Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1992-08-27

              The Ohio Jewish Chronicle
Serving Columbus and the Central Ohio
Jewish Community since 1922
VOLUME 70
NUMBER 35
AUGUST 27, 1992
28 AV 5752
GOP platform
supportive of Israel
, .   Pa8? 2
Clinton offers
stand on Israel
FEATURE
page 2
Israel '92 participants
to meet with Peres
page 7
Camv offers a summer haven from harsh realities
v/v*     jf     jj   Foundation. JDC    Jews in Israel then lam vei
CRC launches
voter registration
page 7
Hebrew classes begin
Sept. 16 at LYJCC
page 12
EARLY DEADLINE
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Viewpoint
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4-6
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There are no shootings,
there is food on the table at
every meal; there is no bloodshed, there is tennis and horseback riding; there is no ethnic
strife, there are unlimited
friendships to be made.
For youths from troubled
areas like the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet
Union, a summer camp in
Szarvas, Hungary, provides a
haven of tranquility from the
chaos that has surrounded
them for the past months.
"You cannot understand
what it's like for us from Belo-
russia to spend two weeks in a
place where there is unlimited
food on the table at every
meal, where we can leave our
rooms unlocked without fear
of being robbed, where we can
have as much fun as we like,
feel happy, Jewish, free," said
counselor Alia Romanovna.
The Ronald S. Lauder Foundation/American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee International Summer Camp was
opened in 1990. This summer
1,525 Jewish youngsters hailing from Hungary, the former
Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, Czechoslavakia, Bulgaria and Poland are expected
to attend. The camp is supported with funds from the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and
the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. .
The counselors are mainly
from Israel and Hungary and
are required to participate in a
training program during the
year. Their two main goals are
to help the children learn as
much about their Jewish roots
- as possible and to have an enjoyable, memorable camp experience.
Campers 8 to 17-year-old
participate in the unusual array of camp activities, swimming, basketball and arts and
crafts, while learning Jewish
songs, prayers and traditions.
In addition to the children,
200 guests attended the opening ceremony for the 1992 sea
son. Among them were Charles
Thomas, ambassador of the
United States; David Kraus,
ambassador of Israel; Zoltai
Gusztav, the executive director of the Jewish Communities of Hungary, and Axana
Sternberg, vice president of
the Lauder Foundation. JDC
President Sylvia Hassenfeld
chaired the ceremony.
A young girl from Minsk
confided to her Israeli counselor, "I have never in my entire life seen Jews so happy
and joyous. If there are such
Jews in Israel then I am very
much encouraged to belong to
this people."
Activities of the JDC are
funded by the regular campaigns of the United Jewish
Appeal and Federations
throughout the United States.
FEATURE
Where the Wislok meets the San
.*  U      1...A        Cir-latA     ill PI
By Dr. Carole Fink
The night was very dark,
very quiet and indeed somewhat frightening. The air was
a bit chilly and the ground
drenched after the rainfall in
the afternoon. My shoes stuck
in the mud, and slipping was a
real possibility. It was awkward carrying the camera and
handbag, which should have
been left in the farmhouse or
perhaps in the car.
We were going to the spot
where two rivers meet, about
three kilometers north of
Tryncza, where Galicia touches the old kingdom of Poland.
How many people have headed for this beautiful spot in the
last century? Did my grandmother ever find her way here;
did her brothers or her sisters?
Did  my  great-grandparents
stroll here on a summer night
in July? When there were no
lights from the road or the village to provide far-off beacons, did the nights, starry and
a little chill, hold the same
kind of mystery and perhaps
the same edge of fear?
And of what is there to be
frightened? I am in Poland,
the descendent of a people destroyed or removed from this
place. A hundred years ago,
my plucky i 5-year-old grandmother, Rose Ringler, and her
cousin joined the exodus westward and across the Atlantic.
Except for one sister, Rose
eventually brought her entire
family to America. Those who
remained behind in Tryncza
were sent to camps or were
killed; two miraculously es-
C-IDCQ
Of three-and-a-half million
Polish Jews there are only
traces: ruined synagogues and
cemeteries, monuments and
research institutes, words and
memories of a people that
lived here for a thousand
years. Those who are elsewhere have carried Poland
with them on their tongues, in
their songs, in their language; I
have it, too, I think, but how
to discover it?
How to discover the physical essence of a lost world? Is it
in the summer cherries in Galicia, the gentile hills and
winding streams and rivers,
the quaint wooden homes and
bams, the cows and the chickens, the storks and the wild
rabbis, the old peasants in
horse-drawn  carts and the
blond-haired children, the
tiny railway station with its
ceramic stove and world-connecting timetable?
1 am sleeping in a poor
farmhouse that once belonged
to my family and is now inhabited by the former servants. They have no plumbing
and few possessions, but they
have photographs of my relatives. Fifty years ago, the
 -j^^thor fHplena Haras)
and her mother ("Matca )
saved two distant relatives of
mine when they plucked two
young girls from the nearby
camp ("ghetto") where everyone else was killed; they gave
them their identity cards so
they could live. Since then,
they have had no contact with
the saved ones. Their "case" is
under investigation by an organization that identified
righteous Christians; some
day Helena Haras may be honored for her and her dead
mother's gesture. I am the first
member of my family to visit
Tryncza since the war.
Helena's daughter, Danuta,
works in a textile factory, has
two children and is pregnant;
she is bright, warm and witty.
Her husband, also a factory
worker who was orphaned at
ten, has a tiny plot of land; he
has worked for a.year in Germany to buy bricks and cinder
blocks to build a bathroom.
The bricks are piled high in
the courtyard, but there is no
money to start construction.
The two young blond girls,
Beate and Camilla, are extremely shy. The grandmother, about 65, and the grandfather, with a broken leg and a
crutch, take the cows out to
the pasture every morning.
Helena and Danuta ask repeatedly about the saved
Chanya and Helena: how are
they? what is their life? It
seems that this terrible moment when the Germans
grabbed and killed the last
Jews from one tiny village
called Tryncza, when two servant women risked their lives
for two young girls, became a
precious moment.
Danuta knows the story by
heart. It was she who \o«k me
see WISLOK p*. 3