shoah foundation

First Spanish Shoah conference promotes Jewish history lessons

By Anshel Pfeffer

The first international conference on the Holocaust held in Spain ended Wednesday. The conference on the Holocaust and its significance today was organized by Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research (IIHR) and was held at the High Council for Scientific Investigations in Madrid. Experts and teachers from Israel and from across Europe attended the gathering.

Spanish schools are set to introduce the Holocaust into their national history curriculum in the near future.


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Prof. David Bankier, head of IIHR, said the idea for the conference grew out of "Spain's desire to be part of what is happening in Europe." He cited the country's decision to join the European Union's task force for Holocaust education. Bankier said that although Spain's involvement in the Holocaust was limited - on the one hand, Spain refused to shelter Jews who had escaped via the Pyrenees Mountains, while on the other hand Spanish diplomats assisted in efforts in Budapest to save Jews - the country wants to be part of the growing European interest in the issue.

Spain's involvement in the Holocaust may have been limited, but two specific subjects connect Spain and the Jews. The first concerns the Fascist regime of Francisco Franco, which enjoyed the active support of Nazi Germany during its Civil War and continued to support Hitler during World War II. Franco made use of anti-Semitic motifs in his propaganda, but in mid-1943, when he sensed the way the wind was blowing, he opened Spain's gates to Jewish refugees on the assumption that the action would help him after the war.

The second concerns the 1492 expulsion of the country's Jews. "The new desire to learn about the Holocaust is connected to the total ignorance about Jews and Jewish history" in Spain, Bankier says. "Even educated people don't know anything about the magnificent Jewish culture that existed here."

In attendance at the conference, which was sponsored by the Marc Rich Foundation for Education, Culture and Welfare in Switzerland, were a large number of Spanish government officials, including the director general of the Education Ministry, who declared that the Holocaust would become a mandatory part of Spain's high school curriculum.
School building plan online
September 30, 2007

The site and floor plans for the $65 million renovation of Beverly High School have been posted on the school district's website, beverlyschools.org. The centerpiece of the high school will be a new academic wing. The four-story, 140,000-square-foot building will connect to the high school's existing auditorium, field house, and cafeteria. Work is expected to begin in June and be completed by winter 2010. - Steven Rosenberg

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For the last seven or eight years, Smith, 31, has been compiling a family tree, which today includes more than 2,300 descendants of a single Hungarian ancestor, Leib Oberlander, born near Drohobych, Galicia, and who later settled in a small town, Chinadievo, near Mukachevo (the old Hungarian name is Munkacs, pronounced Munkatch in Yiddish).

He's traveled the world meeting relatives in the US, Israel, France, Hungary and Ukraine, conducted archival research in Europe and attempted to account for the family's Shoah victims and survivors.

Two years ago, says Smith, "I had about 1,400 names on the family tree, and I thought I was almost done!" He thought it would be a shame if he didn't compile everything into a book, because "if I don't do it, I'm sure no one else will."

Along the way, he's discovered family in France, Argentina, USA, UK, Germany, Ukraine, Slovakia, Australia, Costa Rica and Israel (from Nahariya to Eilat). The earliest relatives made aliya circa 1935; the most recent in 2006.

Overall, Smith has found the family to be extremely warm. He believed that "If I had all of these people together, there were enough commonalities that people would be able to connect well with one another." He began planning the family reunion for last summer, but the Lebanon war postponed it.

On August 22, family from the US, Germany, France and Hungary joined the Israeli relatives, some 150 in all, at Neot Kedumim. "It obviously had to be in Israel," he says, as numerically, about half the family lives in Israel. "It is symbolic to have everyone together in our homeland."

As a side activity, and because there was a great deal of gratitude for what he had accomplished, Smith decided to invite people to donate funds to the JNF/KKL to plant trees in the family's honor. "We've raised more than $11,000," he says.

Smith's research benefited from his linguistic abilities in Hebrew, French, Spanish, and a bit of Hungarian.

He has personally conducted research in Hungarian, Ukrainian and Israeli archives (Yad Vashem, Central Zionist Archives and Safed's Hungarian Museum), hired researchers in Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia, used the Shoah Foundation database, US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) survivor database and JewishGen, where he's a Hungarian Special Interest Group member and has provided microfilms and transcriptions to help other researchers.

Connecting the dots
During his research, parallel processes were occurring. Smith was receiving Ukrainian archival records, "some seemed relevant to my family, others less so." Concurrently, he was contacting living relatives in the US and Israel, trying to connect the dots.

"I had five large family trees with many loose ends," he says. "Speaking to family helped piece it together." The more Ukrainian records he received, the more he could connect and eventually the five became one tree.

"I had a unique opportunity to be brought into people's lives. I got used to calling strangers and telling them that I was their long-lost cousin," says Smith, adding that although they responded differently, almost all responded positively.

When it came to the Israeli cousins, he says, "I think that before I even got to the explanation, they were already asking me when I was coming to visit!" He began to travel frequently to Israel, was warmly welcomed into many homes and immediately treated like close family. "I felt a strong sense of closeness from the Israelis and, since many were more closely connected to the Shoah, they had a strong sense of family."

This contrasted somewhat with Smith's experience with American relatives: "The Israelis responded more emotionally to the family tree, while the Americans responded more analytically."

The family
About a year ago, Smith's earliest document was an 1852 marriage record from Chinadievo, near Mukachevo (Munkacs). The groom, Shepsel Oberlander, son of Leib, was born in Chinadievo in 1830.

Smith contacted an Israeli researcher looking for Oberlanders from Galicia (formerly Austro-Hungary, then Poland, now Ukraine) from Drohobych. He was perplexed, because the Israeli's family tree began with Shepsel Oberlander, son of Josef. He speculated that they were the same family, that the two Shepsels were named for a common grandfather.

Scholars agree that the Jews of eastern Hungary migrated into Hungary from Galicia, which was the province of Austro-Hungary. Drohobych is about 80 miles north across the Carpathian Mountains. At this point, Smith decided to use DNA testing with Family Tree DNA. Two male Oberlanders were tested - one from Smith's side and one from the Israeli side - resulting in a Y-DNA genetic match.

Smith believes the family acquired the name in Galicia in 1787. Leib Oberlander, born near Drohobych in 1800, migrated to Chinadievo, where he married and started a family around 1830. The couple had at least six children, whose descendants now number 2,300 and growing.

Reunions of another sort
Smith nearly reunited two brothers separated by the Shoah. Their mother was an Oberlander, and their father a Weisz.

Sandor Weisz arrived in the US immediately after WWII, and Americanized his name to Alexander White. His brother, Laszlo, was born in Hungary, but was stuck in the Soviet Union after WWII. Each knew the other had survived, but the KGB confiscated letters that Laszlo received from his brother.

Laszlo escaped to Hungary, wrote to Sandor at his last Chicago address, not knowing he had moved to California. Alexander had also travelled to Hungary searching unsuccessfully for Laszlo, while Laszlo asked for help from Jewish agencies.

When Smith heard the story, he called the USHMM (Washington, DC), and asked if their survivor database included Alexander White, born in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary. Yes, they replied. Smith called the family, spoke to Alexander's wife and learned he had died of pancreatic cancer just two months earlier.