Children

Manfred Goldwein's German parents in 1938, fearing the growing terror that was to become known as the Holocaust, arranged for their only child to be sent to America. He was thirteen years old. In his travel diary about his voyage to freedom, which Manfred immediately sent to his parents, he wrote, "I hope that you will be over here soon. But meanwhile, may God bless you and keep you in good health. May He free you very soon...so that we may be together in a country that is too great to describe."

In 1946, still not knowing the fate of his parents, Manfred searched for them in his hometown of Korbach, Germany. A gentile neighbor had something for him. At risk to her own life, she had hidden Manfred's diary and his parents’ last letters to him. His mother wrote, "I know that you and all the dear ones over there have done all to save us, but fate decided otherwise. Don't forget us, my dear son, as we shall never forget you. Farewell, my dear child. I hug and kiss you. Your mother." His father, a Rabbi, wrote, “You must not be sad, for we are in God's Dear Hand and really in God's own land. I love you for ever and ever."

Manfred, later to become a distinguished American physician and teacher, had found the fate of his parents, victims of Nazi persecution that ended for them in Auschwitz.

Richard Schifter was an only child. Determined their son must survive, his parents sent him to America in 1938, where he soon became conversant in English, graduated first in his high school class and later second in his class at the City University of New York. He fulfilled his life's dream when he became an American Ambassador for Human Rights and Special Assistant to an American President. Unable to save his own parents from the catastrophe of the Holocaust, he worked to get Jews out of Russia and told them, "I didn't get my parents out, but I won't fail you." And he didn't. Visit here to see this OTC story Video.

In 1934, Jack Steinberger and his brother were sent to America by their parents, who feared the worst about what was happening in Germany. After graduating from high school, Jack worked in the family delicatessen to earn the money to attend college, where he studied chemical engineering and later physics. In 1988, Jack and two colleagues (Leon M. Lederman and Melvin Schwartz) won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of new sub-atomic particles.

"Things took a dramatic turn when I was entering my teens in Germany. In 1933, the Nazis came to power and the more systematic persecution of the Jews followed quickly. Laws were enacted which excluded Jewish children from higher education in public schools. When, in 1934, the American Jewish charities offered to find homes for 300 German refugee children, my father applied for my older brother and myself. We were on the SS Washington, bound for New York, Christmas 1934." Quoted from here.

Bill Graham's funeral memorial was attended by thousands of ordinary people and the creme de la creme of the world of Rock and Roll. He was Bill Graham, the legendary impresario and father of the modern American music business who launched such icons of Rock as, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. He was born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin and at the age of eleven was brought to America to stay with a foster family in N.Y.C. http://www.billgrahamfoundation.org/bio.html. A good book about him, including his rescue and childhood is Bill Graham Presents by Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield, Delta, Dell Books, 1992.

Werner Michel arrived in America at age twelve with no knowledge of English and was initially placed in kindergarten. He became a career officer, served in three wars and was Director of Counterintelligence and Security at the Defense Intelligence Agency and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight with responsibility for oversight of all Department of Defense intelligence and counterintelligence activities worldwide.

Kurt Steinbrecher attended the University of Washington where he obtained a B.S. in Zoology, a B.S. in Pharmacy, and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry. I have worked as a registered pharmacist, but I spent 33 years as a chemist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration District Laboratory in Seattle. I have been retired for the last 6 years. In between my college school years, my deferment expired and I served 2 years in the US Army, in Stuttgart, during the Korean War. Besides conducting choirs and occasionally being a soloist, I still loved singing and I got a chance of doing it in, of all places, the army. The 7th Army Symphony was stationed in Stuttgart, and I became friends with a pianist who was on the Symphony roster. He persuaded me to audition for a concert good will tour through the British and French zones of Germany on behalf of the State Department sponsored Amerika Hauses with him as my accompanist. We got the gig, and we spent 2 months rehearsing and touring. He did Ravel?s Le Tombeau de Couperin, and we did Schumann?s Dichterliebe. It was really a lot of fun. When I returned to the States, I did some singing with the University of Washington Opera Theater and the Festival Opera Company. I entered the Metropolitan Opera Auditions where I made the Regional finals, and the San Francisco opera auditions where I made second place.

Perhaps more than anyone, Henny Wenkart – publisher philosopher, writer, translator, and poet – is responsible for establishing the field of Jewish women's literature and encouraging and publishing feminist Jewish writers.

To honor Henny and continue the valuable work she has initiated, Kolot is endowing the Henny Wenkart Kolot Writer-in-Residence program. The endowment will enable Kolot to continue in perpetuity our tradition of bringing feminist Jewish writers to enrich the community and the next generation of rabbis so that they may incorporate this literature into our liturgy.

Henny founded the Jewish Women's Poetry Workshop in New York, which she has led for over 15 years, and she has brought the work of Jewish women writers to public attention through her many publishing ventures, including Sarah's Daughters Sing (KTAV 1990), the Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Vols. 1-4, her co-edited collection Which Lilith? (Jason Aronson 1998), and her own book of poetry, Love Poems of a Philanderer's Wife (Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishers, Jewish Women's Resource Center, co-publisher 2005).

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"I loved reading as long as I can remember," Tamar once commented, "and I've always liked telling a story. I think I always wanted to be a writer." Born in Vienna, Austria, Tamar came to the United States at the age of four. "I was young enough to pick up English very easily," Tamar recalled, "yet old enough to be conscious of learning another language; perhaps that contributed to my awareness of words and their nuances of meaning."

Tamar attended New York University where she majored in English with an emphasis on creative writing. However, a class in screenwriting led her to other classes in film production, and by the time of her graduation she was interested in television or film, "another way of telling a story," she explained. She became for five years a production assistant and casting director for a television serial, Search for Tomorrow.

Marriage and children soon followed. With the birth of her first child, the family moved to Port Washington on Long Island. "I was a full-time mom," she related, "and satisfied my creative urge by getting involved with community theater. I didn't concentrate seriously on writing for many years; the necessary solitude of writing clashed with my rather gregarious and extroverted personality, and it took some maturity to muster the self-discipline. It was the young adult novels that my children brought home that spurred me—the 'I can do that' syndrome." A writing workshop at the New School with Margaret Gabel was very helpful. Her work with television and film gave her a keen visual sense. "I still find that my ideas for books start with visual images," she commented. And her work with community theater instilled the idea of character creation in her. "I see a strong correlation between acting and writing—the ability to slip into character is what I rely on when I'm working on a book."