Letter from Albina Jesuthasan to Elie Wiesel regarding the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka

This letter, dated March 8, 1984, is from Dr. Sylvia Frankel, Director of the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, to Professor Elie Wiesel. Frankel expresses gratitude for Wiesel's visit and his offer of assistance to the Center. She conveys her dream of attending his courses on Talmud, T'nach, or Midrach. She also inquires about a contact person and address for a planned conference on "rescuers" (or "sauveurs/libérateurs") in September. Furthermore, Frankel seeks documentation regarding an episode involving Hungarian Jews, specifically the Kastner group and the special Bergen-Belsen convoy. She mentions two families who were part of this convoy, one liberated in Switzerland and another transported to Theresienstadt, where some members, including young children, perished. The letter concludes with the enclosure of a program for a recent evening event at the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center and a Purim greeting.

Kurt Kupferberg was born September 1907 in Berlin, Germany to an observant, middle-class family from Galicia. After World War I, their citizenship was changed to Polish, resulting in their being part of the mass deportation to Zbąszyń, Poland, in 1938. A Nazi policeman had warned them to leave. Kurt describes his return to Germany in 1939, as well as his deportation and experiences in Sachsenhausen in 1939, Dachau in 1940, and Buchenwald in 1941. He details the selections of Dr. Mengele and medical experiments performed on him in Buchenwald, describing his suffering from typhus following an injection of the microorganism under his skin. As Allied Forces approached Buchenwald, non-Jewish political prisoners sheltered Jews from the S.S. He was liberated by General Patton’s unit July 11, 1945. He married a survivor in Berlin in 1946 and emigrated with his wife and baby to the United States in 1947. Also see testimony of his wife, Hardy W. Kupferberg.

Anne Dore Russell, née Weidemann, a non-Jew, was born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926. She went to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg. Her father told her about experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler. She knew that her uncle was sent to Sachsenhausen and heard about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs. A neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer, had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front. She speaks briefly about Kristallnacht and life in Branderburg under the Nazis. Her father, a civil servant, lost his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD). He told Anne Dore why he opposed the Nazi regime. He avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company). She learned to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs. The local police took her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler. She mentions the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war, after which she went to Humbold University in East Berlin and then the Free University in West Berlin.

This email from Gabe Roth to Jamie Moore, with Charles V. Zehren in CC, provides suggested talking points for Dr. Wiesel regarding the release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. The email highlights their unjust imprisonment since 2003 on "made-up charges," their appalling treatment including solitary confinement and denial of access to legal counsel and family. It notes that human rights organizations, including Amnesty International (which deemed them "prisoners of conscience"), have condemned these abuses. The document asserts that over 50 others have been victimized by similar prosecution and many have fled Russia, underscoring systemic problems in the Russian justice system. The author emphasizes that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev continue to fight corruption from prison and stresses their need for freedom to ensure Russia upholds the rule of law and human rights.

This two-page document is the program for "Une nuit pour Václav Havel" ("A Night for Václav Havel"), a theatrical event held at the Festival d'Avignon on July 21, 1982. Organized by the International Association for the Defense of Artists (AIDA), the event was a gesture of solidarity with the imprisoned Czech playwright and human rights activist. The program details Havel's situation, noting his four-and-a-half-year sentence of forced labor and the specific prohibition on writing imposed upon him. It includes a quote from a prison letter by Havel to his wife, Olga. The second page outlines the performances under the title "Vanek à la recherche de son auteur" ("Vanek in Search of His Author"). The evening featured a collection of short plays, readings, and musical pieces by numerous French and international artists, including works by Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, and Elie Wiesel, with many pieces centering on Havel's alter ego, Ferdinand Vanek.