Invitation to the Commemoration of Jan Karski at the Consulate General of Poland

This document is an email invitation sent by Amanda Skarbnik, Assistant to Peggy Siegal, on Tuesday, July 22, 2014, to Leslie Meyers. The invitation is from Amalia Dayan, Rula Jebreal, and Peggy Siegal, inviting the recipient to a lunch celebrating Ruth Dayan. The event is scheduled for Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014, at 12:30 PM, at The Grill Room, Four Seasons Restaurant, located at 99 East 52nd Street in New York City. The lunch is held on the occasion of Ruth Dayan's visit from Israel to New York City. Guests are requested to RSVP to Peggy Siegal's email address. The email includes Amanda Skarbnik's contact information and the address of the Peggy Siegal Company in New York, NY.

This document is an invitation from OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants), represented by its President Jean-François Guthmann and Director General Roger Fajnzylberg, and Handicap Amitié Culture (H.A.C), represented by its President Josette Keisermann. They invite the recipient to the inauguration of the iconographic exhibition "Sauver les enfants, 1938-1945". The event, held under the High Patronage of Monsieur François Hollande, President of the Republic, is scheduled for Monday, October 15, 2012, at 7:30 PM. The venue is the Salle du Parc du 26ème centenaire, located on Avenue Jules Cantini in Marseille. The exhibition is dedicated to the rescue of Jewish children in France during World War II and is part of the centennial celebration of OSE. It will run from October 15 to 24, 2012, open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM, except Friday afternoon and Saturday. The invitation provides contact details for RSVP and includes a quote from Elie Wiesel. Numerous supporting organizations are also listed with their logos on the reverse side of the invitation.

This document is an invitation from the 'Organization of Sighet Marmaros Survivors in Israel' to the annual memorial service (Azkarah) for the victims of the Holocaust from their city. Dated May 2012, it announces the event will take place on May 24, 2012, at Beit Hazikaron in Tel Aviv. The invitation highlights the special attendance of Nobel laureate Prof. Eli Wiesel, who will light a memorial candle and speak. The program also includes a lecture by the author Menachem Michaelson about Rabbi Pirer's organization 'Ezra LeMarpeh'. The invitation is extended to all former residents of Sighet and their descendants. Due to the organization's dwindling funds, a participation fee of 40 NIS per person is being introduced to cover costs. The document is issued by the association's board.

Sybil Niemöller (maiden name von Sell) was born in 1923 in Potsdam into an aristocratic Prussian family. Both her grandfathers were Prussian generals. After World War I her father was appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm to be his financial advisor and administrator. She grew up in Berlin-Dahlem where she had several Jewish friends. Her parents were strongly anti-Nazi. The family attended the Confessing Church which was led by their friend Pastor Niemöller. This church was founded as counterpart against the Christian German Church which had embraced Nazi ideology. Because she did not belong to the Hitler Youth she was prevented from graduating from high school and became an actress. During the war her parents sheltered several Jews, disguised as seamstresses and gardeners. Two of her cousins, Werner von Haeften (who was adjutant to Count von Stauffenberg) and Hans Bernd von Haeften were involved in the attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944 and were executed. Both Sybil and her father were also arrested and interrogated at that time, but released. She arrived in the United States in 1952, became a U.S. citizen in 1957, and married Pastor Martin Niemöller. She accompanied him on his lecture tours but made their home in Wiesbaden, Germany. She describes his suffering as “Hitler’s special prisoner” when he was incarcerated in Sachsenhausen and later in Dachau. Interviewee: NIEMÖLLER, Sybil (von Sell) Date: November 21, 1986

Eva Burns, nee Gerstl, was born in 1924 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where her father was a pediatrician and her mother a concert pianist. They lived a mostly secular life with some inter‌ marriages in her mother's family. The German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939 drastically affected their lives with her brother being sent to Kladno and the rest of the family to Theresienstadt. She refers to help from non-Jews. She was deported to Theresienstadt November 17, 1942. She describes Theresienstadt as a "show" camp with books, a coffee house and concerts. Eva was part of a chorus preparing Verdi's Requiem and observed religious activities and humor. She was deported to Auschwitz in May 1944 and six weeks later to Christianstadt, a women's labor camp. There she helped sabotage grenades in the ammu‌nition factory. She refers to the cruelty of the women S.S. guards. In February 1945 she es‌caped from a death march. Assuming a German identification, she worked in the Sudetenland until the spring of 1945 when she went to Prague where she worked for the family of an S.S. officer serving at the front. In May 1945, with the Czechoslovakian liberation near, she revealed her Czech identity. She married in November 1947 in Prague and immigrated to the USA in June 1948.