Grapevine September 1, 2024: Justice delayed

Never too late 

“IT’S NEVER too late to do historical justice,” says Alon Goldman, chairman of The Association of Czestochowa Jews and their Descendants in Israel. After spending years trying to have Rev. Boleslaw Wróblewski of Czestochowa recognized as Righteous among the Nations he finally succeeded in his mission.

Wróblewski saved numerous Jewish children during the Holocaust. He gave them false identities and put them up for adoption. In some cases, both biological parents perished or were murdered. In others, one or both survived, and came looking for their child or children.

One such child was Miriam Rothschild née Rubin, whose father survived, but not her mother. Miriam Rubin, as she was then, was given the name Maria Dobusz. She was less than a year old.

 About a month before the liberation of Czestochowa by the Russians, in December 1944, Miriam was given up for adoption to the Dobusz family who lived in the town of Elblong in the Gdansk region.

In order to obscure the identity of the family which adopted her, incorrect information was intentionally entered in the adoption documents in order to make it difficult to locate her should the Nazis conduct a search for Jewish children. The date, name of the adoptive family and its address were all changed.

As an additional precaution, Wróblewski did not keep records, which made it very difficult for surviving parents to find and claim their children.

A month after the adoption, immediately upon his release from the Hasag forced labor camp in Czestochowa on January 17, 1945, Miriam’s father, Moshe Alexander Rubin, came to the orphanage to look for his daughter and was informed that she had been adopted.

After many efforts, and two and a half years of searching, on May 12, 1947, he managed to locate her and have her returned to his care. The person who helped Moshe Rubin, and Rubin himself wrote testimony identifying Wróblewski as the person who saved Miriam’s life. Their testimonies, written in 1947, can be found in the archives of the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum at Kibbutz Lohamei Hageta’ot.

Several years ago Miriam Rubin, now Rothschild, unsuccessfully submitted a request to Yad Vashem to have Wróblewski, who died in June,1951, recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Yad Vashem is very strict about evidence that would entitle anyone to receive this recognition. There simply wasn’t enough about Wróblewski to meet the criteria.

The matter came to the attention of Alon Goldman, who did not immediately deal with the problem, and waited for six years after learning about it.

He was spurred by a Polish friend, who introduced him to a Catholic priest who had authored a book about Wróblewski in which he had written about Wróblewski’s work in saving the lives of Jewish children.

Goldman decided to look for other child Holocaust survivors in Israel who knew that they owed their lives to Wróblewski.

After two years, he had enough evidence coupled with Miriam Rothschild’s request to make a convincing case. In the end, his efforts were successful, and Yad Vashem agreed to recognize Wróblewski of Czestochowa as Righteous among the Nations.

Goldman is now searching for relatives of Wróblewski so that they can be present at a recognition ceremony.

Today, Sunday, September 1, is the 85th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II and the Holocaust. Although there is ample evidence of Poles who collaborated with the Nazis in hunting down and murdering Jews, there were also many more Poles than we know of who hid, saved, and rescued Jews.

The Polish government might do itself and its nation a favor by conducting a campaign in which families which have knowledge of parents and grandparents who helped Jews are asked to come forward with whatever knowledge they have so that the stories can be investigated to whatever extent possible, and published in book form in several languages on the 90th anniversary of the war. The campaign, if conducted, should be extended to countries in which there are Polish embassies which can receive information from both Jews and non-Jews.

Ben-Gvir's role models

FOR MANY years now the name of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been associated with those of racist political activist and MK Meir Kahane and mass murderer Baruch Goldstein who in February 1992 opened fire on Palestinians at prayer killing 29 and wounding 125.

Now, in addition, he has a third role model in the person of the late Gershon Salomon who died two years ago.

A retired army officer and a 6th generation Jerusalemite, Salomon was the founder of the Temple Mount Faithful, a messianic movement that sought to build the Third Temple in the Muslim compound of the Temple Mount.

On the eve of every major Jewish Holy Day, Solomon and his followers sought to ascend the Temple Mount but police prevented him from doing so until the last year of his life when he was given special permission to go up just once.

Ben-Gvir appears to have taken over Solomon’s role, though he is not so ambitious as to propose building the Third Temple. He just wants to build a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

Ben-Gvir chooses to ignore the edicts of many learned rabbis, and acts in defiance of the status quo claiming, as do many others that there is no such thing and that the status quo is a hoax because then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1967 made an agreement with the Jerusalem Wakf Islamic religious trust without first securing government approval. Dayan’s reasoning was that the integrity of the holy sites had to be preserved, and the Wakf had been in control of the Temple Mount for centuries.

To remove that control, he believed, would lead to great hostilities and needless bloodshed. Those who claim there is no such thing as the status quo, should check the dictionary definition of this Latin phrase which means the existing or current state of affairs. Surely something that has been in existence for centuries comes under the rubric of status quo.

Not all rabbis are opposed to Jews praying on the Temple Mount. In August 1967, two months after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, Shlomo Goren who was then-IDF chief rabbi, and later became the chief rabbi of Israel, led a group of 50 Jews in a prayer service on the Temple Mount, in defiance of Muslim guards and the Israeli police.

 There is a Hebrew proverb which roughly translated means better to be wise than to be right. The Temple Mount dispute is one of the issues to which this proverb applies. While most people of the Jewish faith would recognize the Temple Mount as being holy to Jews, they also understand that to breach the status quo without a mutual agreement with the Wakf, would start a bloodbath that could go on for years. Choose Life is one of the tenets of Judaism that is one of the reasons that the status quo has remained in effect.

Wearing the Likud pants

THE JURY is still out on whether or not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu actually said that he can’t control Transportation Minister Miri Regev, and that she does what she likes. Reports of that alleged remark went viral, and the PM’s office was quick to issue a denial, adding that the PM is very pleased with Regev.

But the initial report, whether true or false, left the PM wide open for further criticism from various quarters with the bottom line being that he has lost control of several of his ministers. It is obvious that he has never had control over Itamar Ben-Gvir, and his efforts to get rid of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, indicate that he has little or no control over Gallant.

In addition, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is yet another thorn in the PM’s side, and other ministers have spoken out against various aspects of Netanyahu’s handling of the war. It is surely high time for the Knesset to enact legislation whereby rebel ministers can be automatically dismissed from the government.

It is understandable that Netanyahu is hesitant about dismissing coalition partners, but if he dismissed Regev, who is a member of his own party and doing so much harm with her insistence on holding a state ceremony that causes so much grief and pain to families of hostages and families who lost loved ones on October 7 and in the war since then, he is not running a political risk.

If Regev got in a huff and resigned from the Knesset, she would simply be replaced by whoever is next line on the Likud Knesset list, Regev’s intransigence and insensitivity are adding to Israel’s negative image abroad, and playing into the hands of Israel’s enemies. If she is not aware of this, it begs the question of what else has escaped her attention.

 greerfc@gmail.com