Accomplishments and Honors

EXPEDITED MISSING PERSONS IDENTIFICATION ACT

The UJO of Williamsburg initiated new Bill, in response to Menachem Stark Case, that was signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo, “Expedited Missing Persons Identification Act.” The UJO thanks Governor Cuomo, and Lead-Sponsors Assemblyman Lentol and Senator Squadron f or Passing this Important Legislation.

In response to Governor Andrew Cuomo signing the “Expedited Missing Persons Identification Act” into law today, Rabbi David Niederman, President of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn said:

“In the aftermath of the kidnapping and murder of Menachem Stark, it became clear that more could be done to help law enforcement make swifter identifications of unidentified deceased individuals, assisting in criminal investigations, and at the same time help the families of missing persons receive final word about their relative. The law will help investigators obtain vital information that may lead towards the immediate apprehension of the perpetrators, and it will also ensure that the body is treated with respect and dignity, according to the wishes of the family.

The UJO was proud to have started this effort with Williamsburg legislators Assemblyman Joseph Lentol and State Senator Daniel Squadron who announced the introduction of the Bill in March at the UJO and led this undertaking to ensure its swift passage in the State Legislature. We are grateful for Governor Cuomo’s leadership on this issue, and to Assemblyman Lentol and Senator Squadron for their tireless work to pass the bill. We hope and pray that no other New York family endures the excruciating pain of not knowing the fate of their loved one.”

For previous news releases on the bill and its introduction see:
http://ujocolumn.blogspot.com/2014/06/ujo-commends-nys-legislature-for.html

NYS LEGISLATURE ISSUES RESOLUTION HONORING THE LATE RABBI MICHOEL BER WEISSMANDL

Williamsburg - The United Jewish Organization of Williamsburg - the umbrella organization of the 70,000-strong Jewish community in Williamsburg which is overwhelmingly comprised of holocaust survivors and their descendants - commends the NYS legislature's marking the upcoming International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a resolution honoring the memory of late Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl. The resolution honors Rabbi Weissmandl specifically for his efforts "to save the European Jewish populace during World War II.” The resolution sponsors will also bestow a medal of honor for Rabbi Weissmandl.

"Rabbi Weissmandl's efforts, at the constant risk of his own life, negotiating with Adolph Eichmann's people for a ransom, halted the deportations of the Slovkian Jewry. He also played a lead role in saving thousands of lives in Hungary," said Rabbi David Niederman, Executive Director of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. “I can't think of a more fitting way to mark the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, than commemorating this unsung hero. I commend the New York State Legislature for honoring his memory, and I specifically want to thank State Senator Simcha Felder and Assemblyman Joe Lentol for introducing the resolution."

Rabbi Weissmandl also worked tirelessly to publicize the "Auschwitz Protocols," awakening the international community to the Nazi's atrocities and genocide. Ultimately, this ended the deportations in Hungary, saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, much of whom rebuilt their lives in New York State, mostly in Brooklyn.

“I am very humbled and honored to have launched this effort,” said Ari Fixler the brainchild behind the recently established Weissmandl Committee. "This is the first step in a wide-ranging effort to ensure that Rabbi Weissmandl is appropriately honored with government recognition, and also included in Holocaust educational discourse."

Rabbi Weissmandl was also a central figure in the rebuilding of the Jewish community in New York. He was the first to replant a European Yeshiva, the Yeshiva of Nitra. Always a visionary, Rabbi Weissmandl established a “shtetel” in Westchester, NY, where the survivors studied Torah, and it also provided them with jobs and opportunities to rebuild their lives.

The Nitra Yeshiva also planted the seeds and paved the way for numerous other Yeshivos that were later established in New York. Today, Nitra boasts a Yeshiva and community in Mount Kisco, New York, as well as a sprawling Yeshiva campus in Chester, NY, as well as several synagogues and an education network in Brooklyn, Upstate New York, and Worldwide. During the years, thousands graduated the Nitra Yeshivos, and numerous of its alumni went on to take prominent rabbinic positions, while others succeeded in business and in other areas.

"Rabbi Weissmandl's rescue and rebuilding efforts left lasting results on our community and the Jewish community at large," said Rabbi Niederman.

In the Capital after the resolutions honoring Rabbi Weissmandl were passed in the Assembly and Senate, today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Fact Sheet attached and Text of the resolution: http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/J2987-2013
Fact Sheet - Rabbi MD Weissmandl

- The late Rabbi Rabbi Michoel Dov (Ber) Weissmandl was born on October 25, 1903, in Debrecen, Hungary. In 1931 he entered the Nitra Yeshiva, to study under esteemed Rabbi Samuel David Ungar, whose daughter he married in 1937. He passed away on November 29, 1957, at age 54.

- Even before the outbreak of WWII, Rabbi Weissmandl already started rescue work to save the Jews of Burgenland, the first Nazi exiles from Austria after the Anschluss. 60 Rabbis of that city were put on a ship and exiled from Austria, but no country allowed them entry. Rabbi Weissmandl traveled to England, where he met the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Foreign Office, and secured entry-visas to England.

- In 1939, at the war’s outbreak, Rabbi Weissmandl was in Oxford, UK, studying historic texts in the Bodleian Library. Answering the call of duty for his nation, he volunteered back to Slovakia.

- When the deportation of the Slovakian Jews started, in Spring 1942, Weissmandl, through a clandestine; working group (Pracovna Skupina), negotiated with Adolph Eichmann’s assistant Dieter Wisliceny and Slovak officials, promising them a $50,000 bribe to halt the deportations. After agonizing efforts and a series of delays, he finally succeeded to transfer the promised ransom. That effort stopped the deportations in Slovakia for two years, until the end of the Tiso regime.

- In the Fall of 1942, following his successes in Slovakia, he started to work with the Germans on his Europa Plan, which called to spare the lives of the rest of the European Jewry in exchange for a two-million-dollar ransom. Ultimately, the group was unable to come up with the full ransom of millions of dollars, and the deportations resumed. Still, the ongoing negotiations continued until August - 1943, which significantly delayed the start of the Hungarian deportations, allowing more time for the Jewish residents to escape or seek hiding places. In addition, a number of small-scale rescues, such as the Kastner train, grew out from these negotiations.

- Rabbi Weissmandl never resigned from his efforts to try to end the bloodshed, and feverishly looked for means of rescue. An opportunity represented itself when two Auschwitz detainees - Alfred Wetzler and Rudolph Vrba - escaped the death camp, on April 7, 1944, and were smuggled into the borders of Slovakia, where they met representatives of the Working Group. With the assistance of those representatives, they put together a 30-page report describing the atrocities in Auschwitz. The report included a detailed map of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, drawn by Weissmandl, accompanied with a heartfelt plea to bomb this death factory and/or the rail tracks leading to it. That document, later to be known as the Auschwitz Protocols, was translated into several languages and sent by Weissmandl, through emissaries, to world leaders, including President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, and numerous diplomats and activists throughout Europe and the Free World. They were subsequently published and widely distributed by a diplomat stationed in Switzerland, George Mantello. By mid-June, the reports were covered by the BBC and the NY Times. It led the Allies to pressure Hungary. The latter halted the deportations on July 7, 1944, sparing the remaining tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, enabling subsequent escape and rescue undertakings, such as the world-renowned rescue mission by the great humanitarian the honorable Ambassador Raoul Wallenberg.

- During the war, Rabbi Weissmandl spearheaded numerous other smaller scale rescue missions. Many of them panned out, some didn’t, but he never stopped trying.

- Weissmandl himself was deported in 1944, but escaped by jumping from a moving train, and hid in a bunker - where he continued his rescue efforts - until being smuggled out to Switzerland.

- Weissmandl never turned the page on the failure to totally stop the deportations, a topic he often cried about in the later years and that ultimately caused his premature passing at the age of 54. Shortly before his death, he managed to chronicle his rescue efforts, a work later published by his students in Min Hameitzar (From the Straits).

- Though beaten and shattered after the war, mourning his family and the loss of his people that he so frantically tried to save, Weissmandl was never the person to resign or retreat. Immediately after resettling to the United State, he devised and executed a vision to replant and rebuild the European Jewry on American soil. Barely a year after the war, in 1946, he already reestablished the Yeshiva of Nitra. Its first home was in Sommerville, NJ. At the same time, he also worked on a plan to assist the holocaust survivors in earning a living, rebuilding families and succeeding in their new country. To that end, several years later, in 1949, he bought a 300-acre ranch in Mount Kisco, New York, where a village was established for the Nitra students who while completing their studies, performed agriculture and other jobs in businesses established for them.

- Today, Mount Kisco is still the home of the Nitra Yeshiva campus and a successful community, while Nitra also branched out to various other cities in the US and abroad. Especially noteworthy is the Yeshiva campus in Chester, NY, established in the last decade with hundreds of students.

- Rabbi Weissmandl combined boundless vision to strategize innovative ideas for the betterment of his people with endless energy to execute these plans. He was courageous and undeterred in executing daring rescue plans in times of destruction, and a revolutionary with the foresight to plan rebuilding efforts when the time came to resettle. Penniless, when hunkered down in bunkers and when arriving in a new world, he succeeded in reaching out to the most powerful, awakening them to the plight of his people, and raising funds for rescue and rebuilding efforts.

- Rabbi Weissmandl’s heroic efforts, is something to study and learn from, how one man, when driven by boundless love and responsibility to mankind, can make a difference, save thousands of lives and jumpstart reestablished communities. His accomplishments are astonishing.

UJO of Williamsburg Joins White House Celebration Marking 8 Million Enrollees in the Affordable Care Act

Rabbi David Niederman, Executive Director, of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn (UJO), was among a selected group of “stakeholders… who helped with the outreach and enrollment around the Affordable Care Act (ACA)” to celebrate Thursday with President Obama, the achievements of the new law and the completion of the first open enrollment period. Rabbi Niederman greeted the President and the First Lady, and told them how beneficial the Affordable Care Act was for the Williamsburg community and thanked them for their leadership.

The UJO provides a full array of social services to the community, including assistance in enrolling and navigating the various subsidized health insurance plans available. The organization was at the forefront in helping the community utilize the new options available under the Affordable Health Care Act, working with the federal government and New York State’s Health Plan Marketplace to successfully enroll individuals and families, in public and private plans on the Marketplace. In a conversation with Hamodia in February, the White House Jewish Liaison Matt Nosanchuk – who was later appointed to the National Security Council – singled out the UJO as an Orthodox organization that worked to assist the community with the new health plans.

According to Politico, attendees at the star-studded event were privileged to spend time with the first couple in a “loose and informal” setting. The President spoke off the cuff, without a teleprompter or notes. The President was visibly emotional listening to his wife laud his steadfastness in passing health care reform, according to attendees speaking to Politico. Before personally greeting and shaking hands, though, the president regained his humor. “Just need to let you know before I come and shake hands: We don’t have time for selfies with everyone,” he quipped.

Also in attendance, were Vice President Joe Biden, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and the White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and others in the President’s inner circle.

A White House official described the invitees to this highly-personal presidential event, celebrating his signature achievement that already covers 8 million, as a “broad and diverse group of stakeholders who helped to enroll Americans in quality affordable health plans, and get information out about their health care options, including consumer groups, techies, pharmacies, hospitals, athletes, celebrities, mayors and other local elected officials and community leaders.”

“It was an honor to join the President and the First Lady celebrating the Affordable Care Act. The President’s heart-felt remarks showed how personal they felt about making sure health coverage and access to quality health care is attainable to all,” said Rabbi Niederman.

“I’m proud that the UJO is a part of that, enabling so many in the community, on a daily basis, enroll in plans on the exchange. I especially want to thank Mr. Matt Nosanchuk – who may have undertaken a new assignment, but is still there for the Jewish community as much as before – who worked with us to make the ACA a success in the community. In addition, I want to express my appreciation to the NYS Marketplace Exchange – one of the best ACA systems in the nation created by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration – that assisted us in getting health coverage to those who need it most,” Rabbi Niederman concluded.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA GREETING RABBI NIEDERMAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE.

Letter from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) thanking the UJO for its work on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey