Monday, April 1, 2019

Oldest Man Alive is a Jewish Holocaust Survivor

Mar 12, 2016  |  by 
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Oldest Man Alive is a Jewish Holocaust Survivor
Yisrael Kristal is 112 years old and views his life as a miracle.
The oldest man in the world is Yisrael Kristal, a 112-year-old Israeli Holocaust survivor whose daughter attributes his extreme longevity to a mind-body connection. “He’s happy. This is the most important thing to be in every situation,” says Shula Kuperstoch of Haifa.
Her father attributes his longevity to God. He always called his life a miracle. Born Sept. 15, 1903, in Tarnow, Poland, as the son of a Torah scholar, he attended religious primary school until age 11. He remained religious throughout his life.
Kristal recalls the outbreak of World War I in 1914 when he was 11. Also etched in his memory for a century was the sight of Franz Josef I, the longest-reigning emperor of Austria and the last significant Habsburg monarch, passing through town in a car. Onlookers threw candy – which ironically has remained a motif in Kristal’s life ever since.
His younger years were bittersweet. Kristal’s mother passed away before the start of World War I. The Russian army captured his father who died soon after.
As a 17-year-old orphan, Kristal made his way to Lodz, Poland, one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. He recreated his life first as a metalworker, then as a candy factory employee. The grueling physical labor of the latter job involved schlepping heavy bags of sugar. The experience foreshadowed events to come in adulthood.
Kristal would later own a sweets and chocolate factory in Lodz. After the Nazis invaded Poland, he and his wife and two children were ordered to move into the Lodz ghetto with 230,000 other Jews. The Nazis wanted Jews concentrated in ghettos to easily maneuver them. With that many people living in close quarters, adequate supplies of food and fuel became a problem.
His two children died in the Lodz ghetto and his wife perished in Auschwitz.
By then an expert candy-maker, Kristal was able to continue his craft in the ghetto. His family’s fate was heartbreaking; the children died there, and Kristal and his wife were deported to Auschwitz when the ghetto was liquidated in 1944. His wife perished. Kristal survived doing forced labor in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. At the end of World War II, he weighed just 37 kilos, or 81 pounds.
As his daughter told Aish.com, he then started to live. Protected by the Russian army, he was taken to a hospital to begin to heal. When he recovered, he returned to Lodz, re-established and worked at his business, and married again.
“The body was listening to his mind. His mind was strong. His beliefs were strong. His body also became strong,” Kuperstoch says.
Kristal rebuilt his factory destroyed in the war and returned to a sweeter life as a candy-maker once again.
In 1950, he and his wife made aliya and settled in Haifa with their infant son, Haim. They also became parents to daughter Shula. Kristal’s brood would extend to more than 20 great-grandchildren.
In Israel, Kristal first worked at a candy factory. He taught the owners, also from Poland, how to shape an entire production line of sweets. Later he parlayed that acumen into his own business, making yummy sweets at home and selling them at a kiosk in Haifa. His signature temptations included little chocolate bottles of liqueur gaily wrapped in colored foil and carob jam fashioned with chocolate-covered orange peels.
An optimist, he enjoyed making people happy. “The Holocaust did not affect his beliefs,” said Kuperstoch. “He believes he was saved because that’s what God wanted. He is not an angry person, he is not someone who seeks an accounting, he believes everything has a reason in the world.”
Kuperstoch says she doesn’t need a world record; she’s just happy to have her father alive.
After surviving without much food in the concentration camps, one of his philosophies concerned eating to live, not living to eat. He reasoned, “You don’t need too much” in life.
Kristal’s daughter echoes his sentiments. Kuperstoch says she doesn’t need a world record; she’s just happy to have her father alive. This past Friday Guinness World Records confirmed Kristal as the world’s oldest man.
Guinness World Records’ Head of Records Marco Frigatti and 112-year-old Israel Kristal. Guinness World Records Guinness World Records’ Head of Records Marco Frigatti and 112-year-old Israel Kristal.
Guinness World Records
Susannah Mushatt Jones of New York, 116, is the oldest validated living supercentenarian. The top 60 on the Gerontology Research Group’s list are all women. As Robert Young, director of the group's Supercentenarian Research & Database Divison in the United States notes, “Women tend to live three to four years longer than men.” The group is a consultant to Guiness. 
He added that longevity isn’t limited to a particular area of the world. “The maximum human life span is the same the wherever you go. Everyone has the potential to reach the same age.” His list includes supercentenarians from Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Russia and Spain…and now Israel.
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Are Holocaust Survivors Heroes?

Jul 29, 2012  |  by 
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Are Holocaust Survivors Heroes?
Casting Holocaust survivors as nervy, pushy villains is a moral perversion.
Like Anna Breslaw, I too grew up with Holocaust survivors, and went through the “de rigueur exposure to the horror.” I too visited “geriatric men and women with numbers tattooed on their arms,” endlessly, sitting sullenly in boredom. I too “completing assigned reading like The Diary of Anne Frank and Night,” and had nightmares for weeks. The Holocaust was practically a member of my family.
I grew up knowing without a shadow of a doubt that had I been born in 1936 instead of 1986, I would have ended my life as an eight year old mottled blue corpse in Auschwitz, like my seven year old cousin Judith. When I was too lazy to complete a seven-mile hike, my mother informed me I would have never survived a death march.
Cousins murdered during the wa: ages 12, 10, 7The only difference between Anna and me is that I am deeply grateful for my upbringing. I grew up exposed to people who were strong in the face of adversity. No, Holocaust survivors aren’t heroes for enduring pain and suffering. My survivor grandfather will readily tell anyone who will listen that he is not holy for surviving; it was those who died were truly holy. All he did was survive, and that is why he is my hero.
They survived and rebuilt after devastation.
That is why I “clapped for the old Hungarian lady who spoke about Dachau,” because she and her fellow survivors rebuilt after devastation. These young men and women were orphaned, cruelly tortured beyond measure and stripped of their humanity. They built the nation of Israel, and they built communities in America. They built homes, they built families and they raised up the next generation to be strong, proud citizens of their country. They worked menial jobs, saved each and every penny so that their children could grow up and live the dream of a house in the suburbs, and grandchildren who are privileged to be living out their dreams.
No, the survivors were not always heroes but few people have that privilege in a literal man made hell. I know what my grandparents did to survive and not all stories are pleasant, but I would never presume to judge them.
It is only someone who never knew extreme hunger, homelessness, degradation and terror who would dare ask, “What did you do that you’re not talking about?” with a holier-than-thou air.
Here is the answer, plain and simple. They did what they had to survive. And anyone would have done the same in the circumstance. I pray to God I never know the limits of what I would do to defend my own life. I hope Anna never has to make a choice like that. It’s the perch of the privilege to look down on the less fortunate as "conniving, indestructible, taking and taking."
My GrandmotherDehumanization has a nasty habit of warping a person. My grandmother used to force me to help her smuggle out food from buffet tables, she constantly seemed to be seeing how much more she could get. And I smiled through my humiliation at her behavior and remembered I was never 15 and hungry and having the last morsel of bread stolen from my hand. Compassion is a great gift.
I do not judge others for their mental quirks as they dealt with terrible emotional and psychological damage. Anyone would break under those circumstances.
I recall one survivor weeping as she told me she pretended not to know her own younger sisters to make sure she did not join them on the line to the gas chambers.
Is this woman a villain? No, she is human and she mourns her choice each day. We are fortunate to live in a time where these choices are no longer forced on us. In Jewish history, this period of freedom is a rare and precious anomaly.
Yes, the Holocaust is frightening. We all wonder how we would have survived, what could have been done to us, before going back to our comfortable cushy lives. Casting Holocaust survivors as nervy, pushy villains is a moral perversion. It denigrates and blames the victims and displays an unfathomable disconnection to reality. It’s also a rather convenient way of avoiding looking in the mirror and wondering how well they would have fared.
For me, the Holocaust survivors in my life are the marrow in my bones, the steel in my spine and the humility in my heart. They remind me that evil still exists and they challenge me to fight it, they endowed me with the spiritual wish to live, to love life and its beauty.
To my late grandmother, I am sorry I was not as patient to you in life as you deserved. I hope in the next world, you can know that I miss you every single day.
To the survivors in my life who taught me, shared with me their stories and loved me, thank you.
Thank you for the gift of an extreme will to live. It has made me strong and proud and grateful.
I only hope I can live up to it.
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The American Jew who Smuggled Holocaust Survivors to Israel

Jun 24, 2017  |  by 
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The American Jew who Smuggled Holocaust Survivors to Israel
The true story of the secret operation to ferry thousands of desperate Holocaust survivors to Israel.
In 1947 Paul Kaye was asked to be part of top-secret mission to smuggle Holocaust survivors into pre-state Israel. He was warned that if he was caught he could be hanged. Paul didn’t hesitate: “Let’s go!”
In an Aish.com exclusive interview, Paul recalled how he managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible: to secretly smuggle, ship after ship, traumatized Jewish refugees to the Land of Israel. These clandestine voyages were part of Aliyah Bet which saw over 100,000 desperate Jews try to flee to pre-state Israel in the years leading up to 1948.
In 1947, Paul was a 20-year-old US Navy veteran. He’d volunteered to fight in World War II when he was only 17 and served briefly in the Pacific Theater as a marine engineer before the war ended. Afterwards, he returned home to New York and was living with his sister in an apartment in the Bronx.
Those who organized and sailed these boats faced prison or death.
Unbeknownst to him, Israel’s underground fighting force, the Haganah, the precursor to Israel’s army, was working to find people to help sail refitted ships from Europe to British-ruled Palestine. Thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors were living in camps in Europe, housed in impersonal centers years after the war. Though most of these broken survivors longed to reach the Jewish homeland, Britain refused to allow these Jews in. The Haganah organized a series of daring escapes, buying and refitting scores of old ships that were often barely seaworthy. If British forces caught these secret ships, they interned the passengers once more in DP camps on the island of Cyprus. Those who organized and sailed these boats faced prison or death.
One of these Haganah organizers called Paul. “Hello, Paul Kaminetzky?” said an unknown voice on the line, using Paul’s original family name. “We’d like to know if you want to help your people.”
Paul was told to go to the corner of 39th and Lexington Ave. at a certain time the next day and to follow a man with a leather jacket holding a newspaper. If the man were to suddenly throw away his newspaper, it means they were spotted and Paul was to return home. The caller abruptly hung up.
All went according to plan and Paul was led to a secure location where a daring proposition was put to him: would he help sail boats between Cyprus and Palestine? The overloaded vessels would be sitting ducks in the Mediterranean, easy prey for British forces if they were found. Those organizing the voyages faced possible execution. Paul didn’t flinch. To this day, members of his synagogue say to him with a grin, “Let’s go!” in memory of that fateful day when he was recruited into the Haganah.
Paul (lower left with gun), Al Ellis next to him, upper left is Lenny Cohen and Hal Fineberg in Caesarian training as Seals 1948
His first ship was called Tradewinds. Docked in Baltimore harbor, it was a former US Coast Guard cutter that was now registered in Panama. It’s Haganah-trained crew sailed to Portugal, where they ran into a snag. British forces refused to allow it to refuel. A local captain overheard Paul say, “Oy vey!” and asked him if he spoke Yiddish. Paul said yes, and the captain donated Tradewinds fuel to continue her journey.
The boat journeyed to Lisbon, then to Italy, where it would pick up its passengers. While in Lisbon, Tradewinds was docked next to another Haganah ship, the President Warfield, that was waiting to pick up refugees. Paul became friends with Bill Bernstein, an American crew member who’d volunteered to help ferry Jews to Palestine. The President Warfield went on to pick up over 4,500 Holocaust survivors and change its name on route to Israel to The Exodus.
The Exodus
Paul’s boat took on a smaller passenger load, about 1,500, and Paul remembers the moment these battered refugees stepped on board the vessel as one of the most important in his life. “They were haggard,” Paul later recalled. “They had all they owned on their backs. They came up, they hugged and kissed us and said, ‘We are going to Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel). We’re going to our home.’”
British forces forced the HATIKVA to sail for Cyprus. Paul knew that grave consequences that faced him there.
That first trip ended in near-disaster. An airplane spotted the Tradewinds and alerted British destroyers who surrounded the boat. Undaunted, Paul and the crew painted over their boat’s name, renaming it the HATIKVA, Hebrew for hope. British forces forced the HATIKVA to sail for Cyprus. Paul knew that grave consequences that faced him there. “There was always fear,” he recalls.
He was saved from British prosecution and prison or worse by a young Romanian Holocaust survivor who was a passenger on board. Paul’s shoes were covered with oil, a giveaway that he was an engineer and had been working on keeping the barely seaworthy vessel running. The Romanian traded shoes with Paul and when the boat docked in Cyprus, Paul spoke Yiddish and identified himself as a displaced person. “My father never spoke any English,” Paul explains. “I grew up in New York speaking Yiddish at home and blended right in with the passengers.”
Immigrants crowd together on the deck of the ship, Hatikvah
Paul remembers one Haganah member, a former US Navy Officer, who only knew English. Thinking quickly, Paul told British officials that he was a Holocaust survivor who was too traumatized to talk. Despite carrying out their orders to stop and imprison these Holocaust survivors, many British soldiers showed compassion to the broken men and women in their care. The British officer began to cry and quickly left the room, sparing Paul’s comrade detection and a sentence of prison or death.
In Cyprus, the British instituted a quota system, allowing 750 Jewish prisoners each month to be transferred to the Atlit prison camp in Israel, near Haifa. His first month interned in Cyprus, Paul drew a lucky number; he was one of the 750 to be allowed to transfer to Israel. But Hal Fineberg, another American Haganah fighter (who later changed his name to Zvi Galil and fought in Israel’s War of Independence) was gravely ill with scabies and Paul gave his spot to him.
In Cyprus, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, Paul and the prisoners learned that the ship The Exodus en route to Palestine had been intercepted by British destroyers. Bill Bernstein, the other American volunteer Paul had befriended in Lisbon, was killed in the fighting, as well as two refugees. As Paul and other Jews languished in prison camps in Cyprus, things looked hopeless. One thought sustained them: the hope that one day they might make it out to the Land of Israel.
Paul eventually got his chance: he was one of another group of 750 prisoners selected to be sent to Atlit prison near Haifa. He would still be held prisoner for no crime other than wanting to enter the Jewish homeland, but at least he’d be on the soil of the Land of Israel.
With the help of the Haganah, Paul eventually escaped from Atlit prison, slipping under a barbed wire fence, and joined the Palmach, the Haganah’s elite fighting force. He returned to the United States with a fake passport and manned two subsequent ships that successfully brought Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine.
On May 14, 1948, when Israel declared itself a state, Paul was with a boatload of desperate Jewish refugees making their way to Haifa. They quickly changed the name of their boat, a Panamanian-flagged ship called Director, to the Hebrew name Galila. That day, Paul now recalls at the age of 90, when the Jewish people once again had a national homeland, was his proudest moment. “We put an Israeli flag up on our ship - it was the first time we were able to sail as an Israeli ship.”
Paul eventually served in Israel’s navy and then returned to New York where he married and built a family.
Paul Kaye wearing an Israeli Navy hat
Looking back, he credits his incredible desire to help his fellow Jews to his mother’s influence. Paul’s father died when he was young and his mother had a strong Jewish identity. World War II was a turning point in Paul’s young life. “When I saw what Hitler was doing to the Jewish people I realized I have to do what I can do.” At the age of 17, that meant enlisting in the US Navy. At 20, it meant risking death and imprisonment to fight with the Haganah.
“We are being persecuted today as well. Anti-Semitism is increasing around the world and we have to stand up.”
Paul speaks publicly about his own experiences and tries to motivate young Jews to “stand up for themselves and to be proud Jews.”
Many have called Paul a hero but Paul doesn’t view himself that way. “I was working for my people. I had no choice but to step up and help my fellow Jews. When you’re working for your people, you’re not a hero.”
May we each find the strength to feel the obligation to help, and when our time comes to act, to say without hesitation, “Let’s go!”
Paul Kaye is featured in the documentary 4 Million Bullets: The Untold Fight for Israel’s Survival, that includes first hand testimonies about the clandestine effort to bring survivors to the Israel. Click here for more information.
 
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Photographing 830 Holocaust Survivors

Mar 30, 2019  |  by 
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Photographing 830 Holocaust Survivors
John and Amy Israel Pregulman have made it their mission to help elderly Holocaust survivors.
A three-day visit to Chicago changed John Pregulman’s life forever. In 2012, John was living in his native Chattanooga, Tennessee, working in real estate. He’d had little contact with Holocaust survivors. The phone call from the Illinois Holocaust Museum was a bit of a surprise.
The museum was looking for a photographer to take pictures of survivors. A member of the museum was an old friend of John’s and remembered that years ago, John had worked as a photographer in New York City. Would he mind coming up to Chicago to photograph some survivors? John obligingly agreed.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” John recalls of that first trip. He wondered if the survivors would be depressed and gloomy. Instead, he was blown away by how upbeat they were. “I spent three days with survivors taking pictures and I became enamored of these confident, happy people who gave so much, despite what they’ve been through,” he explained in an Aish.com exclusive interview.
“What happened to them shaped their lives, but they had an attitude that ‘We’re not going to let what happened to us ruin our lives’”. Some of the survivors confided that they felt the successes they had made of their lives – their families, their careers, the full, productive, Jewish lives they’d led – were all victories against Hitler.
The portraits, which are given to the survivors as a gift, are important to many of them because one of their biggest fears is being forgotten. John took 65 portraits in three days and was left profoundly changed by the experience. He decided to continue to photograph survivors, contacting Jewish communal organizations and Holocaust museums in different cities and arranging more photo sessions.
John met Amy Israel through a photo session in 2015. One of John’s friend’s father was a survivor, and the friend asked John to travel to his dad’s home in Memphis to photograph him. As John took his photographs, his friend’s father started talking about his experiences during the Holocaust. “All of a sudden he opened up to his children about everything,” John later recalled.
The survivor introduced John to Amy, who was a good friend of his daughter-in-law, and the couple quickly realized they were made for each other. They met in January 2015 got engaged several months later. Together they are raising six children from their previous marriages, as well as working on the charity they have founded to help Holocaust survivors, which Amy jokes is their baby.  
They were in Florida, taking photos of an elderly Holocaust survivor, when they decided to found KAVOD, the charity they now run together. “Invariably, when I take pictures of lady survivors, they want to give me something to eat, like all Bubbies,” John recalls. This friendly, sweet lady opened up her refrigerator and John and Amy were dumbstruck: all she had was milk, some eggs, and a little piece of cheese.
“What happened to your food?” the couple asked. The survivor explained that her air conditioner had broken that month and she had to pay to have it repaired. She had no money left over for food. “I’m just not eating much this month.”
John and Amy started researching the plight of Holocaust survivors in the U.S. and made a startling discovery: nearly a third of survivors live below or near the poverty rate. “The poverty rate for seniors in general is 18% in the U.S.,” Amy explains; for Holocaust survivors, the rate is significantly higher. The reasons are manifold: many came to the U.S. with nothing and never built up significant savings. The trauma of their early years can mean they have more medical needs. Amy and John also found a significant barrier to Holocaust survivors gaining the help they need is their shame of seeming needy: “They are very proud,” Amy explains.
“They don’t like to tell people they need help,” John has found, “and they don’t like to be on a list, for obvious reasons. They are very good at hiding poverty. Amy and I have been in many survivors’ apartments and noticed that they didn’t have anything.” John and Amy felt they had to help and started planning a charity to provide confidential emergency funds to survivors.
Amy has a background in nonprofit management, and quickly got to work setting up a professional organization. They decided to name it KAVOD, which means respect in Hebrew, because they wanted to ensure that they helped survivors in confidential, discreet ways that maintained their dignity and sense of self-worth. John and Amy married in 2016, within a month of formally establishing KAVOD as a not-for-profit charity.
A donor pledged to cover all of the charity’s operating costs, so each dollar raised goes directly to survivors. John and Amy give the money through Jewish agencies in various cities. Working with caseworkers, KAVOD identifies needs and makes grants - often small grants of just a few hundred dollars - to cover financial emergencies or unexpected needs.
“We were thrilled when we raised $30,000 that first year,” Amy recalls. The second year they nearly doubled that, and in 2018 KAVOD gave away over $118,000 to help Holocaust survivors in need.
Amy and John don’t request information about the people they are donating to. “That’s part of protecting their dignity,” Amy explains.
In at least one case, however, a survivor wanted to thank John and Amy personally, with a surprising gift.
The request came from a social worker at a local Jewish agency who knew the survivor: she was living in dire circumstances, with little money, and her greatest joy was her hobby of creating beautiful beaded flowers. But she didn’t have enough money for beads; could KAVOD help her with $50 to buy more beads? KAVOD supplied a gift card for twice that amount. Later on, John and Amy happened to travel to that survivor’s city in order to photograph more Holocaust survivors and the survivor decided to pay them an unexpected visit, bringing a gift of beautiful beaded flowers she’d made.
“This woman came up to us and handed us flowers made out of beads and said, ‘You have no idea what this meant to me; I made this for you.’” Amy was so overwhelmed she had to sit down.
Amy and John keep those beaded flowers in a vase in their kitchen as a constant reminder of the good they can do. “The flowers are a reminder that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and have their unique needs acknowledged.”
Since 2016, KAVOD has distributed funds to 1,200 needy Holocaust survivors. By now, John has taken portraits of 830 survivors. As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, the couple feels the urgency of their mission to document this fading generation and their memories.
The portraits are gifts to the survivors and the families; KAVOD never sells the images or makes any money from them, and they never make public the names of the survivors.
KAVOD can be contacted at http://kavodensuringdignity.com/
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