Yad Vashem Jerusalem - Quarterly Magazine

Contents

► Editors' Remarks
► Committed to Memory
UN Declares International Holocaust Remembrance Day
► The New Museum:
Behind the Scenes
A Family Connection
► Art Focus
New Exhibition: Montparnasse Déporté
► Education
   ► Global Teaching; Dynamic
        Learning
   ► Seminar for Survivors of
        the Rwandan Genocide
   ► Focusing on Europe
► The Names Database:
     A Year Online
► A Gift of Color
► News
   ► Inauguration of the new
        Visual Center
   ► Warsaw Ghetto Square to
       connect to new Museum
       Complex
   ► Yad Vashem wins four
       prizes for technical
       excellence
   ► Whoever Saves One
       Life…
   ► Events October-
       December 2005
   ► Children’s Art from Czech
       Republic
   ► Hungary honors
       Yad Vashem
   ►Recent Visits to
       Yad Vashem
   ► Dr. Joseph Kermish z”l
        (1907-2005)
► New Publications
► Friends Worldwide

► About the Magazine
► Credits

► Back Issues

► Contact Us

On 7 November 2005, a ceremony was held at Yad Vashem honoring the late Hipolit, Wiktoria and Robert Ropelewski (Poland), and Elizabeth Bol (Holland) as Righteous Among the Nations. Retired Supreme Court Judge, Judge Jacob Turkel, Chairman of the Commission of Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations, presented certificates and medals to Robert Ropelewski’s daughter, Wiktoria Bogdan and to Elizabeth Bol in the presence of survivors Dr. Mordechai Menat and Miroslava Arditi, the Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of the Netherlands Dik Wentink, and family members of the rescuers and the survivors.

The Rescue Stories
On 7 February 1942, Leah Cheskelberg gave birth to a daughter, Miroslava. At that time, Leah and her husband Nathan were living in the Warsaw ghetto, and over the following months were witness to the dramatic decline in living conditions. In November 1942, Nathan handed his baby daughter to his Polish friend Hipolit Ropelewski, in the hope of saving her life. Miroslava lived with the Ropelewski family in the Warsaw suburb of Mlociny, where she was taken care of by the mother of the family, Wiktoria, and her teenage son Robert. The family claimed the baby was a daughter of a relative who had been killed during the German invasion of Poland, and treated her as such, protecting her and caring for all her needs. They also hid other Jews in their basement as well as other hiding places in Mlociny at great risk to their lives, particularly since a Gestapo watchtower was positioned close to their house and some neighbors suspected that the child was Jewish.

Nathan Cheskelberg was killed during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, but Leah managed to escape and join her daughter in the Ropelweski’s house, where they both remained until the liberation of Warsaw.

Despite her young age, Elizabeth Bol, 15, assisted her parents—members of a local underground movement in Holland, and later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations—in hiding and caring for Jews in their house during WWII. Elizabeth warned them of imminent Nazi searches, bought them food with forged coupons, and encouraged them with news about their families and the outside world. When her parents were absent, Elizabeth was responsible for looking after the Jews hiding in her home—at times up to 10 extra people.

In July 1943, after informers endangered those hiding the Bol household (including Mordechai Menat), Elizabeth found alternate refuge for four the eight Jews they were hiding, and her parents for the remaining four. When Germans later searched the Bol’s house, they found no one. They arrested Elizabeth’s parents, releasing her mother after two weeks but deporting her father to transit and concentration camps, where he remained until a week before liberation in May 1945.

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Survivor Miroslava (Cheskelberg) Arditi (second from right) with her husband (right), daughter and son-in-law (center), and Wiktoria Bogdan (second from left), daughter of the late Righteous Among the Nations Robert Ropelewski, and granddaughter of the late Righteous Among the Nations Hipolit and Wiktoria Ropelewski, with her husband (left)

Righteous Among the Nations Elizabeth Bol (second row, second from right), survivor Dr. Mordechai Menat and his wife (third and fourth from right), Elizabeth’s sister (right) and Elizabeth’s three sons (left) surrounded by Mordechai’s family