Letter from Ronald Reagan to Elie Wiesel regarding the Freedom Award

Nancy Pelosi writes to Elie Wiesel to congratulate him on receiving the Lincoln Medal at the Ford's Theatre Gala on June 3rd, 2012. She describes the evening as a wonderful celebration of Ford's Theatre and its role in democracy. Pelosi notes the collective rededication to President Lincoln's ideals and leadership principles of courage, integrity, tolerance, equality, and creative expression. She concludes by expressing gratitude for Wiesel's extraordinary dedication and leadership.

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.

Yehuda Mandel was born in Csepe, Hungary, March 3, 1904, into an orthodox family, describes Jewish life in Csepe, before and after World War I, relations with non-Jews, his education, and occupation by various countries, until Csepe became part of Czechoslovakia. He served in the Czech army from 1924 to 1926. He was a cantor in Vienna, Austria in 1928; Novisad, Yugoslavia, 1928-1934; in Riga 1934-1936, and in Budapest in 1935 at the Rombach Temple while also serving as a chaplain in the Hungarian army. He was offered a position in London but chose to remain in Hungary. He describes Jewish and congregational life in each location. He cites anti-Jewish feelings in Austria and talks about the implementation of anti-Jewish laws in 1939, and mentions a mass grave where Jews were killed and buried in Kamenetz-Podolsk. Cantor Mandel was in various labor battalions, escaped, and returned to Budapest in November 1944. He stayed in a house protected by the Swiss consulate, served as a messenger “Eilbotenausweis”, participated in rescuing 300 Jews from a prison; and made illegal trips to Czechoslovakia. He describes his experiences with Russian occupiers, and the desecration and reconsecration of Rombach Temple. His wife and children, who were in Bergen Belsen as part of a Sondergruppe organized by Dr. Kasztner, went to Palestine after the war. He gives a very detailed account of his illegal passage to Palestine in May 1946, aided by the Haganah. He was reunited with his family in Kibbutz Shar Hamakkim, served as a cantor in Haifa until he moved to the United States in 1948 and became a cantor at Beth Judah in Philadelphia in 1950. Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library: Original typed testimony from Emanuel Mandel, son of Cantor Mandel, obtained on June 6, 1980, describes the 1944 transfer of the Jews from Hungary.1 Photocopies of documents: Travel documents from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, 1945 Czech Passports German Certification Employment Document from the Central Council of Hungarian Jews “ Spezia" Copy of Original Music about the town of Spezia, Italy from which he made Aliya,1946 Work Papers From Israel, 1946

Raoul Harmelin, the only son of a doctor, born September 11, 1924 in Boryslaw, Poland, received both a secular and a Jewish education. He talks about pre-war life in Boryslaw-- whose main industry was oil refineries-- and life under German and Russian occupations. Raoul describes life under the Germans after June, 1941, including pogroms, anti-Jewish measures, attitude of the local population, and formation of forced labor battallions organized by the Judenrat. He describes a series of Aktions (roundups and mass murders of Jews) from November 1941 to 1943, and the murder of 600 Jews in Doly in great detail. Some were conducted by a German VernichtungKommando under General Katzman. Polish and Ukrainian locals, Austrians in the Schutz Polizei and Reiterzugpolizei, the Polish Kriminalpolizei , and Jews in the Ordnungsdienst all helped to round up Jews. Jews were sent to a camp at Ulica Janowska in Lwow or to forced labor in local industry, most were transported to and murdered in Belzec. Raoul escaped from a roundup where he witnessed the murder of an infant and a young girl. His father continued to work because Jewish doctors were needed to treat the citizens of Boryslaw. One of his patients hid Raoul and his mother. A ghetto was established but was liquidated after a forced labor camp for Jews was opened in 1943. Jews who could not hide were eliminated or worked as slave laborers in the Zwangsarbeitslager in Boryslaw. Raoul and other Jews who worked in connection with the war effort had some degree of protection. He got news from London via radio and from an underground paper published by ArmiaKrajowa (Home Army). A Ukrainian acquaintance hid 13 Jews, including Raoul and his parents from March 13, 1944 to August 8, 1944, when the Russians came back. He describes postwar life under Russian occupation, including two arrests and escape to Breslaw. He and his parents decided to leave Poland after a pogrom in Kielce. After a stay in Paris, aided by HIAS, they arrived in Sidney, Australia in November 1947. He was able to bring his new wife and her parents to Australia later. He talks about his life in and adjustment to Australia after a very difficult beginning. He closes by naming relatives on both sides of his family who were killed or survived, and reflects on the actions of non-Jews during the Holocaust. See also 2 interviews with his wife, Rita Harmelin. Note: Collateral Material available through the Gratz College Tuttleman Library are photocopies of these German documents: Certificate for Raoul Harmelin that he can walk in the street unaccompanied by an Aryan. The same document for his father, Dr. Elkan Harmelin . Work I.D. Card for Raoul Harmelin . I.D. Card for Regina Harmelin , his mother. Tags with letter "R" which indicated that Raoul Harmelin and his parents were assigned to a work detail.

Bess Freilich, née BashaAnusz, born in1928 in Pruzany, Poland, was the eldest of eight children in a religious Jewish family. Her father was a poor butcher, but she attended private Hebrew school. Her family lived in harmony with Polish neighbors (to whom her grandfather lent money with little or no return). In 1939 under anti-Zionist Russian occupation, her Hebrew school was closed and teachers were sent to Siberia. Fearful of arrest, Bess burned her Hebrew books and then went to a public Jewish school where a communist curriculum was taught in Yiddish. When the Germans invaded in June, 1941, the local population swelled from 3000 to 15,000 as Jews were brought from other towns to the Pruzany Ghetto. Food shortage was acute, and Bess often slipped through the ghetto walls to trade clothing for potatoes or steal potato peels from a German kitchen. She describes in detail the ghetto evacuation, when her grandfather was shot before her eyes, in January 1943. Bess describes in detail the three day train trip in cattle cars to Auschwitz, arrival, brutality of the guards, and atrocities committed there including her six-year old brother’s murder for picking up snow for their mother to eat. Bess saw her mother fall from a blow to her head and later learned that she was burned in an open pit. Her older brother and father were sent to work in a crematorium as Sonderkommandos. Bess was sent to Birkenau and then to Budy, a camp she describes as hell, where about 400 girls, ages 14 - 25, pushed heavy wagons uphill to build an artificial mountain. Some were forced to strip, dance and sing and then were shot. Some were eaten by dogs. She vividly describes suffering from typhus and lice infestation of a breast wound from beatings. Left unconscious in a morgue, she was returned to Birkenau, where she was saved from death several times, twice by German guards. After passing three Mengele selections and seeing her father briefly in the men’s camp in Auschwitz where she worked picking weeds for soup, she was evacuated on a death march, January 18, 1945. She recalls thousands left dead in the snow before they reached Ravensbrück. They were then left in the woods near Malchow. At liberation, she weighed 67 pounds and could not retain food eaten for months afterwards. Returning to her home town, she was taken by the Russians to a camp and questioned as a suspected German spy. Finding nothing of her home in Pruzany and threatened with transfer to Siberia, she fled to Lodz where she met and married another survivor. She found her father in Munich, spent two years in Feldafing DP camp and came to the United States in 1949. She was unable to speak about her holocaust experience until the time of her interview in 1981.