There is no URL here. My friend Clarence Schwab delivered this speech on Yom Ha Shoah at Young Israel of Long Beach, New York.
Like some here tonight, I am a child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors. My father and my father’s mother survived. And I am also the grandson of a rescuer, my mother’s father, Gilel (Hillel) Storch. This day of remembrance, I hope to share with you one of my grandfather, Hillel Storch’s, rescue efforts toward the end of the war, and the impact it and his other contributions have had on me.
I first learned about this rescue effort from my grandfather when I was twelve.
Over a ninety day period, starting in February 1945, my grandfather, then living in Sweden, dares to think and act unconventionally, and in so doing, helps keep imprisoned Jews alive in concentration camps in Germany.
To frame the effort, permit me to give you some context.
A successful businessman, a Zionist and a representative of the Jewish Agency, my grandfather, Hillel, comes to Stockholm in July 1940 from Riga, Latvia, just as Russia invades. He had secured a six-day business visa through well-placed contacts, because he was one of Sweden’s most reliable suppliers of phosphate.