This is a picture of the Santa Maria, a boat made by prisoners in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp on orders from Ilse Koch, the wife of the Kommandant of Buchenwald. The sails were made of human skin, according to the prisoner who gave the picture to me. This prisoner had been the minister of bridges and highways in the Belgium government, and was then a part of the “underground” resistance to the German occupation when he was captured. I had worked with him since he was a fairly recent arrival at Buchenwald from Belgium, and in fairly good physical condition. Since I could speak German, we could carry on a conversation with some ease, and when I was assigned to work with some of the more able prisoners to assist others in more serious physical condition. On the day I was leaving Buchenwald with my unit, the prisoner gave me the picture, and feeling the sails, began to weep. He apparently did not know the word for skin in German, so he pinched the skin on my wrist and said, “Alles kaputt, alles kaputt”, and broke down in a violent weeping. I held him for a short period until he stopped weeping, and then he held the boat out to me, and asked me to keep it, saying, “nicht vergessen, nicht vergessen” ---so that the truth about the Nazis would be known to others. I sent the boat home in a munitions box, wrapped in a kind of curtain material, and didn’t open the box for almost 25 years, or until Elie Wiesel published his book “Night”, about his memories of the German Holocaust. I did not know then that he had been a prisoner in the hospital in Buchenwald, and that I might very well have worked in his ward! When I arrived home after my discharge, I took the “Santa Maria” out of the box, and displayed it in my home, and apartment in Newton, but only on occasion.

When I began teaching in Newton, Massachusetts, I rediscovered the Santa Maria. I had a large population of Jewish children in my classes, and met many of their parents, one of whom was a dentist by the name of Jacob Birnbaum, whose children, all four sons, also became dentists! Jacob was very active in support of school activities, and became a chaperone for a number of class activities, one of which was a class held at midnight on a school night when I wanted my junior high classes to observe some kind of astronomical event, I think it was a lunar eclipse. In any event, when I brought the program “Facing History and Ourselves” to Newton with the encouragement of Lillian Radlo, Jacob was a prominent and enthusiastic supporter. Only then did I learn that Jake had been a prisoner in Auschwitz, met his wife in the camp, and when liberated, came to this country where they took up residence in Newton.

I also became quite friendly with another family whose children, son and daughter I also taught, Sarah and Jim Feldman. Sarah, a very accomplished artist was also an activist in the community and in her temple, Mischkin Tvila in Newton.

Jim and Sarah were avid outdoors people, and bought property next to mine in New Hampshire, staying at their place when hiking in the White Mountains. When their children were out of school, the property became less interesting for them and they offered it to me first. Since I had lost frontage to the 57 acres behind their property when I-93 went through, I grabbed it up, thus giving greater value to my own property.

Jim and Sarah Feldman and Jacob Birnbaum and his wife were my very wonderful sponsors when the Gathering of Survivors and Liberators was first held in Washington in l984. They introduced me to Benjamin Meade, the Chairman of the event, and arrangements were made for me to present the Santa Maria to Mr. Meade on the following year in Philadelphia, where the next “Gathering” was scheduled.

The Santa Maria has been accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for their permanent display.