A ceremony posthumously honoring seven Righteous Among the Nations from Ukraine and Belarus was held at Yad Vashem's Education Center in the Valley of Communities yesterday. Participating in the ceremony, which was conducted in Hebrew and Russian, were Mordechai Halpern and Rachel Heled, who now reside in Israel. They were saved by two of the honorees, Stefan and Anna Chaikovski.
In 1943, surviving Jews attempted to escape from the German-established Buczacz ghetto in what was then Poland. After the sixth and final aktion (violent actions in which Jewish areas were "cleansed" of Jews), seven members of the Heled-Halpern family - Rachel Heled, her parents and aunt, her cousin Mordechai Halpern and his parents - escaped to the surrounding fields. Stefan Chaikovski, a Ukrainian farmer, happened upon the group while they were hiding, and brought them to a barn near his home, where he and his wife Anna hid the seven Jews under the haystacks for eight months. They provided the group with shelter and food for no compensation. "He didn't know us before he met us," Mordechai Halpern later testified. "We couldn't offer him any money since we had been robbed of all our possessions... I think he did it out of love of his fellow man. I have no other explanation."
Stefan and Anna had four daughters, one of whom, Miroslava Luchka, received the medal and certificate on behalf of her late parents.
Another of the deceased honorees, Nadezhda Makrushitz, who was executed by the Nazis, hid five Jews in her house. A nurse in the hospital in Minsk, she was able to steal identity papers of deceased patients and pass them on to Jews and others who were persecuted by the Nazis. In December 1941, Nadezhda was arrested by the Gestapo while at work in the hospital, and was executed a month later. The certificate and medal were presented to her granddaughter Nadezhda Edelman.
The others were Fedosey and Melanya Ploshchadnyi and Leonid and Antonina Stavenko, two couples who each took a Jewish child - siblings of each other - into their home.
Controversy is enveloping Yad Vashem and its Righteous Among the Nations program from another angle, however. The Center for Jewish Pluralism, represented by Reform Rabbi Uri Regev and Atty. Stephan Weiss (grandson of the late U.S. Reform leader of the same name), is suing Yad Vashem for refusing to recognize Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Righteous Gentile. Bonhoeffer, who believed that the "Jewish question" would be resolved ultimately through the conversion of the Jews, actively resisted Hitler, attempted to save Jews during the Holocaust, and was murdered in the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945.
Yad Vashem spokesperson Iris Rosenberg responded that the decision not to grant Bonhoeffer this standing was made unanimously by the 20-member Righteous Gentiles Board, which comprises jurists, historians, Holocaust survivors and public figures, and which is headed by former Supreme Court Justice Yaakov Maltz. "The attempt by the Center for Jewish Pluralism of the Reform Movement," she said, "to bring about a change in the decision via a petition to the Supreme Court is out of place. It stems from a desire to distort the Board's criteria and to adapt them to the desire of individuals in an ideological movement who have their own agenda."
Yad Vashem emphasized that it recognizes Bonhoeffer's "sterling character and traits as a believing Christian," but "he simply does not meet the criteria" regarding the honor in question. At Arutz-7's request, Yad Vashem's Estee Yaari clarified that, specifically, he did not save Jews during the Holocaust. In addition, though he spoke out against the Nazis, he did not speak out against the persecution of Jews.
In 1943, surviving Jews attempted to escape from the German-established Buczacz ghetto in what was then Poland. After the sixth and final aktion (violent actions in which Jewish areas were "cleansed" of Jews), seven members of the Heled-Halpern family - Rachel Heled, her parents and aunt, her cousin Mordechai Halpern and his parents - escaped to the surrounding fields. Stefan Chaikovski, a Ukrainian farmer, happened upon the group while they were hiding, and brought them to a barn near his home, where he and his wife Anna hid the seven Jews under the haystacks for eight months. They provided the group with shelter and food for no compensation. "He didn't know us before he met us," Mordechai Halpern later testified. "We couldn't offer him any money since we had been robbed of all our possessions... I think he did it out of love of his fellow man. I have no other explanation."
Stefan and Anna had four daughters, one of whom, Miroslava Luchka, received the medal and certificate on behalf of her late parents.
Another of the deceased honorees, Nadezhda Makrushitz, who was executed by the Nazis, hid five Jews in her house. A nurse in the hospital in Minsk, she was able to steal identity papers of deceased patients and pass them on to Jews and others who were persecuted by the Nazis. In December 1941, Nadezhda was arrested by the Gestapo while at work in the hospital, and was executed a month later. The certificate and medal were presented to her granddaughter Nadezhda Edelman.
The others were Fedosey and Melanya Ploshchadnyi and Leonid and Antonina Stavenko, two couples who each took a Jewish child - siblings of each other - into their home.
Controversy is enveloping Yad Vashem and its Righteous Among the Nations program from another angle, however. The Center for Jewish Pluralism, represented by Reform Rabbi Uri Regev and Atty. Stephan Weiss (grandson of the late U.S. Reform leader of the same name), is suing Yad Vashem for refusing to recognize Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Righteous Gentile. Bonhoeffer, who believed that the "Jewish question" would be resolved ultimately through the conversion of the Jews, actively resisted Hitler, attempted to save Jews during the Holocaust, and was murdered in the Flossenburg concentration camp in 1945.
Yad Vashem spokesperson Iris Rosenberg responded that the decision not to grant Bonhoeffer this standing was made unanimously by the 20-member Righteous Gentiles Board, which comprises jurists, historians, Holocaust survivors and public figures, and which is headed by former Supreme Court Justice Yaakov Maltz. "The attempt by the Center for Jewish Pluralism of the Reform Movement," she said, "to bring about a change in the decision via a petition to the Supreme Court is out of place. It stems from a desire to distort the Board's criteria and to adapt them to the desire of individuals in an ideological movement who have their own agenda."
Yad Vashem emphasized that it recognizes Bonhoeffer's "sterling character and traits as a believing Christian," but "he simply does not meet the criteria" regarding the honor in question. At Arutz-7's request, Yad Vashem's Estee Yaari clarified that, specifically, he did not save Jews during the Holocaust. In addition, though he spoke out against the Nazis, he did not speak out against the persecution of Jews.