In combinatie met onze “Partners in de zorg” programma gefinancierd door de UJA-Federatie van New York, de Y zal interviews bevatten van zes lokale overlevenden om het verhaal van elk individu beter te begrijpen. Deze interviews zullen worden tentoongesteld in de Hebrew Tabernacle-galerij “Ervaar een tijd van oorlog en daarna: Portretten van pittige overlevenden van de Holocaust”. De galerie opent op vrijdag 8 november haar deuren.
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(sculptuur van 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. For example, 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.”
Eventueel, 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 jaar oud. 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 jaar.
Dit interview werd afgenomen door Halley Goldberg van het Y’s Partners in Caring-initiatief en is eigendom van de YM&YWHA van Washington Heights en Inwood. Het gebruik van dit materiaal zonder schriftelijke toestemming van zowel de Y als de geïnterviewde is ten strengste verboden. Lees hier meer over het Partners in Caring-programma: http://ywashhts.org/partners-caring-0
Hebreeuwse Tabernakel Armin en Estelle Gold Wing-galerijin trotse samenwerking metde YM&YWHA van Washington Heights en Inwoodnodigt u uit voor onzeNovember december, 2013 Expositie“Ervaar een tijd van oorlog en daarna: Portretten van pittige overlevenden van de Holocaust” met foto's en sculpturen van: YAEL BEN-ZION, PETER BULOW en ROJ RODRIGUEZ. In combinatie met een speciale service ter nagedachtenisvan de75e verjaardag van de Kristallnacht - de nacht van gebroken glasDiensten en openingsreceptie van de kunstenaar, vrijdag, 8 november, 2013 7:30 p.m.
Een verklaring van de Y : ” Decennia lang is de Washington Heights/Inwood Y dat geweest, en dat blijft zo, een toevluchtsoord voor wie op zoek is naar een toevluchtsoord, respect en begrip. Velen die onze deuren binnenkomen en aan onze programma's deelnemen, hebben beproevingen en beproevingen meegemaakt die we ons niet eens kunnen voorstellen. Voor sommigen, wie zal deel uitmaken van deze tentoonstelling, Eén zo’n gruwel is in de wereld bekend geworden als ‘De Holocaust’ – de systematische moord op zes miljoen Joden in Europa.
Wij bij de Y herinneren ons het verleden, eer degenen die in die tijd leefden en stierven, en de waarheid veiligstellen voor toekomstige generaties. In het belang van onszelf en onze kinderen, we moeten de verhalen doorgeven van degenen die het kwaad van oorlog hebben ervaren. Er zijn lessen te leren voor de toekomst. De interviews zijn gedocumenteerd door Halley Goldberg, een programmabegeleider ‘Partners in Caring’. Dit essentiële programma werd mogelijk gemaakt door een genereuze subsidie van de UJA-Federatie van New York, ontworpen om de relaties met synagogen in Washington Heights en Inwood te verbeteren. “
Onze gezamenlijke kunsttentoonstelling bevat portretten en interviews van overlevenden van de Holocaust, Hanna Eisner, Charlie en Lilli Friedman, Parel Rosenzveig, Fredy Seidel en Ruth Wertheimer, die allemaal lid zijn van de Hebreeuwse Tabernakel, een joodse gemeente waar veel Duitse joden de nazi's ontvluchtten en het geluk hadden naar Amerika te komen, sloot zich eind jaren dertig aan. Daarnaast eren we ook Holocaust-overlevende Gizelle Schwartz Bulow- moeder van onze kunstenaar Peter Bulow en overlevende van de Tweede Wereldoorlog Yan Neznanskiy – vader van de Y’s Chief Program Officer, Victoria Neznansky.
Een speciale sabbatdienst, met luidsprekers, ter nagedachtenis aan de 75e verjaardag van de Kristallnacht (de Nacht van Gebroken Glas) gaat vooraf aan de opening van de tentoonstelling Gold Gallery/Y:De diensten beginnen stipt om 7 uur:30 p.m. Iedereen is uitgenodigd om hierbij aanwezig te zijn.
Voor openingstijden van de galerie of voor meer informatie kunt u bellen met de synagoge op212-568-8304 of ziehttp://www.hebrewtabernacle.orgVerklaring van de kunstenaar: Yael Ben-Zionwww.yaelbenzion.comYael Ben-Zion werd geboren in Minneapolis, MN en opgegroeid in Israël. Ze is afgestudeerd aan het General Studies Program van het International Center of Photography. Ben-Zion is de ontvanger van diverse subsidies en onderscheidingen, meest recentelijk van de Puffin Foundation en van NoMAA, en haar werk is tentoongesteld in de Verenigde Staten en Europa. Ze heeft twee monografieën van haar werk gepubliceerd. Ze woont met haar man in Washington Heights, en hun tweelingjongens.
Verklaring van de kunstenaar: Peter Bulow: www.peterbulow.com
Mijn moeder als kind, tijdens de Holocaust ondergedoken had gezeten. Door de jaren heen, haar ervaring, of wat ik dacht dat haar ervaring zou zijn, heeft een grote invloed op mij gehad. Deze invloed komt zowel in mijn persoonlijke als in mijn artistieke leven tot uiting. Ik ben geboren in India, woonde als jong kind in Berlijn en emigreerde op leeftijd met mijn ouders naar de VS 8. Ik heb een Masters in Schone Kunsten in beeldhouwkunst. Ik ontvang ook een subsidie waarmee ik een beperkt aantal bronzen bustes van overlevenden van de Holocaust kan maken. Laat het me weten als je geïnteresseerd bent om deel uit te maken van dit project.
Verklaring van de kunstenaar :Roj Rodriguez: www.rojrodriguez.com
Mijn oeuvre weerspiegelt mijn reis vanuit Houston, TX – waar ik ben geboren en getogen – naar New York – waar, blootgesteld aan zijn etnische achtergrond, culturele en sociaal-economische diversiteit en haar unieke kijk op immigranten– Ik vond een hernieuwd respect voor ieders cultuur. Ik heb stage gelopen bij gerenommeerde fotografen, reisde veel de wereld rond en werkte samen met veel topprofessionals in het veld. Sinds januari, 2006, mijn carrière als onafhankelijk fotograaf is een proces geworden van het aannemen van persoonlijke fotografieprojecten die voortkomen uit mijn eigen begrip van de manier waarop we de wereld delen en onze creativiteit als geheel uitoefenen.
