. He was discharged in 1946 or 1947, after serving 4 1/2 years in the army. Harold kept contact with his mother and knew that she reached USA in late 1941. Through the help of a non-Jewish woman, she obtained a visa in September 1941, left Germany on a sealed train (to Berlin), journeyed through occupied and Vichy France and Spain to Lisbon, boarding one of the last steamers from Portugal to America. Her brother, however, was arrested by the Gestapo and never seen again. Her sister, a musician, later hospitalized in a sanitarium was “euthanized”. Harold immigrated to the USA in 1947 under the German quota. In 1959, he moved to Philadelphia.

Sonja Samson was born in Aurich, Germany in 1931, into an assimilated but observant Jewish family. In 1936 she lived with her grandparents in Luxembourg until she joined her parents who had moved to France earlier. She talks about her family history and her childhood, and speculates about her parents’ reasons for staying in France instead of emigrating to the United States. Her father volunteered for the French army but was interned in 1939. Sonja and her parents were in Gurs briefly, then lived in Garlin, a village near Gurs until August 26, 1942 when they were rounded up by French police, sent to Gurs and then transported to Rivesaltes in September, 1942. Her parents were deported and her mother managed to keep Sonja from going on this transport with the help of Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE). She never saw her parents again and still profoundly resents this separation. She briefly describes conditions in the two camps and her life and schooling in the villages of Garlin and Gurs, including pressure on a teacher to rescind an honor Sonja had earned. Sonja stayed in a convent and then an orphanage at Palavas-les-Flots with other Jewish children, under the auspices of the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) and OSE, then with distant relatives who were in hiding, later in a boarding school in Chambéry, constantly on guard. She mentions a failed attempt to cross the border into Switzerland. Later Sonja worked as a maid at an inn that was a substation of the ArmeéSecréte (the French underground). She invented a new identity for herself as a non-Jewish war orphan, and participated in Catholic rites to avoid discovery. After she earned their trust, Sonja became a messenger. She relates how her presence of mind foiled a plot by the so-called “Butcher of Grenoble” to blow up the Underground headquarters just after liberation in August 1944. Sonja describes post-war life at the Chambéry boarding school, with her cousins, as well as her search for her parents, and was an active member of Hashomer Hatzair in Paris. She describes how she learned what she needed to do to survive, how the loss of her parents affects her to this day, and how her outlook about religion, Jewishness, and Zionism changed as she matured. Sonja went to the United States from Sweden on the Gripsholm as a war-orphan in 1947, instead of making aliyah with her friends. She talks about the difficult adjustment to life in the United States, how she managed to get the higher education she wanted, and post-war trips to Israel in great detail. Interviewee: SAMSON, Sonja Date: June 3, 1985

This letter, dated November 9, 1981, is from Evelyn K. Meltzer, National Chairwoman of American Mizrachi Women and Mother-in-Israel, to Mrs. Marion Wiesel. It expresses regret that Mrs. Wiesel was indisposed and unable to attend the organization's National Convention, conveying shared disappointment and wishing her good health. The letter also states the organization's eagerness to introduce Mrs. Wiesel to their membership and present her with the Honorary National Chairwoman Mother-in-Israel 1981-82 Award, hoping to arrange a mutually convenient time for the presentation. The letter is written on the official letterhead of American Mizrachi Women, a religious-Zionist organization, detailing its mission related to Youth Aliyah, child care, social services, adult welfare, and education, and lists its various officers and regional offices across the United States, with a second page listing extensive board members.

This recording captures a 1961 lecture by historian and editor Solomon Grayzel at Adath Israel Congregation in Trenton, New Jersey. In the surviving portion of the talk, Grayzel uses contemporary Jewish literature—especially works by Philip Roth and Leon Uris—to reflect on the condition of modern Jewish life, the challenges of Jewish identity, and the tensions surrounding Zionism, power, and tradition. Grayzel argues that uncomfortable literary portrayals of Jewish life should not simply be dismissed, but read as revealing deeper communal concerns, particularly the growing distance of younger Jews from Jewish values and practice. He suggests that the future of Jewish life depends on renewed engagement with foundational Jewish texts and stronger transmission of tradition to the next generation