Holocaust Survivors

The Jewish Federation of Howard County has received a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. County residents who are Holocaust survivors and have a limited income might qualify for a grant to obtain medical care, shelter, food and clothing. Call 410-730-4976, ext. 120, for more information.

The O'Malley administration has chosen a Canadian company to operate two MARC commuter train lines, passing over a competitor whose critics have tied it to Nazi Germany and avoiding a potential fight with Holocaust survivors. The Maryland Department of Transportation is expected to seek Board of Public Works approval Oct. 3 for a nearly six-year, $204 million contract with Bombardier Transportation Services to run the Camden and Brunswick lines. The lines are now owned and operated by CSX Transportation, which has long wanted to get out of the business of running a commuter railroad.

Keolis can bid for the contract to run the Camden and Brunswick MARC commuter rail lines ("Holocaust rail fight moves to Congress," Sept. 25). The survivors and descendants of those herded into cattle cars destined for Nazi concentration camps by the French national railroad, the majority shareholder in Keolis, will gain access to the records of their fateful journeys. That's what the General Assembly accomplished with the passage of legislation we introduced this past session.

Keolis can bid for the contract to run the Camden and Brunswick MARC commuter rail lines ("Holocaust rail fight moves to Congress," Sept. 25). The survivors and descendants of those herded into cattle cars destined for Nazi concentration camps by the French national railroad, the majority shareholder in Keolis, will gain access to the records of their fateful journeys. That's what the General Assembly accomplished with the passage of legislation we introduced this past session.

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced this week that it will award $10 million over five years for emergency services for impoverished Holocaust survivors living in North America. The Weinberg Holocaust Survivors Emergency Assistance Fund provides medical equipment and medications, dental care, transportation, food and short-term home care for Holocaust survivors. The money from the Baltimore-based foundation will be managed by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, based in New York.

It wasn't until Ellen Lightman began to take care of her mother in her final years that she learned that the frail woman used her nightly prayers to whisper words of their family's painful past. "Every night, she prayed that the last few seconds of her parents' life went quickly," said the Baltimore County woman, whose grandparents, great-grandparents and aunt were killed in the Holocaust. "Those last few seconds were in the gas chambers. " "They never would have gotten there had they not been transported by the railroad," she adds, wihout pause.

Baltimore attorney Aaron Greenfield's work representing Holocaust survivors and their families earned him an invitation last month to join a special committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Greenfield, special counsel in the corporate practice group of Duane Morris LLP, was selected after he worked on state legislation requiring firms bidding on commuter rail contracts to disclose whether they had transported Holocaust victims to death camps during World War II. The measure was passed this year by the Maryland General Assembly and signed into law last month.

Questions of guilt and atonement that are usually the province of historians and moral philosophers arose in Annapolis during hearings Thursday on a bill that would hold a subsidiary of the French national railway responsible for the parent company's role in transporting deportees to death camps under Nazi occupation. Holocaust survivors and their relatives asked Maryland legislators to impose broad disclosure requirements on Keolis America, a Rockville-based company controlled by the French company SNCF, before it can compete for a contract to operate the MARC Camden and Brunswick lines.

It wasn't until Ellen Lightman began to take care of her mother in her final years that she learned that the frail woman used her nightly prayers to whisper words of their family's painful past. "Every night, she prayed that the last few seconds of her parents' life went quickly," said the Baltimore County woman, whose grandparents, great-grandparents and aunt were killed in the Holocaust. "Those last few seconds were in the gas chambers. " "They never would have gotten there had they not been transported by the railroad," she adds, wihout pause.

Baltimore attorney Aaron Greenfield's work representing Holocaust survivors and their families earned him an invitation last month to join a special committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Greenfield, special counsel in the corporate practice group of Duane Morris LLP, was selected after he worked on state legislation requiring firms bidding on commuter rail contracts to disclose whether they had transported Holocaust victims to death camps during World War II. The measure was passed this year by the Maryland General Assembly and signed into law last month.

Academy Award-winning film director Sidney Lumet, who passed away April 9 at age 86, is remembered for classics such as "Twelve Angry Men," the courtroom drama that challenged racial prejudice and which Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has cited as a major influence on her career. What is not widely known is that before he became a director, Mr. Lumet, as a young actor, was at the center of a 1940s controversy in Baltimore involving Zionist activists and the fight over racial segregation.

Liliana C. "Lilly" Shepard, a Holocaust survivor who chronicled her experiences being trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto with other Jews in a 1980 book, died April 7 of cancer at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. The longtime Ellicott City resident was 85. The daughter of an engineer and a homemaker, Liliana Cukier was born and raised in Kalisz, Poland. Her formal education ended when the Nazis invaded her homeland in 1939. "Then came September 1, 1939, the date Poland and the world will never forget.

Questions of guilt and atonement that are usually the province of historians and moral philosophers arose in Annapolis during hearings Thursday on a bill that would hold a subsidiary of the French national railway responsible for the parent company's role in transporting deportees to death camps under Nazi occupation. Holocaust survivors and their relatives asked Maryland legislators to impose broad disclosure requirements on Keolis America, a Rockville-based company controlled by the French company SNCF, before it can compete for a contract to operate the MARC Camden and Brunswick lines.

Eva Adele Schonfield, an artist who worked in glass and was an early Harborplace merchant, died Feb. 12 of a blood clot of the brain at Sinai Hospital. The longtime Mount Washington resident was 76. Eva Adele Preisach, whose parents owned and operated a shoe repair business, was born and raised in Budapest, where she attended high school. Her father and many relatives perished in the Holocaust. "She survived by hiding in a safe house with her mother, sister, aunt and cousins.