THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501140217
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 205 lines
Shep Zitler's ``private hell'' began six months before the start of World War II. He was a Lithuanian Jew drafted into the Polish army, where anti-Semitism was rampant.
The New Orleans salesman remembered a lieutenant named Walchek who kept a sign on his office door: ``From Jews and Dogs the Entry is Forbidden.''
``How did I feel going against my enemy, the Germans, fighting with my second enemy, the Poles?''
In 16 days, Poland lost. Zitler was sent to a labor camp, where he stayed for five years and seven months.
Zitler's firsthand account is among five Holocaust survivor stories with photos on display through Tuesday at Virginia Wesleyan College. The show, which consists of color portraits of the survivors along with old family photos and text, was put together by New Orleans lawyer and photographer John Menszer.
The exhibit commemorates the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which took place in January 1945. Six local Holocaust survivors were among several dozen people who attended the opening reception Friday.
``Holocaust. The Final Solution. None of these terms is as chilling as Auschwitz,'' Menszer told the group. ``It brings to mind crematoriums. It brings to mind selections. Roll calls. Death. Suicide.
``One-quarter of the 6 million who died were at Auschwitz.''
``One-third,'' piped up Szaia Lida of Norfolk, who came with his wife, Ruth, also a survivor.
``The gentleman here says one-third,'' Menszer said respectfully.
Besides the Lidas, other survivors included Esther Goldman of Norfolk, who was at Auschwitz, and Anna Perl of Virginia Beach, who was on ``Schindler's List.''
Menszer began his project a year ago in New Orleans, home to 32 survivors. Zitler was his first subject.
In telling his story, Zitler tread lightly on his own experience. Mostly, he focused on the fate of lost family members.
As the project evolved, Menszer said, ``the survivors showed me that the grievous loss of their families was their greatest loss. It was not what the survivors suffered personally that was so hard to bear. It was the loved ones they could not save that hurt the most.''
This was something Menszer could relate to, having lost a close friend and then his younger brother, Kenny, to suicide.
``Kenny and I both had difficult times growing up. In many ways, very similar. I think deep down I have a strong willpower.
``The willpower to survive.''
Two years ago, Zitler, 87, was given a family photo by a relative. The faded old image of carefree times is reproduced on a panel for the exhibit.
``It shows my family - my mother, father, four sisters, my niece and nephews, my cousins and myself. Except for my oldest sister and my brother who went to Palestine before the war, everyone else was killed,'' Zitler told Menszer.
``I show the picture and tell people, `This is my Holocaust.' ''
Zitler's niece, Tzerna Morgenstern, is in the portrait. An eyewitness account of her death was published in Russia.
The passage, which Zitler recounted for Menszer, described how Tzerna watched her mother and brother be shot to death in a forest called Ponar.
Then, ``she stood near a deep ditch. She was told to remove her clothes. Those who did not respond had their eyes stabbed out. It was evening. The moon had just begun to appear above where Tzerna stood, half-undressed, by the ditch.''
A Nazi commandant pulled her aside, telling her such a beautiful girl should not die.
In the tone of a lover, he spoke to her of moonlight. Then he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head.
Roaring with laughter, he dragged her back to the ditch.
As a teenager, Menszer, who is 45, was drawn to photography as a way of dealing with trauma. He was a shy and chubby child. Picture-taking became an outlet.
``In a way, I've prepared for this project my whole life,'' Menszer said. ``As a child, and as a Jew, I remember hearing about the Holocaust and being shocked by it - as only a child who has lived a rather sheltered life could be. It confronts a reality a child cannot understand.''
He knew his great-uncle Nathan Rottersman and his wife were survivors.
And he was aware his other Polish relatives had been killed during the war, though the family did not know when or how or where.
``My family didn't talk about it. Nathan and his wife wouldn't talk about it. His wife was at Auschwitz. She still will not talk about it.
``I was sensitized to this experience. Shocked at the brutality. I felt personally threatened. I felt like, `There but for the grace of God go I.' ''
Menszer worked in his father's real estate firm, then studied real estate law, earning his law degree two years ago.
He kept up photography as a serious hobby, studying with important photographers like essayist Mary Ellen Mark.
In a summer 1993 photo course in Santa Fe, N.M., he was assigned to find a subject for an extended photo essay.
``Well, what do you care about?'' the instructor asked him.
His answer: ``Since childhood, I have had these strong, unresolved feelings about the Holocaust.''
Later that year, he gave Zitler a call. Zitler was a survivor who had publicly told his story.
When Menszer stopped by, Zitler told him he wasn't in the mood to talk. Then he pulled out that picture and ended up telling Menszer about each person in the photo, and how each died.
Menszer came back a week later, this time with a note pad and camera. ``We had to establish a rapport. I learned that it's a very narrow window to get to these people. It's obvious - it's a very emotional thing.''
After Menszer's talk, guests stayed to read the panel text and to speak with the survivors.
Though Menszer has so far restricted his project to New Orleans residents, he approached Anna Perl about the possibility of including her in his exhibit.
``I don't mind,'' said Perl, a sweet-faced grandmother of 10. ``I am a real witness. If I can share, I am more than happy.
``It depresses me in a way, but I like to share.''
A cluster of college students perused the show. They were taking part in a two-week ``January Term'' course ``The Holocaust: A Historical Overview,'' taught by Daniel Graf, professor of history.
Graf is Menszer's cousin, and invited him to bring the show to Virginia Wesleyan.
``I'm having a hard time reading some of this,'' said Marlene Yermal, a junior. Her eyes were red, moist. ``I got halfway through before I started to cry.''
``We've been watching videos in class. Same thing,'' said a sophomore, Caryn Burgess.
``It's hard for the younger generation to grasp that this could happen,'' Yermal said.
``Real sad,'' added Gina Cafiero, a sophomore. ``But it's part of our history. And we need to know about it.'' SURVIVORS' STORIES
I was in labor camps for five years and seven months. When the war was over we thought we had survived because we were smarter than other people. Then we talked to other survivors. Plenty of smart people died. We learned we were just luckier than they were. After the war I came to know what happened to some members of my family. My youngest sister Doba got married during the war and gave birth to a baby boy. A Polish woman was found who agreed to hide two babies. There was a stipulation. The babies could not be circumcised. Doba decided to ask her parents what to do. My parents were very religious. My father said, ``The boy is Jewish, he has to be circumcised.'' So Doba's little boy stayed with our family in the ghetto and they all perished. Another little boy was hidden with the Polish woman. He was the child of Doba's brother-in-law. Today, that child works for IBM. His daughter was Miss Vermont.
Shep Zitler
New Orleans salesman
``We were driven into the Lodz Ghetto (in Poland) in 1940. I was working as a nurse in a hospital. I was on my night duties when the Germans came in at 5 a.m. They took the sick people out of the hospital and put them on trucks. I was working on the maternity floor. I was a witness when the Germans came and took out from the. . . labor. . .women they were in labor. . . and they took them out into the wagons. On the way they lost their babies to the wagons. He just shove it away. With the boots. . . the babies on the side.
- Felicia Fuksman
New Orleans businesswoman
July 1943, I was shipped to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Birkenau. . . was four kilometers from Auschwitz. The trains came to the crematoria and gas chambers in Birkenau. . . I was working for two years at the same job. . . in a sand mine. Every day we loaded up a wagon with sand and pushed it 16 kilometers.. . . The sand was to cover the ashes of the crematorium. One side is the ovens. The ashes came out this side. Someone else took the ashes out of the ovens. We covered the ashes with sand.. . . I saw when the transports were coming. . . I saw the people going to the real showers and I saw the people going to the gas. In August and September of 1944 I saw them throw children alive into the crematorium - grab them by an arm and a leg and throw them in.''
- Solomon Radasky
New Orleans furrier
I was 3 when my father took me to hide.. . . That was the last time I ever saw my father. . . I hid in this house for two years. I never went out of it. People might suspect that I was Jewish. The Nazi bastards used to love to parade. Everybody on the street used to open their front doors to watch the parades. This lady I was staying with had to open her door, too. She would make me hide in the outhouse. I was petrified. I did not know what I was afraid of. I would retreat to the furthest little corner of the outhouse. There was a crack in the wood. I thought if I could see outside they would be able to see me inside.''
- Jeannine Burk
New Orleans secretary
So many things happened to me during the war. . . Just as we were marching into a concentration camp, I jumped. I joined the partisans. . . . I was arrested in the forest. In jail somebody told them I looked like a Jew. They brought me down into the death chamber. In the basement was a dark room. Just one brick was taken out for air. They kept me 10 days. During this time they brought in three Jewish transports. . . . A young girl named Ira Pogorelskaja - I will never forget her. Her face I saw when we went to the bathroom. They took her out. She never returned. I was beaten with leather straps until my skin turned black. A Volksdeutscher said, `This guy has been beaten so much that if he were a Jew he would already have confessed.'. . . It was pure luck that I survived.''
-Isak Borenstein
New Orleans carpenter ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Motoya Nakamura, Staff
Holocaust survivors are introduced Friday at the opening of the
photo exhibition. From left are Bluma Bromberg; Ruth Lida; her
husband, Szaia Lida; Anna Perl; her grandson, Joshua Cohen; and
Esther Goldman.
John Menszer of New Orleans put the exhibit together.
KEYWORDS: HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR by CNB