In conjunctione cum nostris “Socii in Caring” progressio a UJA-Foederationis Novi Eboraci fundus, colloquia Y faciet ex sex reliquiis localibus ut melius cognoscant singulas fabulas. Hi conloquia ostendentur in porticu Hebraico Tabernaculi “Experiens tempus belli et ultra: Effigies SPIRITUAE Holocaustae reliquiae”. Porticus aperietur Veneris die 8 mensis Novembris.
Fredy Seidel lives in Washington Heights. Through this initiative, he has learned more about the Y and plans to become a member of the Center for Adults Living Well @ the Y.
Fredy Seidel(sculpture by Peter Bulow: WWW.PETERBULOW.COM)
After Kristallnact, the Seidels realized that it was no longer safe to stay in Germany so they decided to contact a Jewish agency in Breslau to begin preparations to leave. There was a Jewish organization that worked tirelessly to help Jews get out of Germany. The organization’s first priority was helping to get prisoners out of concentration camps, which was a very expensive task because the German government would not let prisoners leave the camps unless they were able to produce a roundtrip ticket out of the country. Fredy’s parents received a telegram at their synagogue on Saturday morning during services from this agency, stating that the agency found money for them to leave Germany and that they should come immediately. The agency had enough money to rescue Fredy’s parents, grandmother, and one of his brothers, Horst. Fredy’s oldest brother Rudi would be sent to Berlin to stay with an interfaith family in the hope that he would receive an affidavit to go to America. However, Rudi would never make it to America; while he was in Berlin, he was picked up from the street and sent to Auschwitz.
In 1939, the family left Bremerhaven, Germany and arrived in Shanghai a month later. After getting off the boat, the Seidel’s were taken to the ghetto that had been organized by the local Sephardic community. Fredy Seidel was born on May 1, 1941 in Shanghai, China. While in Shanghai, Fredy’s parents attempted to make a living by doing anything that they could to make money. The conditions were poor and made it very difficult to find work. The ghetto of 25,000 people was fed by a community kitchen that was also funded by the local Sephardic community. The ghetto had one synagogue, which had been built by Russian Jews. The synagogue became known as Ohel Moishe and that synagogue is still standing today.
The Jews who lived in Shanghai ghetto were housed in warehouses that were divided into 10 rooms. Each room provided shelter to 28 people. There were no walls; it was just one large room with bunk beds. Fredy’s mom would use a trunk and tablecloth to make a table for their meals. Conditions were not very sanitary. In castris virgam laboravit ad creare experientiam castra unica pro omnibus camper, the toilet was about 150 feet away from the room, so the Seidel family would keep pot under their bed in case they had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. In the morning, they would take their pots to the toilet to dispose of the waste. There were two community showers, one for men and one for women; this did not allow for any privacy. Approximately 3000 people died from malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. Fredy recalls that you were not allowed to leave the ghetto without special permission from the police commissioner.
Not all of the refugees in the ghetto were Jewish. Fredy remembers that there were people who came because they had interfaith marriages. When asked about his community, Fredy states, “For me, I felt a very strong sense of Judaism and a very strong belief in G-d.” While living in Shanghai, Fredy recalls learning a lot about Judaism and what it means to have faith. He goes on to explain that a large portion of the refugees came from a town in Germany called Selisia.
The Jewish community in Shanghai was very tightknit and poverty stricken. People tried to make the best of their time there. The Jews created their own newspaper called the Yellow Post. Fredy recalls the Chinese being very helpful and shared what little they had with the Jewish community.
Fredy attended four Jewish schools within five years in Shanghai. He also attended a British school. Fredy recalls having to attend Anglican services while in the British school. There, the students were punished by the teachers with a bamboo stick, which they used to hit the children. This was very different from his experience in the Jewish schools. He described the Jewish schools as very nurturing. Since there were many refugee students left, a small school was created to accommodate them. There were three students to every teacher. This was not very conducive to learning because of the way the teacher’s attention was decided.
While in the ghetto, Fredy’s fathers tried making a living by collecting old razor blades, sharpening them, and trying selling them to the Chinese, but this did not work out. He then tried to become a shoemaker. Additionally, he was the cantor at Ohel Moshe synagogue.
The Red Cross came to Shanghai and distributed questionnaires to the refugees to figure out who was looking for their relatives. A year later, they came back and posted a large bulletin board on a wall with a list of names of the people they had been looking for. This is how Fredy’s father found out that his oldest son had been murdered in Auschwitz. He also found out that his parents and siblings had all been killed. Fredy remembers, “my father collapsed into the arms of my brother. That’s how people found out what happened to members of their family. It wasn’t the most sensitive way to find out.”
Eventually, the Chinese government told the Jews that they could not stay there any longer. In 1952, the Seidel’s returned back to Germany. They were one of the last thirty families to leave Shanghai. Fredy’s parents would get startup money to rebuild their lives once again in Germany.
When the Seidel’s got back to Germany, it had been divided into East and West Germany. Fredy’s parents were from a German town called Breslau, which had become a part of Poland, and was considered to be a part of West Germany so the restitution that was promised upon their return to Germany did not apply to them. This was financially devastating to the Seidel’s. This made the Seidel’s resort to smuggling good between East and West Germany in order to help them survive. The Seidel’s moved into a small apartment and Fredy’s father became a cantor again. On February 2, the Seidel’s received their visa to come to America. On February 22, Fredy’s mother was admitted to the intensive care unit where she would stay until September and would come out in a wheelchair. Fredy’s bar mitzvah was going to be in May. He was supposed to be the first boy with two Jewish parents to be bar mitzvahed in post-war Berlin. Many rabbis came from all over to be there for this occasion. The night before his bar mitzvah, Fredy and his father decided that they did not want to have the bar mitzvah without his mother being present and healthy again. He ended up waiting until after she was discharged from the hospital to have his bar mitzvah.
The Seidel’s were stuck in Germany for 7 years. In 1959, the Seidel’s made their way to America. The family decided to go to San Francisco to visit one of Fredy’s brothers before settling down in New York. What was supposed to be a two week trip turned into a yearlong stay. While in San Francisco, Fredy worked as a busboy and then a stock boy to try and help his family financially. After his family decided to move to New York, Fredy worked in Gimble’s selling stamps. He had dreams of attending Columbia University and after working at Gimble’s for a short while, his dreams were realized. Fredy enrolled at Columbia University at 20 annos habet. Although he would be drafted into the army while at Columbia, because of the tropical illnesses he contracted as a child in Shanghai he was not accepted into the army. In his last job, Fredy worked as a paralegal at a law firm for 20 annos.
This interview was conducted by Halley Goldberg of the Y’s Partners in Caring initiative and belongs to the YM&YWHA de Washington arces et Inwood. Usus huius materiae sine consensu scripto dato tam Y quam euentum stricte prohibetur. Plura de Sociis in programmatis curandis hic reperi: http://ywashhts.org/partners-caring-0
Tabernaculum Hebraicum Armin et Estelle Aurum Wing Galleryet in societate superbirein YM *&YWHA de Washington arces et Inwoodinvitat te ad nostrumNovember/December, 2013 Exhibit“Experiens tempus belli et ultra: Effigies SPIRITUAE Holocaustae reliquiae” per imagines et sculpturas by: YAEL BEN-ZION, PETRUS BULOW et ROJ RODRIGUEZ. In conjunctione cum speciali Service in memoriamde75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht id est noctem Vitri fractiOfficia et Artist's Receptio Aperiens, Veneris, Novembris 8th, 2013 7:30 p.m.
Enuntiatum a Y * : ” Pro decenniis Washington Heights / Inwood Y fuit, ac pergit, portum petentibus, respexit et intellectus. Multi qui portas nostras intrant et programmata nostra participant, per tribulationes et tribulationes vixerunt, quas ne cogitari quidem possumus. Aliquot, quis erit pars huius exhibit, quis talis horror innotuerit mundo simpliciter ut « Holocausta ». – caedes systematica sex miliones Iudaeorum Europae.
Nos apud ego memini praeterita, honorificabit eos qui in tempore illo vixerunt et mortui sunt, et veritatem posteris tueatur. Pro nobis et filiis nostris, fabulas praeterire oportet eorum qui belli mala experti sunt. Lectiones sunt ut discantur in posterum. Colloquia confirmantur ab Halley Goldberg, a "Socii in Caring" programma supervisoris. Haec progressio vitalis possibilis facta est per generosam donationem ab UJA-Foederationis Novi Eboraci, ad augendae relationes cum synagogis in Washington Arcibus et Inwood. “
Nostra ars iuncturam exhibeat lineamenta imagines et colloquia reliquiarum Holocaustici, Anna Eisner, Charlie and Lilli Friedman, Margarita Rosenzveig, Fredy Seidel et Ruth Wertheimer, qui omnes membra sunt tabernaculum Hebraicum, Congregatio Judaica, quod multi Germani Judaei nazis fugientes et felix ad Americam venerint, coniuncta nuper 1930's. Insuper etiam honoramus Holocaustum superstes Gizelle Schwartz Bulow- mater artificis nostri Petri Bulow et WWII superstes Yan Neznanskiy - pater principalis Programmatis officialis., Victoria Neznansky.
Peculiaris sabbatum Service, cum loquentium, in memoriam 75th anniversario Kristallnacht (noctem Vitri) praecedit foramen Aurum Gallery / Y exhibent:Officia statim incipiunt ad VII ":30 post meridiem. Omnes invitantur ad comitatum.
Ad gallery horas apertas vel ad ulteriores notitias synagogam vocare placet212-568-8304 aut viderehttp://www.hebrewtabernacle.orgArtis Editio: Yael Ben-Zionwww.yaelbenzion.comYael Ben-Zion in consectetur, MN et erexit in Israel. Graduata est Programma de Studiorum Generalium Internationalium Centre Photography. Ben-Zion est recipiens variarum concessionum et praemiorum, recentissime ex Fundatione Puffin et NoMAA, et opus eius in Civitatibus Foederatis Americae et in Europa exhibitum est. Duo monumenta operis sui edidit. Cum marito in arces Washington habitat, et gemini pueri.
Artis Editio: Petrus Bulow: www.peterbulow.com
Mater mea sicut puer, fuerat in latebris in Holocaustum. Trans annos, eam experientiam, vel quod eam experientiam fuisse putabam, magnam vim habuit in me. Haec auctoritas tam in personali quam in artificiosa vita reflectitur. Ego natus sum in India, vixit puer parvulus Berolini et emigravit in US cum parentibus meis aetate 8. Magistros in Finibus Artibus in sculptura habeo. Ego quoque donam recipio , quae mihi paucas imagines aereas Holocausti superstites facere sinit .. Quaeso me certiorem facias si interesse in parte rei huius.
Artis Editio :Roj Rodriguez: www.rojrodriguez.com
Corpus meum opus itineris mei de Houston, TX – ubi natus sum et educatus – Novi Eboraci – ubi, expositae ad ethnic!, diversitas culturalis et oeconomicae oeconomicae eiusque unica sententia de immigrantibus– Renovatum inveni observantiam omnium culturae. Ego photographers bene confirmatum didici, iter per orbem late et cum multis doctorum summo in agro collaboravit. Cum Ianuarii, 2006, curriculo meo quasi sui iuris photographer factus est processus sumendi in personalis consequat inceptis quae ex meo sensu emergunt viae communicamus mundum et nostram exercent creationem pro toto.
