As has become an annual tradition, Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day was marked by a moving ceremony at the KKL-JNF Head Office in Jerusalem on Thursday, April 12, 2018. Special guests were child survivor Prof. Amos Blas and members of the Japanese Makuya movement.
“This year, which is Israel’s 70th anniversary, we are focusing on Holocaust survivors who came after the war to what was then Palestine. They helped found and build the new country, contending with a new language, a culture that was foreign to them, and people born in Israel who had no real understanding of the horrors they had experienced,” said KKL-JNF Books of Honor Custodian Efrat Benbenisti, who organized and moderated the moving ceremony for the staff of KKL-JNF’s head office.
The ceremony was also attended by a number of members of the Japanese Makuya movement, which sees the establishment of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies and are staunch supporters of the state. A special guest was Dr. Akiva Jindo, Chairman of the Japan-Israel Association. One of the Makuya participants briefly related the story of Setsuzō Kotsuji, a Hebrew professor in Japan and the son of a Shinto priest. During the Holocaust he helped Jewish refugees to escape the Nazis, arranging for them to stay first in Kobe and later in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. He also fought against Nazi-inspired anti-Jewish propaganda. He converted to Judaism in 1959 after converting to Christianity from Shinto in his youth.
The ceremony began with the recitation of a Psalm and readings by KKL-JNF staff from a book by Aharon Applefeld, the internationally acclaimed Israeli author who described his experience as a new immigrant after surviving the infernos of Europe.
After the readings, Efrat introduced Professor Amos Blas, who graciously agreed to share his personal story and testimony with everyone present.
“I once saw a quote from Abba Kovner,” Professor Blas began, “‘Remember the past, live the present, believe in the future.’ I was born in Warsaw in April, 1935, which means that I was four and a half years old when the war broke out. In November 1942, the Warsaw Ghetto was established for the Jewish population of the city, which numbered about 500,000, and also for Jews from neighboring areas. Everyone was forced into an area of what was about 2% of the city’s territory. From that moment on, all my parents thought about was how to provide food for my brother and I, and how to enable us to survive.
“There were bodies everywhere, I remember the man who came with a horse and buggy every day to collect them. There were daily selections – if you were sent to the right, you remained alive in the meantime. Those who were sent to the left were shipped for death in Treblinka the same day. Old people and children always went to the left. My father found places for us to hide, places where there was no air and I could not make a sound. When the ghetto was about to be liquidated, my father knew about the plans for the rebellion, and he had my aunt smuggle me away to safety through the sewage system. It was the day before Passover that I saw the ghetto go up in flames from the safe spot my father had arranged for me. Out of a family of eighteen, five of us survived. Every year during Passover, we hold a memorial ceremony for those who were murdered at KKL-JNF’s Martyrs’ Forest.
“After going from one house to another, I was eventually taken in by a Polish peasant woman for two years. To this day, I refer to her as ‘my angel’. I was already 8 years old, and I had to learn to act like a Christian child. At least I looked like one. Both my parents eventually came to the village, but I could show no signs of knowing them. Since my father was far more educated than anyone else there, he became the village mayor. No one knew that he was Jewish.
“Towards the end of 1943, the village was liberated by the Russians. It was then that the villagers found out that we were all Jews, and ‘my angel’ was forced to leave the village for the crime of harboring Jews. She was eventually declared one of the Righteous Among the Nations. We went to Paris, and in 1947, we came to the land of Israel. I was illiterate, but I eventually learned the language and was accepted to the Technion. During my entire life, I never missed one day of work.
“A person can never be the same after going through what I did. I grew used to my new surroundings and was very successful, but my older brother was not so fortunate. He suffered terribly until he was 53, when he could bear life no longer.”
When Professor Blas completed his testimony, everyone in the room was visibly moved. In answer to a question about European anti-Semitism today, he that “anti-Semitism has never disappeared. My message to Jews today is unequivocal – we are privileged and blessed to have our own country. Do you want to gamble with your lives and your children’s lives? Israel is the only home for a Jew.”