Yaffa Eliach

Yaffa Eliach (May 31, 1935 – November 8, 2016 ) was an American historian, author, and scholar of Judaic studies and the Holocaust. In 1974, she founded the Center for Holocaust Studies, Documentation and Research in Brooklyn, New York, which collected over 2,700 audio interviews of Holocaust survivors as well as thousands of physical artifacts. Eliach created the "Tower of Faces" made up by 1,500 photographs for permanent display at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Biography Yaffa Eliach was born Sonia Sonenzon (Yiddish name Shayna) to a Jewish family in Ejszyszki (/Eishyshok) near Vilna. It is a small town now Eišiškės, Lithuania, but before the war it was part of Second Polish Republic, and had a Jewish majority until the Holocaust. When the town was occupied by the Germans in June 1941, most of the Jewish population were murdered by the Germans and Lithuanians, including 200 of Eliach's relatives. The family members were:

Father Moshe Mother Zipporah Older brother Yitzhak Shayna (Yaffa) Baby brother Hayyim (I), who died when other refugees in an attic in Radin muffled his crying, which would have betrayed their hiding-place Baby brother Hayyim (II), born later while they were still in hiding

In 1944, following the Soviet takeover of the town from Nazi Germany, Eliach's family returned to the town. Soon thereafter, her father again became involved with the Soviet authorities. Her father began to house Soviet soldiers. The principal of her school was David Eliach, whom she married in 1953.

Career From 1969, Eliach served as a professor of history and literature in the department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College.

Eliach served as a member of President Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Holocaust in 1978-79 and accompanied his fact-finding mission to Eastern Europe in 1979. bringing the Jews back to life.

In memory of her hometown, Eliach created the "Tower of Life", a permanent exhibit that contains approximately 1,500 photos of Jews in Eishyshok before the arrival of the Germans for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

In 1953, Eliach married David Eliach, and nine great-grandchildren, at the time of her death in New York on November 8, 2016.

Works Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust Eliach is the author of Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press). Derived from interviews and oral histories, these eighty-nine original Hasidic tales about the Holocaust provide unprecedented witness, in a traditional idiom, to the victims' inner experience of "unspeakable" suffering. This volume constitutes the first collection of original Hasidic tales to be published in a century.

According to Chaim Potok, Hasidic Tales is "An important work of scholarship and a sudden clear window onto the heretofore sealed world of the Hasidic reaction to the Holocaust. Its true stories and fanciful miracle tales are a profound and often poignant insight into the souls of those who suffered terribly at the hands of the Nazis and who managed somehow to use that very suffering as the raw material for their renewed lives." And, as Robert Lifton wrote "Yaffa Eliach provides us with stories that are wonderful and terrible -- true myths. We learn how people, when suffering dying, and surviving can call forth their humanity with starkness and clarity. She employs her scholarly gifts only to connect the tellers of the tales, who bear witness, to the reader who is stunned and enriched."

There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok In memory of her native Eishyshok she wrote There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (1998). The book was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Dispute over death of Eliach's family members Eliach's eyewitness testimony was published and widely disseminated in a New York Times op-ed, in which she said she was a victim of a pogrom by Poles and the Polish Home Army. Eliach claimed that prior to the attack, the Polish commander outside the houses concluded his order with what she claims was a popular Home Army slogan "Poland without Jews".

Israeli historian Israel Gutman criticized Eliach stating "I don't have sympathy for this author; she's not an authority on Holocaust, and her books haven't been translated to Hebrew. One shouldn't close eyes to the fact that the Home Army in the Vilnius region fought with Soviet partisans for the liberation of Poland. That's why Jews that belonged to the other side were killed by the Home Army as enemies of Poland, and not as Jews".

Polish-Jewish journalist Adam Michnik, founder of the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said she insulted Poland and that while "individual anti-Semitic excesses could have happened(...)it is shocking and out of place for a professional historian to blame everyone for a crime committed by one individual" and that the Eliach's claim was "senseless fanaticism". A Polish American Public Relations Committee member said that "Holocaust survivors tend to be revisionist, wanting to satisfy their egos, defame others and financially profit". Eliach responded by saying that "several fringe Polish-American groups, following in the footsteps of Holocaust revisionists, set out to deny the truth about the murder of Zipporah and Hayyim Sonenzon, my mother and baby brother".

Historian Jaroslaw Wolkonowski did not deny the incident, but said Eliach omitted to mention that her family was harboring a Soviet spy and that her father was a supporter of the Soviet Union, who had occupied the area from Poland and later Nazi Germany. Lithuanian historian and political scientist Liekis Sarunas has also said that the available historic documents do not support Eliach's version of the event as being an attack on Jews while showing that her family and friends "were clearly on the side of the NKVD and even directly served them" and thus became part of the "Soviet repressive structure". John Radzilowski said that Eliach believed that the Home Army with the help of the Catholic Church held a conference similar to the Wanesee Conference in which a plan to mass murder all remaining Jews was discussed, and death of her family was part of a "Polish Final Solution". Radzilowski also stated that Eliach was questioned on her claims and documents supporting them by members of US Holocaust Memorial Museum Memorial Council, and responded by joking "they didn't have Xerox machines", later changing her version to stating that the documents were found by Soviet secret police, and later again changing her claim and stating that this document was found by her father and NKVD in raid against the Home Army Two historians interviewed in the article have rejected Eliach's claims and described the death of her family members as most likely a coincidence during a shoot out between Polish resistance and Soviet and NKVD operatives.

Honors and awards Myrtle Wreath award for humanitarian activities (with Joseph Papp), 1979; Christopher award, 1982, for Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust; Guggenheim fellowship and Louis E. Yavner award, both in 1987; Women's Branch of the Orthodox Jewish Congregation of America's "Distinguished Woman of Achievement," 1989; AMIT Women's Rambam award, 1990; Award of accomplishment, 1994, and National Holocaust Education award, 1995, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations; CBSTV "Woman of the Year," 1995; Eternal Flame award, 1999; Honorary doctorates: Yeshiva University, New York; Spertus College, Chicago;