BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL
Frauds, Miracles
MSU scholar Waltzer to talk about his Holocaust archive findings.
Keel Guten Cohen
movie was being
planned and the
but had no last
name. Rav Lau
looked for him all
his life."
pages of documents in Germany's Bad
Arolsen, which houses the Red Cross
author and his wife
had appeared on
Oprah twice.
Waltzer will
discuss why a
Holocaust survivor
would spin a false
story and what
can be learned
from the episode.
International Tracing Service archives.
One discovery he will speak about
during a lecture entitled "No Angel at
His other Bad Arolsen discovery is not
on his Sept. 13 agenda. But know that
it involves finding the man who saved
the Fence: Finding a Holocaust Memoir
Fraud" at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13,
at Congregation B'nai Moshe in West
Bloomfield.
Israel's former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi
Israel Meir Lau when he was a child in
Buchenwald.
Story Development Editor
East Lansing
p
rofessor Kenneth A. Waltzer,
director of the Jewish Studies
Program at Michigan State
University, has made several
great discoveries among the 50 million
While researching child survivors of
Buchenwald at Bad Arolsen in June
2008, Waltzer made his disturbing dis-
covery that the love story told by author
Herman Rosenblat in his children's
book, Angel Girl, was false. A Hollywood
A protected
children's bar-
Kenneth Waltzer
Among the first group of scholars to
delve into the records at Bad Arolsen,
Waltzer focused on the children of
Buchenwald for a book he is writing.
"I knew of Rav Lau's rescue from his
memoir and his brother's," Waltzer said.
"Both talked of a `Fyodor from Rostow,'
Block 8. At Bad Arolsen, he found sev-
eral Fyodors on the list, but searched for
"Fyodor from Rostow" until he located
the blond, blue-eyed Russian in the files.
Lau, now chairman of Yad Vashem,
wanted to honor Fyodor Michajlitschenko
racks — Block 8
— was created
in Buchenwald in
the fall of 1943.
Rabbi Lau
On Jan. 20, 1945,
Israel Meir Lau,
then 7, was brought to live in the bar-
racks. He was put in the care of an
older boy, Fyodor, then 18, from Rostow
in Russia.
Because of Waltzer's findings, Fyodor
Michajlitschenko was inducted Aug.
4 into Yad Vashem's list of Righteous
Among the Nations. His daughter
accepted the honor.
He watched over him like a father,"
Waltzer said. "He gave him potato soup
Waltzer will be glad to talk about
this miraculous story after his Sept.
every day; made ear muffs for him out
of an old sweater. In the last days, he
sheltered him with his body."
13 lecture, sponsored by the Cohn-
Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at
Wayne State University, Detroit, and
Congregation B'nai Moshe.
Seating is limited; for reservations,
call (313) 577-2679 or e-mail: aa2690@
wayne.edu .
After the war, Fyodor also looked for
Lau, who he called Lulek, but to no avail.
Enter Waltzer. He was drawn to find
Fyodor and had lists of prisoners from
as a Righteous Among the Nations. But
Fyodor had died in 2006 — not before
leaving a videotaped interview about
his Buchenwald experience — including
Lulek — with his family.
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tools for the task
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September 10 2009