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New study indicates Holocaust survivors
suffered terribly in 2nd Lebanon War
HAIFA, Israel (publicity release)—A quarter of the Holocaust
survivors living in northern Israel who were released from hospitalization
shortly before the war were in immediate need of help during the Second
Lebanon War, but in some cases local authorities were unaware of their
needs.
Researchers found relatively high levels of depression,
psychologically-induced physical ailments and loneliness among the Holocaust
survivors who were residents of Haifa and northern Israel during this
summer's war. The research was conducted by Prof. Ariela Lowenstein,
Dr. Dana Parilutzy, Batya Rappaport an Dafna Halperin of the Center for
Research and Study of Aging at the University of Haifa. The study was
undertaken in behalf of the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust
Survivors in Israel.
The study found a quarter of the survivors in immediate need of personal
care at home, food or medicine. "The study demonstrated the need for
organizing and developing a program specifically for elderly Holocaust
survivors that will answer their basic functional and emotional needs,"
stated Lowenstein, head of the Center for Research and Study of Aging.
The survey identified three main areas of need: home care, medical care and
medications/ food supplies. Many home care workers left the area
fearing the dangers of the Katyusha rockets. Many medical clinics were
closed during the war, rendering medical care and medications inaccessible.
The lack of mobility of some of these elderly survivors prevented them from
acquiring adequate food supplies.
About a third of the survivors found themselves living alone, unable to take
care of their basic needs. A study found 25 percent of the survivors
in immediate need of assistance and that some of the local authorities were
unaware of their needs.
Common responses to the researchers' questions were: "I keep taking
tranquilizers." "I don't have anything to live for." "If I had the
courage, I would kill myself."
Lowenstein said a program now is being undertaken to train professional
teams to deal with the special needs of Holocaust survivors in traumatic
situations.
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The Jewish Grapevine
 YOM
HASHOAH—Hillel Mazansky,
in anticipation of Yom HaShoah, passes on the link to this
CBS video clip on "Hitler's Secret Archives."
Meanwhile the lineup is being finalized for Sunday's communal Yom
HaShoah observance at 1:30 p.m. at the Lawrence Family JCC in La Jolla. The
schedule calls for participation from various members of the New Life
Club of Holocaust Survivors in addition to other dignitaries.
Among
individuals expected to be on the Lawrence Family JCC program are:
Michael Bart, Cantor Mauricio Bogomolny, Gizella and Zoltan
Buchinger, Congresswoman Susan Davis, Lou Dunst, Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ezagui,
Mendel Flaster, Cantor Joseph Furmansky, Eve Gerstle, Joe Goetz, Sol
Kempinski, Dora and Leon Kozin, Hannah Marx, Tovah Marx, Rabbi Scott
Meltzer, Israeli Consul Gillad Milo, Edith and Herman Polak,
Myla Wingard Rosen, Sally and Norman Scheinok, Herbert Siegel, Pastor
Greg Stephens, Eileen Wingard, and Gussie and Mike Zaks.
Meanwhile,
the 6th@Penn Theatre has begun a Human Rights
Festival that will run through August 12, with five of the offerings in the
twelve-program festival having components directly bearing on Jewish
history. Three of these productions will deal with the Holocaust, and two
will examine the Arab-Israeli conflict. From May 24 through June 8, the
theatre will produce Catherine Filloux's Lemkin's House, story of a
man haunted by genocide. Vessels by Kim Yaged deals with lesbian
identity in the Holocaust. It will be performed June 21-July 6.
Fireflies by Charmaine Spencer will follow, July 26-Aug. 12. It
deals with the art of the Terezin ghetto. The Israeli-Palestinian situation
will be addressed May 5 with the showing of the film, Saraida, Woman of
Palestine and May 12, with the film Keep Not Silent: Ortho-Dykes.
Information about these and other programs scheduled during "Resilience
of Spirit: Human rights Festival 2007" may be
accessed via this link.
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Biden
Clinton
Dodd Edwards
Obama Richardson
Democratic presidential hopefuls to woo National Jewish
Democratic Council
WASHINGTON (Publicity Release) – The
National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) will be welcoming Senators Joe
Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Governor
Bill Richardson to speak at its Washington Conference, April 23-25 at
the Almas Temple, 1315 K Street NW in Washington DC.
The candidates will be addressing Democratic Jewish activists from
throughout the country and taking questions on issues ranging from Middle
East politics to church-state matters and other domestic issues.
The conference will also feature DNC
Chairman Howard Dean, Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor, and House Majority
Leader Steny Hoyer. More than two dozen Jewish Senators and Representatives
will be chairing a reception for the attendees.
Real campers from locale of Marjorie Morningstar to
honor'Aunt Ruth' in SD
By Geri Kuscher Pizzi
In the Rancho Bernardo section of San
Diego, where she has been a retiree for 20 years, people know her as
92-year-old Ruth Fineman. But back at Camp Cayuga in the Adirondack
Mountains of New York State, she’s revered as “Aunt Ruth,” mentor to
thousands of summer campers from the 1950s to the 1970s. Along with her
late husband Bill, she ran the camp on Schroon Lake that lives on from that
period in the movie Marjorie Morningstar which starred Natalie Wood
and Gene Kelly.
More than 50 of her former campers have decided to pay tribute to her on the
first weekend of May by having a grand reunion in San Diego—an early
present for her 93rd birthday which falls on May 29. In the eyes
of the former campers, Paradise Point Resort on Mission Bay will be
transformed into Camp Cayuga and legends of both “Aunt Ruth” and of the 1957
filming of Marjorie Morningstar will be relived by campers and former
staffers who will gather from points all over the world.
It all started when Ralle Greenberg, a Cayuga camper and counselor for 14
years, and Marcia Abelson, also a camper, visited Aunt Ruth last December in
San Diego. As they were saying their goodbyes, they asked her what was her
wish for her upcoming birthday. Aunt Ruth responded that she’d love to see
her campers and learn where they were and what they were doing. She added
that if it were to be done, it should be soon because of her advancing age,
and also in the San Diego area because long distance travel was not an
option.
On returning to her home in Connecticut, Greenberg began networking with
other campers. Through Google and an uncountable amount of phone calling to
high school alumni officers, people started to be found. “What was amazing,”
said Greenberg, “was that as people were located, they not only expressed
positive interest in attending the gathering, they also became involved in
the effort to make the reunion a reality.” Old friendships from as many as
five decades ago are being restored—as was always promised in the songs
these campers sang so many years ago.
Ruth and Bill Fineman met at a Pi Alpha Tao sorority dance in Albany in
1934. Ruth, a graduate of New York State University at Albany, remembers it
as “love at first sight.” Bill, a newspaper reporter, had immigrated at a
young age with his family from Manchester, England to Minneapolis, where he
was graduated from the University of Minnesota. He later became a
journalist with the Albany Times Union in New York. The couple
married in 1936 and had a son and daughter. Uncle Bill continued his career
as a journalist and Aunt Ruth taught school.
In 1950, they became involved with a partner in the camp, and later
became its sole owners. When Marjorie Morningstar was filmed on
location at the camp it gave Camp Cayuga a fingerprint that it would retain
until it closed in 1970.
Flag raising scene from Marjorie Morningstar.
In photo at right, writer Geri Kuscher Pizzi
points to a scene featuring Natalie Wood (left) and Carolyn Jones (right) at
that ceremony.
Based on a popular novel by Herman Wouk, the film featured Natalie Wood as
Marjorie, a camp counselor, whose older love interest, Gene Kelly, was an
actor/songwriter residing at South Wind, a nearby resort modeled on the real
Scaroon Manor. In one scene, all the real girl campers of Camp Cayuga got
to participate in a flag-raising ceremony, in which Natalie Wood and her
friend played by Carolyn Jones stood in the front ranks.
While the real-life camp under Aunt Ruth
had plenty of stage productions, color wars, and traditions, nothing could
compare with the thrill the Campers of ’57 had in participating in that
film. Carol Beth Gold, who attended Camp Cayuga for 17 years, remembers when
the filming equipment began to come in. “Natalie Wood and Carolyn Jones
showed up in mink coats and long gloves. We couldn’t understand why they
were dressing like that in the heat of the summer. The poor boys that went
to Cayuga (a coed camp) just watched. They all remember seeing Natalie Wood
being courted by her then boyfriend Robert Wagner…right there at our camp!”
While not in the movie, Wagner, smitten by Wood, hung around on location.
They were married soon afterwards.
One of the scenes in Marjorie Morningstar had Wood and co-star Jones
leaving the camp in a canoe at night to sneak off to a resort down the
lake. Ironically, when Natalie Wood died in a tragic and still mysterious
drowning incident in 1981, there was a great deal of discussion about her
fear of the water.
Following the camp reunion at the beginning of May, Aunt Ruth will be feted
again on her May 29 birthday by the Rancho Bernardo Chapter of Brandeis
University Women for her distinguished work in education and summer camp
direction.
Pizzi, once a camper at Cayuga herself, is a
freelance writer based in Virginia.
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.Advertisement:.J
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Arts
in Review
by
Carol Davis
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Hold Please: Female views on the office
There are two articles of clothing in my wardrobe that I can always count on
for being there whether I gain or lose weight; my shoes and my scarves. So
when Kandis Chappell, in her character as Agatha in Annie Weisman’s Hold
Please at the Old Globe Theatre on the Cassius Carter Center Stage in
Balboa Park, extolled the wearing of pins and scarves as being the right
accessories for business attire, I breathed a sigh of relief. Scarves are my
best new embellishment for I too am of the older generation in a young
workplace. But I get ahead of myself.
Hold Please brings the older, more genteel generation of office worker
together in a sort of face off with the younger, faster, more ambitious.
Weisman’s new work is receiving its debut here in San Diego (it had its
first outing at The South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa) and is
under the skillful direction of Kirsten Brandt, former director of
Sledgehammer Theatre. Brandt has also directed two other shows at The Globe
since leaving San Diego to pursue other avenues, The Intelligent Design
of Jenny Chow and Lobby Hero, both of which won critical acclaim.
She is a master of her craft and here, once again she proves it.
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Hold Please is a is a fast paced comedy/drama that has all
the earmarks of one day becoming the proto type for a sit-com
series. The play opens with the four secretaries, Erika, Agatha,
Jessica and Grace, of a large (or so it seems) business located
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(l-r) Stephanie
Beatriz, Globe Associate Artist Kandis Chappell and Starla Benford
in The Old Globe’s production of HOLD PLEASE, by Annie Weisman,
directed by Kirsten Brandt, playing in the Cassius Carter Centre
Stage March 31 through May 6; photo by Craig Schwartz. |
somewhere in Southern California (SXG&S), |
gathered in a small circle with the leader of that
group holding a red velvet heart. It’s a ‘Truth Telling Session’ that bears
all the earmarks of conspiracy (let’s call it sexual harassment but let’s
not call it that yet) to get rid of one of the top honchos.
Thoughts are not allowed, feelings only and if you stray, you are brought
right back into the fold by its leader, Agatha. She has been there the
longest and has her story, as they all do, but we need to wait our turn to
hear it. The heart is passed around and the only one allowed to speak is the
one holding the heart. It’s funny at a first glance, but not ha, ha funny.
It also has its cynical moments and in light of the advancements of the
Women’s Movement where there are more opportunities, kumbaya fests
and camaraderie in the workplace, there is also more backstabbing,
gossip and conniving or so it seems.
Working the phones on Michael Vaughn Sims’ sprawling set on the theatre in
the round with sleek looking modules set up as tables, desks, file cabinets,
and of course, the ever blinking phones with more buttons flashing than a
series of red lights along Harbor Drive, (David Lee Cuthbert) the women tend
to do business, i.e. answer the phones, take messages, and drink their
Starbucks in between telling their stories.
They take turns at answering the phones, taking notes, mocking each other
and having a one upsy as to how fast they answer and if they
got all the initials in the business name correct.
In one of the funnier scenes when all four are together, watching Erika and
Jessica try to teach Grace and Agatha the new phone system, hits a raw nerve
here. They just don’t get it, and watching them trying to maneuver the
buttons is simply too funny. I can identify! So my next question is, “Can
we really teach old dogs new tricks?” I wonder. The younger set are always
looking to the future and what it holds. Sadly, the older generation is
looking back. It’s a cruel world out there, downsizing is the way of the
future and the strongest survive. It’s not a new concept.
The younger women dress casually (Mary Larson), the more mature,
conservatively, each showing their individuality, but Erika (Stephanie
Beatriz) pushes the cleavage card to a point and gets grief from it later
on. She’s having an affair with one of the wigs and plays a little phone sex
between answering calls. Unfortunately hers is a story told in countless
offices across countless boardrooms. It seldom turns out positive in the end
and Beatriz plays the roll perfectly. She is sexy, spunky, emotional and
aloof in turn, and tries to mind her own business in the meantime. She is a
survivor as we soon see.
Her counterpart, Jessica (Kate Arrington) is an odd duck She’s in a
relationship that requires physical abuse for it to work. Her daffy remarks,
which leave you scratching your head wondering what she just said, is one of
the endearing things about Weisman’s piece. She is clever, witty and take
you by surprise. Aside from the fact that Jessica still can’t make up her
mind as to what she wants to be when she grows up, she considers her options
throughout the play. She might be a lawyer or a rapper. She has connections.
Arrington’s performance is quite amazing as she changes her mind and her
options for opportunities, as fast as a chameleon changes color.
Grace (Starla Bedford) has the quiet calm of someone you would want to work
with. Although she has been there and done that, she seems at peace with
herself and doesn’t seem to want much more. Watching her phone manners and
comparing them to the two younger secretaries, (she’s the one who wears the
pin as an accent) you know why she has had her job for so long. Both Agatha
and Grace have, most likely, forgotten what these younger women have yet to
learn.
Chappell’s performance as Agatha is, as is to be expected with anything she
does, amazing and done with aplomb. Her harshness, when she chides the
others for stealing her Nutter Butters that she hides behind the microwave,
is in sharp contrast to her softer reminiscences of her less successful
climb up the corporate ladder. Unfortunately, her story is the least
believable of the four. Perhaps because her tale of an embarrassing
situation that happened years ago, sounds trite now it gives pause as to why
Weisman couldn’t have come up with a better one for that character. That’s
the one drawback to Weisman’s otherwise clever set up. But you be the judge.
Weisman, a graduate of Williams College, is a native of San Diego who grew
up in Del Mar. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Her other works include
Be Aggressive, which had its debut at The La Jolla Playhouse,
Surf Report, and The Essential Alice. Her play, Hold Please
is an interesting take on the workplace today. If you are in it, you will
identify. If you are not, this might be a good time to check it out.
Hold Please will continue through May 6th on the Cassius Carter Center
Stage of The Old Globe. For more information call 619-234-5623 or on line
at: www.theoldglobe.com.
See you at the theatre.
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 Jews
in the News
-----------------------------------------------------------------
News spotters: Dan Brin in Los Angeles,
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego., Marsha Sutton in North San Diego County. If you'd like to be a spotter in your
California city, please contact Harrison at
sdheritage@cox.net.
_______________________________________________________________________
*Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been weighing a boost in
interest rates to ward off inflation, the Associated Press
reports in today's San Diego Union-Tribune.
*U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) was one of the co-sponsors of the
Republican version of the stem-cell research bill, which allows research on
cells of embryos that are "naturally dead." Michael Luo of the New
York Times news service tells
the story in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
*Stan Daniels, writer and producer of television's Mary Tyler Moore
show and co-creator of Taxi, has died. Valerie J. Nelson wrote
the obituary in today's Los Angeles Times
*As foreclosures on homes across the nation mount, U.S. Sen. Charles
Schumer (D-N.Y.) is mulling a bill to provide aid to homeowners.
Associated Press reporters Alan Zibel and Dan Caterinicchia tell
the story in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
* The Six Million Jewish victims of the Holocaust are remembered
in a photography exhibit on Nazi Concentration Camps
reviewed in today's San Diego Union-Tribune by art critic Robert
L. Pincus.
*The role of U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and others in the
outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert intelligence agent
is discussed by columnist Robert Novak in today's San Diego
Union-Tribune.
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LRS Newsletter file