A History of Survivors in Hartford
Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany settled in Hartford beginning in the 1930s. In Hartford, these German Jews, often highly educated and skilled, came to play a significant role in Hartford’s communal life and beyond. Rabbi Hans Bodenheimer settled in Hartford in 1939 after escaping from Germany following Kristallnacht and imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp. In Hartford, he became the spiritual leader of Congregation Tikvoh Chadoshoh (New Hope), a synagogue which came to be composed primarily of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany; after 1945 other survivors of the Holocaust who had settled in the Hartford area also joined Tikvoh Chadoshoh. Rabbi Henry Okolica, a refugee from Nazi Germany who fled to England in 1939 and then to the United States in 1940 became the spiritual leader of New Britain’s Orthodox congregation, Congregation Tephereth Israel, in 1960 continuing to serve until the 1990s. Likewise, Rabbi Isaac Avigdor, originally from Drohobicz in Poland, survived six years in labor and concentration camps including Auschwitz and Mauthausen, before his liberation by the American army in May 1945. After coming to Hartford, he became Rabbi of Congregation Ateres-Knesseth Israel, which became known as the United Synagogues of Greater Hartford in 1962 where he would remain leader until 1993. Berthold Gaster, a refugee born in Vienna in 1926, reached Hartford and came to serve as managing editor and later owner of the Jewish Ledger from 1958 until shortly before his death in 1992.
Among the first survivors to reach Hartford in 1946 were Joseph Korzenik and David Chase. Korzenik, born in Gorlice, Poland in 1926, survived Auschwitz and Flossenburg before liberation by American troops. He was among the first DPs to reach Hartford, where he found work in the aircraft industry. He came to play a singularly prominent role in dedicating himself to the cause of Holocaust education. David Chase, born David Tuvia Ciesla in Sosnowiec, Poland, was also a survivor of Auschwitz and arrived in Hartford in 1946 with almost nothing. From such modest beginnings, he went on to become one of the most prominent real estate developers, entrepreneurs and philanthropists in Hartford and beyond, before he passed away in 2016. Among his many charitable and business ventures, he was a co-founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and built cable TV systems in Poland. Simon Konover, born in Makow Mazowiecki in the Warsaw province of Poland in 1922, survived German forced labor before escaping to the Soviet Union during the war. Following imprisonment in Siberia he managed to reach Hartford in 1948 where his older brother had moved after the Depression. With virtually no money, he began working at his brother David’s flooring company. In the decades that followed, he built one of the most successful development companies in the Southeast, encompassing hotels, office buildings, apartments and more than 100 shopping centers. He was also a founder of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and a recipient of numerous awards, including the Prime Minister’s New Life Award from the National Committee for Israel Bonds.
In 1952, Fred Jacobs, a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto and of several concentration camps, together with some 30 families, organized an association of local survivors. They received strong support from a local branch of the Workman’s Circle and encouragement and involvement by two of the communities most prominent rabbis, Abraham Feldman and Morris Silverman. Jacobs also organized the annual Holocaust commemoration ceremony, which began as a recognition of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Survivors in the community continue to play a prominent role in organizing the annual Yom HaShoah commemoration. In the 1970s, the survivors association, under the leadership of Jacobs, along with JCC director, Murray Shapiro, and other community leaders, undertook a project to erect a Holocaust Memorial monument on the grounds of the new building. The sculpture by Elbert Weinberg stands on the grounds of the JCC to this day as a lasting testament to the victims of the Holocaust. Survivors also played an instrumental role in helping create the Holocaust Memorial room together with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford that occupied the entry space in the Mandell Jewish Community Center until 2016.
Hartford-area survivors have also played a prominent role in early oral history projects that preceded the growing historical awareness of the holocaust in the American public at large. Hartford survivors were among the first to record their experiences as part of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, including Joseph Korzenik, Helen Kopman, Kurt Israel, Rabbi Isaac Avigdor, Dori Katz, and others who were featured in the Survivors Among Us video broadcast on CPTV in the early 1980s. The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford also recorded oral histories with Hartford-area survivors beginning in 1972.
Eve Soumerai, who was just 13 years old when she left Germany on the Kindertransport, came to Hartford where she taught as a French teacher for many years at Northwest Catholic High School. She was instrumental in developing the human rights curriculum adopted by the Connecticut Department of Education. David Chase and the Ararat Lodge of B’nai B’rith established the Joseph Korzenik fellowship for Holocaust teaching at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford to support the teaching of the Holocaust. Joseph Zola and family also established an annual award to likewise support Holocaust education through the Greenberg Center that continues to this day.
Since 2011, Voices of Hope, an organization of the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, has continued to work throughout the state of CT to promote a culture of courage to stand up against hatred through Holocaust and genocide education and remembrance. Voices of Hope continues the work of Hartford-area Holocaust survivors in ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten.