COMMENT
YES! You can be the winner of
FREE
S
K ET
Dr. John Mames:
Personal Recollection
SIDNEY BOLKOSKY
Special to The Jewish News
W
Just come into Summit Place Mall to enter before December 21. We will be giving away to
5 lucky winners a set of 4-tickets to a Pistons' game at The Palace. There's no purchase
necessary to enter, just pick up an entry blank at any of the three entry cubes in the mall.
The drawing will be on Friday, December 22...wouldn't a call telling you that you're a winner
make your holidays happier?! Come in and register today!
See official entry for rules.
L
Telegraph & Elizabeth Lake Roads in Waterford Township
Hudson's, JCPenney, Kohl's, Montgomery Ward, Sears and 135 stores
Store hours extended for your holiday shopping convenience
OVER 60
"Your No. 1 Financial Fear Should Be
The Cost of Long Term Nursing And Home Care Expenses
"Medicare & Catastrophic Insurance Plans Won't Pay!"
MONEY — April '1988
Protect Your Hard Earned Assets From Financial Ruin
call
THE BENSMAN GROUP
NOW
The Leader and Pioneer of Long Term Care Protection in Michigan.
We Carry All The Major Policies Listed In Consumers Report and
Money Magazines To Meet Your Individual Needs & Pocketbook!
Call Us Now at 855-4524 for A FREE Personal Consultation
In Your Own Home or At Our Office
THE BENSMAN GROUP
"THE LEADERS AND SPECIALISTS IN SENIOR
INSURANCE PROTECTION FOR OVER 40 YEARS"
30230 Orchard Lake Road
Farmington Hills, MI 48018
(313) 855-4524
Also Tune into Lawrence and Daryl Bensman on The Senior Spotlight" every Wednesday at noon, WCAR (1090 AM)
WE CONDUCT NURSING HOME AND HOME CARE INSURANCE SEMINARS - ORGANIZATIONS PLEASE CALL
68
FRIDAY DECEMBER 15 1989
hen a survivor of.
the Holocaust dies,
grief assumes an ex-
tra dimension: a remnant, a
saved remnant, forces the lost
past to recede even further in-
to oblivion. Another victim
gone — another story lost.
With the death of Dr. John
- Mames on Dec. 1, tha extra
gentle man determined that
survivor testimonies would be
told, and set out to ac-
complish it — somehow.
When, in 1981, we met and
agreed to work together on
the oral histories, both of us
probably entered into our
pact somewhat naively, but
with boundless energy and
determination he resolved to
overcome any obstacle.
So we spent long nights
reviewing names, discussing
techniques, talking of the im-
portance of collecting the nar-
ratives and, usually well past
1 a.m., shared a few warm
l'chaims. He would then
retire to listent to some of the
tapes:' I would drive home
puzzling over such strength.
Time and again I asked him
to tape his own story; no —
there was no time for that, get
the others first. So he would
throw more Latin phrases in-
to the conversation, laced
with Hebrew aphorisms and
some Polish and he would
plan his strategy for breaking
down the defenses of reluc-
tant survivors.
Those were exhausting and
extremely painful times.
They changed our lives and
the lives of some survivors.
For all the anguish, I treasure
those long nights because of
the privilege of working with
such a mentsh as John
Mames.
John vociferously objected
to my referring to the
perpetrators as "civilized"
men. He adamantly rejected
that proposition: to him, they
epitomized barbarism. It did
not matter that they came
from cultured backgrounds
and had university educa-
tions. They adapted high
technology and bureaucratic,
civilized tecniques for mass
murder.
And I now understand why
John became so irritated. He
embodied civilization. He
Dr. Sidney Bolkosky of the
University of Michigan-
Dearborn worked with Dr.
John Mames on the Oral
History Project of the
Holocaust Memorial Center.
breathed it, lived a civilized
life full of compassion, caring,
education; blending science
and - humanity. Part of the
tragedy of the Holocaust,
perhaps, rests in this: that
such insouciant misanthropes
shared the same civilization
with John, indeed, with all
Jews.
He did not give his story.
Few, if any, then, know of his
past during the Holocaust (he
spoke occasionally about his
life just after the-war in Ger-
He vociferously
objected to
referring to the
perpetrators as
civilized men.
many). But we all know of his
life in Detroit. How much the
war years haunted him, or
how much the tapes he listen-
ed to tormented him I cannot
say.
This place will mourn his
absence. But how fortunate
we were to have him among
us, to rescue lost stories, to
motivate and inspire and
even ennoble us all, a human
being, a survivor whose
nature far transcended
civilization's boundaries. ❑
NEWS
Ex-Spy Claims
Israel Neglectful
Jerusalem (JTA) — An
Egyptian woman who once
spied for Israel with her hus-
band has broken her decade-
long silence on the affair with
a complaint that the Israeli
authorities are neglecting
her.
The woman, who now lives
in Israel, claims her husband,
who was later hanged by the
Egyptians, gave Israel ad-
vance warning of the Yom
Kippur War.
Her story has revived the
controversy over why Israel
was unprepared when the
Egyptian and Syrian armies
struck suddenly on Yom Kip-
pur 1973. Israel suffered
nearly 3,000 dead or missing.
Inshrah Shahin, 45, who
converted to Judaism and
changed her name to Dina
Ben-David, has no regrets
about spying.
But she is bitter over her
poor economic condition, con-
sidering that she and her late
husband, Ibrahim Shahin,
worked for Israeli intelligence
from 1967 until they were
caught in 1974.