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.
The genocides in
... 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
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
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
Gluck wrote the memoir soon
after she arrived in the
Gluck was born in 1881 in
Greenwich Village, the daughter of parents who had emigrated from
In the
After Achile
LaGuardia's death, Fiorello returned to the
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
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
"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
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
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,
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