Please enlarge your screen to read this letter.
Disclaimer: Rose is a friend of the author, BUT no one to date has detailed the book’s contents more rigorously than she has.
The author has framed this letter and placed it in a position of prominence in her home.
Thank you, Rose.
Sincerely,
Joan Arnay Halperin
Frontiere da Paz (Frontier of Peace) Museum at Vilar Formoso, #Portugal
Architecture and museography:
Luísa Pacheco Marques (pictured above) with Milena Raposo and João Gomes
Commissioner and Research:
Margarida de Magalhães Ramalho
Letter from Leah Rozenfeld Sills, daughter of Sousa Mendes Visa Recipient Stefan Rozenfeld and Vice-President of the Sousa Mendes Foundation
Dear Friends,
Last month, I had the opportunity to visit the museum at Vilar Formoso.
What was created there was so moving and memorable that when I stepped in the door, I started to weep.
A museum made for us- It was that emotional Every step and exhibit was designed with the refugees and their families in mind. The photos, facts, videos, and interactive screens taught me about the people and the events that I never even knew were part of our story! I cannot wait to see it again this summer.
With affection on this beautiful fall day in NY,
Leah
Sousa Mendes visa recipients gather at Cafe Europa, Figueira da Foz waiting for news of the war and where they will be accepted next. (Photo courtesy Joan Arnay Halperin )
Retrace the footsteps of Aristides de Sousa Mendes and the refugees of 1940 beginning in Bordeaux and ending in Lisbon.
Visit sites germane to the dramatic and moving story, including Bayonne, Hendaye, Vilar Formoso, Cabanas de Viriato, Porto, and Figueira da Foz** along with Sousa Mendes grandchildren and visa recipient families.
Holocaust Educators will receive a courtesy copy of the book My Sister’s Eyes: A Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II by Joan Arnay Halperin and instruction on use of the special Curricular Unit created under the guidance of Holocaust educator Jane Robins Denny,
* Limited to Visa Recipient Families and Holocaust Educators
**Preliminary itinerary. Program subject to change.
Dever de Memória-Projeto UNSECO aecs - The Duty of Memory #NeverAgain
Joan with UNESCO teachers - Dores do Carmo, Lurdes Cruz and Josefa Reis - and student presenters.
Joan with presenters and audience.
Mariana Abrantes, Luso-Americana and Treasurer of the Sousa Mendes Foundation with Dores do Carmo and Joan.
Joan Arnay Halperin brings her family's story of rescue and loss during #WWII to Figueira da Foz and Carregal do Sal on an educational book tour. Students and teachers listen and react and the press takes notice.
How to BUY My Sister's Eyes: A Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II!
Yvonne Krakowiak's Minho yarn doll on display at the Fronteira da Paz Museum in Vilar Formoso, Portugal. Picture above: Alberto Malafaia, Hala and Ignas Krakowiak with the automobile the Krakowiaks drove to safety (c. 1940-41). Pictured below: Hala and Ignas seated in front of their barrack at Gibraltar Camp, Kingston, Jamaica, where the couple found refuge after they were evacuated from Portugal on January 24, 1942.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes visa recipients and grandsons were welcomed by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa during the Sousa Mendes Foundation's 2016 - "Journey on the Road to Freedom" visit to the Presidential Place, Lisbon, Portugal.
L-R: Gerald Mendes, Stefan Rozenfeld, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Lissy Jarvik, Sebastian Michael Edward Mendes, Antonio Pedro Moncada Sousa Mendes.
"Uprising" the film directed by #jonavnet is a powerful statement about the courage of the men and women fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt.
Dr. Michael Berenbaum is on the Sousa Mendes Advisory Council and was the first scholar to bless My Sister's Eyes with these kind words:
“My Sister’s Eyes is a charming work written with precision and passion. It tells the story of the Krakowiak family from their prosperous life in Poland and Belgium through the Nazi onslaught and their perilous flight to freedom. The story unfolds so graciously that one does not quite realize its power as we experience the world before in its elegance, the descent into hell, the struggle to find a way out of Europe, the moral heroism of the Portuguese Consul in Bordeaux and then their escape from the inferno and their journey to a new world and a new life. And just as they are about to reach safety, they experience a tragedy – and later freedom and stability, birth and rebirth. The brevity of the work intensifies the depth of the journey, the words that are written and what cannot be written.” —Michael Berenbaum, Director, Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University
"Uprising" Q & A with Dr. Michael Berenbaum (l.), director Jon Avnet (c.) and actor Jon Voight. Voight, who plays a Nazi commander in this film. Voight, a man who loves #Israel. explains how his deep appreciation of the Jewish peole came about.
Lolek Kaplan (above), a soldier in the Polish Army. was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Buza River, Warsaw, Poland in September 1939 and sent to Stalag IIA, Neubrandenburg. He was later released and incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Great-granddaughter of Sousa Mendes visa recipients Hala and Ignas Krakowiak pictured below at the current exhibition: Vedem: The Underground Magazine of the Terezin Ghetto.
Here she is presenting copies of My Sister's Eyes to April Slabosheski (center), Director of Education at OJMCHE. Her grandmother and author of the book, Joan Arnay Halperin, looks on with pride.
OJMCHE makes Holocaust Educational Trunks available to middle and high school teachers for use in their classrooms to study Holocaust Rescuers among other subjects.
- Sunday, April 8, 2018
Joan's presentation of My Sister's Eyes , the story of how her family was rescued by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, to the Confirmation class of Congregation Adas Emuno was one such occaision.
Rabbi Barry Schwartz, the religious leader of the congregation, is a good teacher. This was evident by the thoughtful follow-up questions he posed to Joan and the class.
Rabbi Schwartz is also a prolific writer as well as director of the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia, the nation's oldest and best known Jewish publisher. The society has just published Dr. Mordecai Paldiel's latest book, Saving One's Own , which recounts the stories of Jewish Resucers during the Holocaust.
Thank you Rabbi for helping to share the story of My Sister's Eyes
My parents, Ignas and Hala; my sister Yvonne; my Uncle Hipek and Aunt Zosia; and my grandmother Julia Krakowiak are not listed on any of the Portuguese Consulate register pages created during those tumultuous days in 1940, when Aristides de Sousa Mendes gave a second chance at life to thousands of desperate refugees.
This testimonial recorded on January 1, 1989 in New York is proof that my family was among them.
Hala died never knowing whom to thank. Aristides de Sousa Mendes died never receiving the expressions of gratitude that thousands would have liked to have shown him.
This is my homage to them.
Photos and stories that did not make it into My Sister's Eyes will be shared with Figueira da Foz's, Escola Básica Dr.João de Barros, teacher Helena Romão and her students who used the book to learn about one family saved by the #Portuguese #Holocaust rescuer Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
Many thanks to Arquiteta Luísa Pacheco Marques curator of the Fronteira da Paz Museum for the care shown to my sister Yvonne's Minho yarn doll, a parting gift from Alberto Malafaia, Portuguese friend of the Krakowiak family.
Alberto Malafaia (standing above left) , Hala and Ignas Krakowiak, Figueira da Foz, 1940-41.
Tell me honestly, if you can find a bettter example anywhere.
Google images for vintage Minho yarn dolls.
Speaking to an engaged group of 6th grade students who have already visited the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Long island and heard the testimonies of two Holocaust survivors, Joan had the priviledge of sharing the story of how the #Holocaust hero, Portuguese Consul General Aristides de Sousa Mendes, saved the lives of thousands of desperate refugees by issuing visas for safe-haven in Portugal.
To the credit of their librarian, Ms. Ellen Widawsky, and the three sixth grade teachers the students are deepening their understanding of this the darkest of periods in world history by studying ghettos, Righteous Among the Nations and other details of the Shoah (The Hebrew word which appears in the Bible more than a dozen times, always to signify complete and utter destruction.)
The Chatterton School in Merrick, LI, NY is an example of the New York State school system at its best.
Keep up the good work. #NEVERAGAIN.
Congratulations to Íris, Patrícia, Catarina, Inês, João, Beatriz, Afonso, André, Matilde, and Duarte..
já começaram as suas micro-pesquisas, sobre personalidades da época do Holocausto (who have started their micro-inquiry into personalities of that time. ?? How's my Portuguese coming along??).
Here is their blog: The Freedom Lighthouse
Ignas, Hala and Yvonne Krakowiak were saved by visas issued by #Holocaust hero Aristides de Sousa Mendes. This photo was taken at Carnaval time. Yvonne is wearing a traditional Minho dress loaned to her by a sympathetic Portuguese friend of the family, Alberto Malafaia. Forte Santa Caterina - Figueira da Foz 1941.
This text and photos below are taken from the Figueira da Foz student blog:
VINTE E CINCO EXEMPLARES DA OBRA "MY SISTER'S EYES" ESTÃO A CHEGAR À ESCOLA EB 2,3 DR. JOÃO DE BARROS
É verdade! Graças ao esforço primeiro da autora Joan Halperin e da gentileza solidária da Sousa Mendes Foundation (Olivia Mattis) e da Drª Mariana Abrantes, vão chegar e poderão ser requisitados pelos nossos alunos! Obrigada a todas! Ah! E chegarão outros tantos marcadores de leitura...
Mariana Abrantes, Treasurer @SousaMendesFdn with Helana Romao, teacher Figueira da Foz High School (above) and Dores Do Carmo teacher UNESCO School Cabanas di Viriato, Portugal (below). Water color of Do Passal (lower right corner) the ancestral home of Aristides de Sousa Mendes by UNESCO school teacher Josefa Reis.
Figuiera da Foz Light House of Freedom. Water color of Do Passal, the ancestral home of Aristides de Sousa Mendes by Josefa Reis.
Yvonne Krakowiak between two refugee children (left) and four Portuguese friends, Figueira da Foz, 1941.
My mother never knew what happened to her family - the Kaplan Family of Lodz, Poland.
The last she knew, they had been trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Every Yom Kippur she stayed in bed and did not get up. She said, "This is the one day I allow my self to mourn for my family."
The rest of the days she lived life. My mother Hala (nee Kaplan) Krakowiak Arnay "ז״ל" died in NYC in 1999. She was saved from her family's fate by a visa from Aristides de Sousa Mendes.
Joan will be presenting My Sister's Eyes: A Family Chronicle of Rescue and Loss During World War II , her family's story, and speaking about the debt of gratitude she feels to Aristides de @SousaMendesFdn for having given them visas for safe haven in Portugal in June of 1940.
Here are the dates:
March 6th to a sixth grade on Long Island, NY;
April 7th to a synagogue study group in New Jersey;
April 20th to a synagogue congregation on Long Island, NY;
May 22nd to a high school history club on Long Island, NY;
June 6th and 13th to two high schools in #Portugal.
