Editor’s Note: Our editor and publisher emeritus, Donald H. Harrison, delivered the following talk at Sunday’s Yom HaShoah observance sponsored by the Jewish Federation of San Diego County at the Lawrence Family JCC. It was part of a program that included ceremonial candle-lightings in memory of the Six Million, a musical presentation, and a panel discussion by Survivors and members of the Second Generation. Don’s presentation may be seen at heard from minute 37:37 to 46:24 in the accompanying video.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — The Holocaust did not simply end the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies. Survivors torn from their homes, their families, and their health, needed to be nursed back into physical and mental health and resettled in countries where they would be accepted and given a chance to reconstruct their lives. One San Diegan who was intimately involved in this process was Army Lt. Al Hutler, a Jew whose compassionate administration of a Displaced Persons camp helped thousands of people make those adjustments. After leaving the Army, Hutler moved to San Diego where he served as the executive director of the Jewish Federation from 1946 to 1958. He was among those San Diegans who put out the welcoming mat for the survivors of the Nazi scourge.
Three members of the clergy – Cantor Joseph Cysner at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Rabbi Baruch Stern of Beth Jacob Congregation, and Cantor Henri Goldberg of Beth Israel – also were very welcoming, because they had survived the Holocaust themselves. Cysner was among the Polish Jews who were repatriated from Germany in the early years of Hitler’s reign. At the request of the Jewish congregation in Manila, he subsequently made his way to the Philippines, and thence to San Diego. Rabbi Stern became the spiritual leader at Beth Jacob after teaching Hebrew at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. The first bar mitzvah at which he officiated was for Bill Kolender, the future police chief and sheriff of San Diego. If Stern’s son hadn’t been murdered in the Holocaust, he would have been the same age as Kolender. Both the rabbi and the bar mitzvah boy cried together on the bima in one of San Diego’s most emotional coming-of-age ceremonies. Cantor Henri Goldberg, who had been trained in Berlin and directed choirs around the U.S. before taking a post at Congregation Beth Israel, developed the choral music program at the 54th Street Jewish Community Center.
Vernon Kahn left Germany with his family before World War II and established in San Diego Vernon’s Delicatessen and North Park Bakery, a venue that provided a touch of pre-war home for the Jewish refugees who made their way to San Diego County.
Zelig Camiel, a Polish Jew who had immigrated to San Diego via Mexico and Honduras, owned the Mission Bell Market in downtown San Diego, where he made it a point to hire Holocaust Survivors and to find jobs at other businesses for them as well. Zel later opened a liquor store in Del Mar, where he was given the honorary title of “Mayor of Del Mar.”
Holocaust survivors settled in various parts of San Diego County. Some were so poor that they had no time for anything but a hand-to-mouth existence in relative obscurity. Today the Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Service reach out to such elderly Jews with special programs to assure their comfort and wellbeing in the sunsets of their lives.
In contrast, other survivors who lived in such areas as the South Bay, Hillcrest, North Park, Rolando, San Carlos, Del Cerro, and the College neighborhood gradually formed their own social network. Seventy years ago, in 1953, that network was formalized in an organization that became known as the New Life Club.
Within the confines of this club, the horrific depredations about which members rarely spoke to the outside world, could be discussed, sometimes in depth, other times by allusion. All the club’s members knew the pain of having family members murdered by the Nazis and their allies. In one way or another, all of them had been personally subjected to barbaric cruelties.
But that was not all that the members of the New Life Club had in common. All of them wanted to put the horrible past behind them and to focus on a future that included building businesses, perfecting their English language skills, and starting families – with every child born considered a victory against Hitler who wanted to eliminate Jews from the face of the earth.
Additionally, the members of the New Life Club wanted to fit into the San Diego community, to be considered contributing members of society and not simply as victims of the European madness. Feeling a special debt to the American military, which had played such a large part in defeating the Nazi oppressors, such New Life Clubers as Gussie Zaks and Rose Schindler volunteered to serve breakfast to “the boys” at the Naval Training Center. The Club sponsored student essay contests on World War II topics. New Life Club members regularly volunteered as hostesses at the House of Israel in Balboa Park. The Club’s monthly meetings first held in a hall across the street from Congregation Beth Tefilah, and later at Tifereth Israel Synagogue became the venue for musical entertainment, lectures, and even political presentations from both major American parties.
The New Life Club also was a social organization, which developed its own traditions like an annual picnic held sometimes at Balboa Park, at other times at Mission Beach. There was always a New Year’s Eve dinner and dance. And there were trips to Las Vegas, such as one in 1985 at the Flamingo Hilton costing just $79 per person including breakfasts, 2 dinners and a show. In the club’s monthly newsletter, life cycle events in members’ families were studiously observed: births, b’nai mitzvah, engagements, marriages, sicknesses, and the death of loved ones. New Lifers had a fund to help members in need and regularly visited those who were sick. The Club also sponsored a yearly commemoration of Yom HaShoah, with survivors lighting candles for the Six Million who perished.
It didn’t happen immediately, but members of the New Life Club also became speakers about the Holocaust, telling their personal stories to service clubs, student groups, and at various forums to counter the Holocaust deniers. Lou Dunst, Rose and Max Schindler, David Faber, Fanny Krasner Lebovits among others wrote or inspired books about their lives. Officers of the new Life Club often were turned to by journalists writing stories about remembrance ceremonies, denial controversies, and outbreaks of antisemitism. The roll call of New Life leaders included Paul Landers, Morris Schwartz, Hanna Marx, Mike Zaks, Isadore Horne, among others. Speakers included Ruth Sax, Agi Ehrenfried, Eva Eger, Ben Midler, Sally Sheinok, Eve Gerstle, and the list goes on. The New Life Club successfully encouraged many of its members to film their testimonies for the Shoah Project that was underwritten by director Steven Spielberg with profits from the film, Schindler’s List.
Children of New Life Club members formed The Second Generation group, some of whose members are here today. Today, there are Third Generation members who speak to school groups and make sure that the world always remembers the Holocaust, and the terrible price the world can pay when hate is allowed to flourish. One of the early projects that the Second Generation took on was to advocate for a Holocaust Museum. Now realization of their dream is in prospect, thanks to the County Board of Supervisors appropriating money as well as a publicly-owned space for a Holocaust exhibit to be held for at least a year. The exhibit is curated by Second Generation member Sandra Scheller, the daughter of Ruth and Kurt Sax. The funds are administered by the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
San Diego County is a place that benefitted and was benefitted by Holocaust Survivors. We are richer for their contributions and those of their families.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com