To Our Children: A Prologue by Elie Wiesel

Martin Vidlák, former personal assistant to the late Václav Havel, writes to Elie Wiesel on June 19, 2012, from Prague. He informs Wiesel that Havel had intended to nominate Yohei Sasakawa for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize before his death. The nomination was in recognition of Sasakawa's tireless efforts to eliminate leprosy not just as a medical issue but as a social and human rights concern, which culminated in a 2010 UN General Assembly resolution. Havel also admired Sasakawa's other humanitarian contributions, particularly in Africa. Vidlák reminds Wiesel that the three of them—Havel, Sasakawa, and Wiesel—co-founded the Forum 2000 conference in 1996, an event mainly sponsored by Sasakawa and considered a major part of Havel's legacy. Vidlák leaves it to Wiesel to decide how to use this information.

Ursula M. Heisman was born in Mewe, Germany (now Gniew, Poland). Ursula grew up in Berlin and was a teenager when Hitler came to power in 1933. Her father, Isidor Hirschfeld, was a physician who served as such in the German army in World War I. He received the Iron Cross. Ursula had two older brothers. Her parents were “free thinkers” and her upbringing was an assimilated upper middle class one, with little Jewish content. While still in high school Ursula was employed as an actress and dancer in a theater company. Ursula describes the rise of Hitler and the consequences it had for her and her family. For example, she was fired from her job as a dancer and her father could no longer practice medicine. She tells how they were made to wear the yellow star and of how her father resisted wearing it. When Ursula witnessed Kristallnacht she decided that she must leave Germany. One of her brothers, a physician, had already gone to the United States. Ursula recounts the difficulties she encountered in leaving Germany. It was only to Cuba that she was able to emigrate, and she tells of arriving in Havana, with her other brother, in 1938. Ursula recounts how she got a job as a dance teacher and that she was invited to move in with her employers, who were not Jewish, who subsequently paid $1000 to the Cuban government to obtain visas for her parents. They arrived in Cuba on the ship after the St. Louis. Ursula describes life in Havana which she enjoyed very much. In 1945 Ursula and her parents moved to the United States, joining one brother and leaving one in Cuba, who did join them at the end of the war. She tells of resuming her career as a dancer and eventually marrying and moving to Philadelphia where she decided to open a dance school. Eventually she had three schools and a ballet company called Ballet des Jeunes which engaged the top 25 students at her schools. The company danced throughout the United States and in Europe. Ursula closes her testimony recounting a trip to Berlin she and her husband took in 1969 or 1970.

Rita Harmelin, nee Brauner, was born June 17, 1925 in Bucharest, Romania to Polish-born parents who returned to Poland in 1931. The family moved to Boryslaw an oil town. She describes her secular and religious education and interactions with local Poles and Ukrainians. Rita describes life under Russian occupation September 1939. Rita's memories of the German invasion of Boryslaw, June 1941 include efforts of local Ukrainians to save Jews. She focuses on successive waves of pogroms encouraged by Germans and carried out by local Poles and Ukrainians. A Jewish quarter or ghetto was established in Boryslaw. There were periodic roundups leading to deportation. BertoldBeitz, a director in the local petrol industry and Mr. Siegemund rescued many Jews, including Rita from the deportations several times. Restrictions increased gradually. Many Jews worked in the Boryslaw petrol industry. A forced labor camp was established in 1943 for the Jewish workers guarded by Ukrainian volunteers. She mentions escape attempts by workers. Rita, her future husband Rolek, and 11 other people went into hiding in the home of a local Ukrainian from March to August 7, 1944 when Russian troops arrived and re-occupied Boryslaw. Her parents were deported before they could accept an offer to hide in a Polish woman’s house. Her mother was killed in Auschwitz, her father survived. Jews from Boryslaw were transported to Plaszow, Poland but the final transport, July 1944 went directly to Auschwitz. Rita explains why resistance was difficult; the attitude of the Polish underground (ArmiaKrajowa) andmost Ukrainians toward Jews. Her post-war experiences include return to Poland; search for and reunion with her father in Austria in 1945; smuggling herself in and out of Poland. Rita and her father joined her husband (whom she married in Austria) in Australia on January 9, 1949. Rita mentions her guilt as a survivor and how she told her children about her past. She describes life as a Jew in Australia. She gives examples of acts of humanity and compassion by individual non-Jews (Polish, Ukrainian and German). Interviewee: HARMELIN, Rita Date: April 26, 1992

Lola Krause, née Miestschanimoff, was born March 1,1916, in Vitebsk, Belarus. Her father, a successful movie photographer, and her mother, an accomplished pianist from Latvia, were non-observant Soviet Jews. Lola studied music with her mother, learned German from her governess and attended public school in Vitebsk. Rejected by the local Soviet college because of her father’s upper-class status, she moved to Leningrad, studied engineering and worked in film and scientific instrument factories. She married in 1938 and a son was born in 1939. She details the siege of Leningrad; German bombardment; disease; lack of food and all public services. Her husband died of starvation, her weight dropped to 60 pounds and at three years of age, her son weighed only seven-and-a-half pounds. When her factory was relocated to Samarkand in 1941, she traveled with her son in a cattle car for six weeks, stopping in Tashkent. There she met her uncle, a doctor, who insisted that the fragile child remain with him in the hospital. A year-and-a-half later, he joined her in Samarkand, where she worked until 1946. She married again and the family moved illicitly across European borders, living in Jewish Agency camps in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland and at Waseralfinger, near Stuttgart, Germany. Another son was born and they survived with food packages from American relatives. In 1949, Lola and her familyemigrated to the United States. Lola describes their adjustment in Bradley Beach, N.J. and in Philadelphia, working in factories and establishing their own cleaning business. She sold her valuable bracelet to buy a piano, suffering ridicule from poor neighbors, because she believed children had to learn to play an instrument. She had her sons circumcised, sent them to Hebrew school and began to observe Jewish holidays. A visit to Israel in 1972 further heightened her Jewish consciousness.

Dr. Paul G. Eglick served in the 508th Parachute Infantry of the 82nd Airborne, U.S. Third Army as a medical officer. Around May 7, 1945 he was ordered to go to Ludwiglust, Mecklenburg, Germany, not knowing he would enter the Wöbbelein concentration camp. He vividly describes piles of victims who had starved to death, the condition of survivors, and the attempt to save them. His unit took care to treat the starving survivors properly and evacuated them, helped by several other medical units. Dr. Eglick explains how deeply entering this camp affected him and the other American soldiers. Local Germans were ordered to bury the dead. He gives his opinion about United States policy concerning the extermination camps and why the United States could have done more to stop the killing. He tells about an encounter with a couple in a mixed marriage who survived in Berlin with the help of non-Jewish neighbors.