Sunday, April 15,

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia' Sister's Concentration Camp Memoirs

The ANNOTICO Report

 

For those whom the name LaGuardia means more than a NY  Airport, many are yet surprised to hear that the former mayor had a Jewish mother, and even more are surprised to learn that his sister was interned by the Nazis in a concentration camp.  Her story unfolds in "Fiorello's Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck's Story"

 

It saddens me that we Jews continue to seem to dwell, and even revel in "victim hood" when a greater tribute to those who died in the Holocaust, and a greater contribution to our Heritage, instead would be using all those same efforts, and monies to stop CURRENT HOLOCAUSTS.

 

As Danielle Singer says in her article "Remembering the Holocaust"  :   http://holocaust.hklaw.com/essays/2006/20062J.htm

...Tragically, [the lessons of the Holocaust] have yet to be learned in many parts of the world. Darfur is one of those areas, experiencing a modern-day genocide, much like the Holocaust.....

The genocides in Darfur, Cambodia, Turkey, Bosnia, Armenia and Tibet [RAA:among SO many others]all repeat the evil that immediately comes to mind when we hear the word Holocaust. We all exclaim in awe and disgust how terrible the Holocaust was, but many of us sit and do nothing while many holocausts continue each and every day.

... The fundamental question is, What can we do about it?...

Each time someone reads the message Never forget. Never again,... I hope they also realize that they, as people of todays world, must do whatever they can to stop CURRENT holocausts and prevent FUTURE ones. (emphasis added)

[RAA Note:There is such an incredible List that can be compiled, and should have included the Japanese Rape of Nanking, Stalin's Starvation of the Ukraine, Stalin's Gulags, Mao's wholesale killings.  The History of man's Inhumanity to Man is INCOMPREHENSIBLE. BUT

We can do little about what was done in the Past, BUT Should Not our Efforts be directed to What Injustices we can PREVENT NOW?????

 

Thanks to Bert Vorchheimer

Mayor LaGuardia' Sister

Newly re-released memoir details Gemma LaGuardia Gluck' experiences at the Ravensbruck concentration camp.

 

Jewish Post

Sandee Brawarsky 

Jewish Week Book Critic
April 13, 2007

 

Among New Yorkers for whom the name LaGuardia means more than an airport, many are still surprised to hear that the former mayor had a Jewish mother, and even more are surprised to learn that his sister was interned by the Nazis in a concentration camp.

 

Her story unfolds in "Fiorello's Sister: Gemma LaGuardia Gluck's Story" by Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, edited by Rochelle Saidel (Syracuse University Press). Her life was full of courageous and compassionate acts, but she writes with humility along with a graceful directness.

 

While Gluck details her time at the Ravensbruck women's concentration camp with great clarity --- she is believed to be the only American-born woman interned by the Nazis --- the book is about more than that. Her life spanned the great wave of immigration to the United States in the 1880s to the presidency of John F. Kennedy. She grew up in New York City and the Old West, later led a cosmopolitan life in Budapest and lived her last years in a municipal housing project in Long Island City, Queens, built during her brother's term as mayor of New York City.

 

Gluck wrote the memoir soon after she arrived in the United States in 1947; the book was published in 1961, although it has long been out of print. This new edition is expanded to include a new prologue and epilogue, previously unpublished photos, explanatory footnotes and recently discovered letters between Gluck and her brother, written between July 1945 and May 1947. Also included is a copy of a document referring to her arrest by the Nazis, submitted as evidence at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.

 

Gluck was born in 1881 in Greenwich Village, the daughter of parents who had emigrated from Italy the previous year. Her mother, Irene Coen LaGuardia, was the daughter of a prominent Italian Jewish family, the Luzattos, and her father, Achile Luigi Carlo LaGuardia, was Catholic but listed no religion on their marriage certificate.

 

In the U.S., the family moved around a lot, as her father was a bandmaster in the U.S. Army; their first posting was in the Dakota Territory, where Irene LaGuardia befriended and communicated in Italian with the American Indians, who knew a dialect of Spanish. The LaGuardias later lived in upstate New York, Arizona and then Missouri, and the family traveled to Europe during Army furloughs. When Achile LaGuardia finished his service, the family moved back to Italy where they opened a tourist hotel. Gemma studied languages and her brother Fiorello studied the books he brought with him from America, always intending to return there. He was hired by the American consul in Budapest and later as consul for immigration in Fiume (then Hungary, later Italy, now part of Croatia).

 

After Achile LaGuardia's death, Fiorello returned to the U.S., first working as a sales clerk and than as an interpreter at Ellis Island while attending college and law school at night. A younger brother also left for America and settled in Trenton, N.J. Gemma taught English in Fiume, married one of her pupils, a Hungarian Jew, and moved to Budapest.

 

In June 1944, Gemma and her husband Herman Gluck were arrested in an order from Eichmann, undoubtedly an act of retaliation for the anti-Nazi activities of her brother, as S.L Shneiderman explained in the preface to the original edition. Two months earlier, Mayor LaGuardia, who was outspoken in condemning the Nazis and predicting their downfall, led a mass demonstration of Polish Jews on the steps of City Hall commemorating the first anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

 

The Glucks were taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp where they were separated. Herman Gluck was killed there, although Gemma didn't learn of his fate until after the war. Moved to Ravensbruck, which is about 50 miles from Berlin, she wasn't a regular prisoner but a political hostage, held in a special section for prominent families. The niece of Charles de Gaulle was also held in the camp.

 

By the time the camp was liberated in 1945, more than 132,000 women had been imprisoned there; less than 20,000 survived. Gluck was over 60 when she arrived at the camp. Her work assignment was light, but she still suffered starvation and deprivation. Her job was to supervise one of the dining tables (where she had to divide the meager scraps of food into equal portions), and she chose to make her table international, including 34 women of 12 nationalities and several religions. As is evident by her descriptions, she was looked up to by the other women there, some of whom attended her clandestine English classes. She thought of writing something if she got out, so she made sure to notice details and remember them.

 

In April 1945, as the Allies were approaching, Gluck was reunited with her daughter and baby grandson --- she hadn't known they were being held in the same camp --- and the three were sent to Berlin for a possible hostage exchange. There, they met more hardships, as they were abandoned with no identity papers, no money and no way to document where they had been. She was finally able to get word to the Americans who contacted her brother, who had no idea where they were. He worked to get them on the immigration lists. After two years of struggle, they were able to leave, via Denmark, and come to the United States.

 

"I think I kind of fell in love with Gemma," Rochelle Saidel tells The Jewish Week in an interview, discussing how she got involved with this book. Saidel, an author and scholar who divides her time between Manhattan's Upper West Side, Jerusalem and Sao Paolo, Brazil, is founder and director of the Remember the Women Institute, which is dedicated to research in women's history. She first discovered the published memoir in 1980, when she was doing research for her book, "The Jewish Women of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp."

 

Last year, when Saidel was already working on this edition, she discovered a typed manuscript and page proofs of the book in the archives of the Leo Baeck Institute at the Center for Jewish History. No one knows when or why the materials were deposited there, perhaps because of a reference to someone Gluck knew at Ravensbruck who helped Rabbi Baeck. Saidel, who has been in close contact with Gluck's granddaughter, says that the original handwritten manuscript is lost.

 

Saidel first visited Ravensbruck in 1980, as a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, on a press trip to then East Germany, and she insisted on seeing the women's camp. Although there was no evidence that Jewish women had been interned at the camp, Saidel began questioning and came to learn that there had in fact been 20,000 Jewish women there, between 1939 and 1945.

 

Saidel, who is 64 --- the same age as Gluck when she was in Ravensbruck --- explains that she felt a special connection to her subject.

 

"Gemma was so brave," Saidel says. "She took care, and had no ego. Fiorello had the ambition --- he wanted to make something of himself. She was just doing what she had to do."

 

About two years ago, Saidel appeared on a panel with former Mayor Edward I. Koch and others on the subject of Fiorello LaGuardia and immigration. Koch said something to the effect that if it had been his sister who was interned, he would have gotten her out in a week. Mayor LaGuardia did make contacts on his sister's behalf, but acted according to regulations, without asking for special favors. He urged his sister to have patience, and finally they were able to leave.

 

Gluck writes, "Because fate gave me such a famous brother, my life has been full of pride and great happiness, but also of suffering and heartbreak. Being a LaGuardia was the reason for my incarceration in Mauthausen and in Ravensbruck, but ultimately the name LaGuardia saved my life and those of my daughter and grandson."

 

"Fiorello's Sister, Gemma's Brother," a public conversation with film and radio clips, will be presented at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St., on Tuesday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m. The program will feature Matilda Raffa Cuomo; Katherine LaGuardia, a grandchild of the late mayor; Rochelle Saidel and actor Tony LoBianco presenting excerpts from the show "Fiorello." A reception will follow. Tickets are $20. Call (917) 606-8200 or go to www.primolevicenter.org

 

http://www.thejewishweek.com/

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