The Blue Card: Masha Pearl
The Five-O-One is joined by Masha Pearl, Executive Director of the Blue Card, an organization that provides assistance to destitute Holocaust survivors in the United States. Take a listen to hear testimony from survivors Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Sami Steigmann.
To learn more about this work visit www.bluecardfund.org.
Talia: The number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling by the year. But how many survivors are there today, and how many does The Blue Card serve?
Masha: There are approximately 75,000 Holocaust survivors remaining in the United States, and their average ages range from 76 years old to 105. We serve those that live at or below the federal poverty level. So although there are about 75,000 survivors remaining, the ones that The Blue Card serves are those that are struggling to make ends meet in their daily living, and are living off of meager pensions and reparations from Germany.
Talia: Can we get into those early days? And can you talk a little bit about the role of the organization at its start?
Masha: Yes, The Blue Card was founded in Germany in the Nuremberg-Firth area. When Hitler first came into power, Jews were losing their livelihoods. It was a local effort, really an underground effort, by other Jewish families to help raise funds for those that needed assistance, and it was an effort to help them maintain their existence. Donors who donated for those families that were in need, received a stamp and a blue card. So that's how the name got to be, as a record keeping method for having given a donation. So the founders of The Blue Card emigrated to the United States, and after the Holocaust, Holocaust survivors were coming from different parts of the world and Europe and settling in the country. There was a large group of survivors who settled in Washington Heights in New York, and one of them was notably Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who is a supporter of The Blue Card, and she's really an incredible person who was on the kindertransport. She was orphaned during the Holocaust and became a sniper in the Israeli army, and truly paved her own way in becoming a sex therapist and lending her voice to those who didn't have a voice. But she was an original recipient of blue card assistance, and many others who to this day, remember getting $10 from the blue card at that point, being connected to a menial job as a driver or a cook, and learning about an apartment that was available on a fourth floor walk up somewhere when they had no place to go. So these are the kinds of assistance that The Blue Card was giving to those who had survived the Holocaust at the time that were settling in the United States. And to this day, The Blue Card continues its mission of being purely focused on financial assistance to needy holocaust survivors in the United States.
I'm Dr. Ruth Westheimer. I was born in a little village near Frankfurt. And my father had small business, he went with a bicycle to different stores, with the boxes on his bicycle, my mother helped him in his business. And my grandmother, my father's mother lived with us, or we lived with her, and she really took good care of me. And I lived there until I was 10 and a half. I went to an Orthodox Jewish school, and I had lots of friends. I had a wonderful childhood. I had 13 dolls… I had a dollhouse…and then after the night of broken glass, there was a conference in a Vienna where they try to save German Jewry, and the conference failed miserably. But out of that conference came a cry, let's at least save the children. So England despite dark clouds on the horizon, England took 10,000 Jewish children — Holland, Belgium, France and Switzerland took 300 each, supposedly for six months, so that the parents should be able to leave Germany. My father was taken in November of 1938. I was an only child. I didn't want to leave my mother and grandmother. But he said he can only come back to Frankfort if I will take the kindertransport to Switzerland, so I had no choice. My mother and grandmother came to the railroad station on January 5th, 1939 and waved goodbye, and that's the last I saw them. They all were deported. So I was on a group going to Switzerland, to a children's home, the children's home in Switzerland became an orphanage, and I was there for six years. If I had been to Holland, Belgium or France, I wouldn't be alive —those children did not come out alive. Then in 1945, right after the war ended I went to then Palestine. I went on a kibbutz. I went then into the Haganah, that was the forerunner of the Israeli Defense Forces. I was a sniper. I was a very good sniper. I first was a kindergarten teacher, Director of kindergarten in Paris for few years, and then I worked in public health. And fortunately for me, the money ran out on a government project at Columbia University, and I needed a job. So I got a position for Planned Parenthood of New York City, and worked there and did my doctoral dissertation on the data of following 2,000 women’s contraceptive history. And thenI realized I didn't know enough about sex ed… I went to a course at Cornell Medical School and became a sex therapist. So I had the both the academic training and the therapeutic skills. I did the radio program 10 years NBC. Every Sunday night, from 10-12. I was very well prepared academically, I had all of the data. But more important, my accent, this German with Israeli and French, and then American accent. Because when people turn on the dial, they knew it was me.
So I don't call myself a Holocaust survivor. Because I was not in a camp, I was in a children's home that became an orphanage. But I certainly call myself an orphan of the Holocaust. And there is no question that I was and still am a Zionist, I'm going every single year to Israel. By being survivors, by being orphans of the Holocaust, somebody like me knew that we have to do something to repair the world. So it is right now crucial to tell stories, that whole generation is not going to be around for much longer. And there are two important reasons that I'm very glad that you people do this. (1) There are people who say there never was a Holocaust. They are called the Holocaust deniers. And we have to stand up and be counted and say I was an orphan at the age of 10, because of the Nazis. (2) There are people who say there's Holocaust fatigue — which is a terrible thing — because there are people who say, enough already… we heard enough about the Holocaust, we don't want to hear any more about it. Even if it did happen. Let's move on. So for those two reasons, it’s very important that people like me have to talk about it. People like me have to write about it, and they have to stand up and be counted.
Talia: That was an excerpt from an interview that Dr. Ruth gave to the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. But you know, Masha, Dr. Ruth said something interesting, and she's right. This generation is aging, and 10 to 15 years from now, there won't be any more Holocaust survivors. And so I wonder what then happens to The Blue Card?
Masha: that's such a great question, and we get one we get all the time. And it's, of course, a very sad question. We've lost a number of survivors. And actually, personally, this was a really challenging year, because I've lost a number of dear friends —Holocaust survivors that The Blue Card has served for a number of years, and we've lost them due to COVID, and due to in part to COVID, maybe not necessarily being the result of their passing, but weakening them to a point where ultimately, they pass. Right now, for us, though, the needs are so high, and the needs continue to grow and evolve. We're looking at where the next step for The Blue Card is…doing assistance for second generation survivors who need psychological assistance, or psychiatric assistance with medication — much of that is due to trauma they endured as children of survivors. Additionally, we're also seeing that as a window of opportunity of survivors who can tell their stories is closing, we're trying to record stories for those who weren't able to give a testimony, or who those who weren't ready to speak of their experience, but now are and may not have children that can retell their story. So we're pairing them with Bar Mitzvah age students, that can be the keeper of their story, and also capitalizing on the survivors who are able to use technology, which, of course, is incredible, and we're really trying to empower them with Zoom and Skype.
Talia: And that was probably really important during the pandemic, when a lot of them were isolating on their own. What kind of things did you put in place to make sure that they were okay?
Masha: The Blue Card was deemed essential workers in New York, and we kept our office open, you know, from day one. And right away, we sprang into action. And we were sending and/or distributing PPE and supplies for sanitizing and clorox and gloves. And just tons and tons of masks — of course, we wanted them to be disposable, because we know that survivors tend to specifically with food, hoard and or leave things to be expired. They have these attitudes of just sort of not really letting things go because of a fear that they might not get a new supply in. And we wanted to make sure that we're sending them enough that they know that they can just dispose of those masks and more are always there and keep coming and we continue to send that.
Talia: Well. We're joined today by a survivor who has received that help from The Blue Card through the years. Let's take a listen to his story.
Sami: My name is Sam Steigman. I was born in a city called Czernowitz which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And in 1939, it belonged to Romania. The Romanians, obviously with the help of the Germans, annexed an area of Ukraine called Transnistria. There was a camp called Mogilev Podolsk, a labor camp — my parents and I were there from 1941 to 1944, when they camp was liberated by the Red Army. Interestingly enough, being so young, my luck was that I was never separated from my parents. Most of the kids did not survive, but in my case, they find some use of me, and they did medical experiments. And later on came a stage that I was dying of starvation, and a German woman saved my life. Not far away from the camp, there was a farm owned by Germans. The German woman brought food to the guards so obviously she had access in the camp. And as she was walking around one day, she saw me and she saw the physical signs of starvation — a big head, swollen stomach and fit. This German woman had compassion for a strange child, a Jewish child, and decided to give me milk. But we have to understand the courage not only of this woman, but of other people that saved Jews and other ethnic people, they are called the Righteous Among the Nations because she did not risk only her own life, but she risked the life of her entire family. Had she been caught, her entire family would have been killed. I do not know her name, however, in 2014 I went to Yad Vashem and there is a sign for the 27,000 non Jewish people that saved Jews. And I was extremely happy to see a marker honoring the unknown, Righteous Among the Nations.
Talia: You mentioned, Sami, that the Nazis experimented on you as a baby. I know that many survivors suffer from PTSD. Do you have any of that lingering pain associated with that time?
Sami: I've been suffering from excruciating pain, all my life. I will be in pain for the rest of my life, but you will not see it on my face. And they could not find in my particular case, a cure because I'm suffering from head, neck, shoulder and back. But it's not localized. It's constantly moving from place to place.
Talia: Masha, obviously you're dealing with lots of different clients, some of whom have pain like Sami, others who have dietary issues stemming from their malnutrition that they experienced in the camps. I know that one of the things that the organization prides itself in is that it's constantly evolving with the needs of its clients. And as the clients age, the needs change, can you talk a little bit about how the organization has evolved with its client base?
Masha: First, I will say that there are so many misconceptions about Holocaust survivors in that many assume that they came and then they were able to build a new life, or they had so many different support networks. That's not the case for those that were serving. These individuals, as I mentioned, they had menial jobs, many didn't have children, or they couldn't have children, or their children require their care and assistance because studies show that Holocaust survivors are more likely to pass on genes to the next generation that may lend them prone to psychiatric problems, such as schizophrenia and depression. So really, that's a misconception. And The Blue Card evolved from really just providing this emergency assistance to preventing emergencies. So our preventative programs have really grown. And the goal is to keep survivors in their homes for as long as they can be there safely and independently. Because for survivors now they're in their late 70s 80s 90s and beyond, their goal is to age at home and not to be forced into institutionalization, such as a nursing home or assisted living, because that brings them back to this traumatic place of having to be told what to do and when to do it and potentially be limited — and many of them suffer from PTSD as a result of that. So being in their home, being where they're comfortable, is most important. So for us, our programs now are really geared towards monthly assistance, making ends meet between their income and expenses, helping them to pay their rent, to pay their transportation costs, to afford their co-pay assistance of telephone Emergency Response System units in their home so that in the case of an emergency, they can press a button, then an operator will follow up and dispatch an ambulance if necessary. We're also providing home care — someone that can come and cook and bathe, do some laundry and some minor housekeeping and we’ve added additional programs, whether they're virtual or whether they're in person that allows them a sense of well being in the sense of you're really increasing their happiness quotient. So we've evolved in those ways and making sure that we're also recognizing the limited opportunity we have for survivors to tell their stories. Because 10…15 years from now, the landscape will look very different.