New Partisan Panorama and Donor

The New Partisans’ Panorama and Donors: The Karten Family

by Gerald S. Nagel

Isidore and Julia Karten

This fall, Yad Vashem will dedicate the Partisans’ Panorama, made possible by Julia and Isidore Karten’s generous legacy and a major contribution from their children. The Panorama overlooks the Jerusalem forest as well as Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities.

“The Panorama is a wonderful tribute to my parents,” says daughter, Bernice (Karten) Bookhamer. “Even more so, it honors all the Jewish partisans who resisted bravely and saved many from the Nazis.”

Son, Harry Karten agrees: “The setting—overlooking the Valley of the Communities—is not only beautiful, but symbolic. My parents looked out onto the surrounding communities from deep within the forest.”

Isidore Karten was 26 years old and working as a forester when the Nazis invaded and began moving east toward his town of Swierz in what is now the Ukraine. The youngest of 10 children, he knew the woods well and urged his family and neighbors to retreat there and resist.

Initially, only one brother agreed. But after they built one bunker and Nazi atrocities were perpetrated closer and closer, others joined. Soon they had bunkers and sub-bunkers.

Isidore would rise before dawn, enter nearby ghettos and towns to recruit others to join them, and seek food and—where possible—guns, knives, broomsticks, or any other possible weapon. He posted notes in Yiddish on trees to guide others to the bunkers, which were two miles into the thicket.

The Partisans’ Panorama (architectural illustration by Shalom Kweller)

About 10 percent of nearby villagers helped the partisans, but most were Nazi sympathizers. At night, Isidore and the others often dragged tin cans on a long string and sounded noisemakers so the sympathizers would think there were many armed Jews in the forest and relay that misinformation to the Nazis. The Nazis would thus be reluctant to pursue them into the forest.

One of Isidore’s recruits was Julia Grossberg, whom he later married in the bunker. Together they helped hundreds of Jews survive the war.

In 1947, the Kartens arrived in the United States where Isidore went into the textile business and built I. Karten-Bermaha Textile Co., Inc. into one of the world’s leading suppliers of off-goods to the apparel fabric industry. Julia and Isidore raised three children, Harry, Marcia, and Bernice, and were blessed with eight grandchildren. Their life after the war was motivated by Holocaust remembrance and education and they were pioneering supporters of Yad Vashem. Isidore was a founder and longtime leader of the American Society for Yad Vashem and three of his children and grandchildren are also active members. Isidore died in 1999, Julia in 2002.

“Our parents had a remarkable zest for life,” notes daughter, Marcia (Karten) Toledano. “They believed they could survive against the odds. They felt they were meant to survive. And they were. In their lives, they accomplished so much for others and for the cause of remembrance.”