ing of the Jewish community board.
Before he knew it, he was unanimous-
ly elected the new president.
"I had some difficulty explaining
this to the State Department," Lauder
says, but the delighted local press
redoubled its attacks on the combined
ambassador and community president.
Among Lauder's projects has been a
campaign to identify an estimated
70,000 Polish Jews who, as children at
the beginning of the war, were hidden
by Catholic families.
Many of the children were killed,
others rejoined the Jewish community
after the war, but Lauder believes that
some 25,000 of the former hidden
children are still in the closet or
unaware of their Jewish roots.
The Roman Catholic Church has
refused to help in the search, but by
sending rabbis to Polish towns and
through ads in newspapers, Lauder
says, some 3,500 of the 25,000 former
hidden children have been identified.
Some years ago, Lauder flew in
kosher food and gave a dinner in
Warsaw for 100 of the children, now
middle-aged to elderly men and
women. As the evening progressed, it
became apparent that the guests
remained uneasy, with few speaking to
each other.
At 9:30 p.m., Lauder called over a
rabbi and proposed that together they
sing the old Yiddish lullaby Raisins
and Almonds, and then asked anyone
who could remember the words to
join in.
As Lauder recalls it, "By the end,
80 of the 100 people were singing
along, and then the dam burst.
Everyone started talking and we stayed
there until 1:30 a.m." It was "another
critical moment" for Lauder, which
gave him the push for his campaign to
revive Jewish life in the Holocaust-
devastated countries of Central and
Eastern Europe.
He is proud of his work. "We may
have communities with only 7,000
Jews, but they are more active than the
700,000 Jews in Southern California,"
he says. This work is more satisfying
than selling cosmetics."
Given his own leadership role,
and the equally high profile of fel-
low multimillionaire Edgar
Bronfman, who is president of the
World Jewish Congress, does it take
a pile of money to become a Jewish
community leader? "It's not only a
matter of wealth," Lauder responds.
It requires a lot of energy and
effort, day in and day out, though it
helps to have some means to reach
out to other people."
ive M e ib
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