The United States is ramping up pressure on Poland in hopes of stopping legislation that would prevent families from receiving restitution for property seized during the Holocaust and communist era.

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The US said Wednesday that Poland is the only country in Europe to have regressed over the past year in meeting commitments to return seized property or provide compensation for Holocaust victims and their families. The public admonishment is likely to anger Polish authorities, who have rejected previous criticism on the matter.

The issue is one of several points of friction that have arisen or gotten worse between Washington and Warsaw since the Biden administration has been in office. Others include differences over the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 pipeline and a proposed restrictive media law.

The proposed compensation law, which may be enacted in August, has already been denounced by Israel, Jewish groups and the US. The new US criticism comes just before the one-year anniversary of the release of a congressionally mandated report tracking European progress in adjudicating Holocaust claims. That report called out several nations but was particularly critical of Poland.

On the eve of the anniversary, Cherrie Daniels, the US special envoy for Holocaust issues, said the Polish legislation "would cause irreparable harm to both Jews and non-Jews by effectively extinguishing claims for restitution and compensation of property taken during the Holocaust that was subsequently nationalized during the communist period."

If adopted, the law would prevent property ownership and other administrative decisions from being declared void after 30 years, which would mean that pending proceedings involving communist-era property confiscations would be discontinued and dismissed. It affects Polish, Jewish and other property that are subject to contested previous determinations.

Poland says it's a response to fraud and irregularities that have emerged in the restitution process, leading to evictions or giving real estate to property dealers. Authorities insist restitution claims will still be possible through courts, regardless of the claimants' nationality or place of residence.

But those explanations have been rejected by both the US and Israel, which has said adoption of the law would cause grave damage to Polish-Israeli relations.

"We are disappointed that the Polish government and the opposition seems too often to purposely conflate property restitution or compensation with (WWII) reparations," Daniels said. "We would like to see the Polish government, at a minimum, amend the legislation so that claimants with pending claims can continue to pursue them through the existing administrative process."

Daniels, Israeli officials and others like the World Jewish Restitution Organization and World Jewish Congress have called for Poland to enact a comprehensive law or establish a procedure that deals with the compensation issue, which becomes more urgent with each passing year due to the death of aging Holocaust survivors.

The State Department has identified six countries where significant compensation concerns have still not been addressed, but of those, only Poland has regressed, according to Daniels. The others are Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.

Before World War II, Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish community of some 3.5 million people. Most were killed in the Holocaust under Nazi Germany's occupation and their property was confiscated. Poland's postwar communist authorities seized those properties, along with the property of non-Jewish owners in Warsaw and other cities. The end of communism in 1989 opened the door to restitution claims, most of which would be coming from Poles.

Poland is the only European country that has not offered any compensation for private property seized by the state in its recent history. Only the remaining communal Jewish property, like some synagogues, prayer houses and cemeteries, mostly in disrepair, have been returned where possible or compensated for.

The still unresolved matter has been a constant source of bitterness and political tension between Poland and Israel as well as the United States, which has pressed the Poles to address it through successive administrations and called them out publicly for a lack of progress.

The year-old report was mandated by Congress in a law known as the Justice for Uncompensated Survivors Today, or JUST, Act, which was signed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 with the support of many lawmakers from both political parties and Jewish groups.

Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, have made combatting anti-Semitism a priority. Last month, Blinken and his German counterpart signed an agreement to begin a formal US-Germany Holocaust Dialogue to ensure that the lessons of the Nazi era are not forgotten as the number of survivors dwindle.

The matter unexpectedly surfaced again at the State Department this week when a swastika carved into an elevator was discovered on Monday at the agency's main headquarters in Washington. Blinken, the stepson of a Holocaust survivor who was raised in the Jewish tradition, condemned the vandalism and said it was a sign that the fight against antisemitism must be "relentless."

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Jed Leiber was an adult before he learned that his family was once part-owner of a collection of centuries-old religious artworks now said to be worth at least $250 million.

Over a steak dinner at a New York City restaurant in the 1990s, he had asked his mother about his grandfather, a prominent art dealer who fled Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power. "What was grandpa most proud of in his business?" he asked.

"He was very, very proud to have acquired the Guelph Treasure, and then was forced to sell it to the Nazis," she told him.

That conversation set Leiber, of West Hollywood, California, on a decadeslong mission to reclaim some 40 pieces of the Guelph Treasure on display in a Berlin museum. It's a pursuit that has now landed him at the US Supreme Court, in a case to be argued Monday.

For centuries, the collection, called the Welfenschatz in German, was owned by German royalty. It includes elaborate containers used to store Christian relics; small, intricate altars and ornate crosses. Many are silver or gold and decorated with gems.

In 2015, Leiber's quest for the collection led to a lawsuit against Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The state-run foundation owns the collection and runs Berlin's Museum of Decorative Arts, where the collection is housed. Germany and the foundation asked the trial-level court to dismiss the suit, but the court declined. An appeals court also kept the suit alive.

Now, the Supreme Court, which has been hearing arguments by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, will weigh in. A separate case involving Hungarian Holocaust victims is being heard the same day.

At this point, the Guelph Treasure case is not about whether Leiber's grandfather and the two other Frankfurt art dealer firms that joined to purchase the collection in 1929 were forced to sell it, a claim Germany and the foundation dispute. It's just about whether Leiber and two other heirs of those dealers, New Mexico resident Alan Philipp and London resident Gerald Stiebel, can continue seeking the objects' return in US courts.

In a statement, Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, argued that the suit should be dismissed. The foundation and Germany have the support of US President Donald Trump's administration's on the matter

"Our view is that Germany is the proper jurisdiction for a case which involves a sale of a collection of medieval German art by German art dealers to a German state," Parzinger said.

The suit's claim that the Guelph Treasure was sold under Nazi pressure was also diligently investigated in Germany, he said. The foundation found that the sale was made voluntarily and for fair market value. A German commission dedicated to investigating claims of property stolen by the Nazis agreed.

Parzinger said records "clearly show that there were long and tough negotiations on the price and that the two sides met exactly in the middle of their initial starting prices."

The art dealers' heirs, however, say the purchase price, 4.25 million Reichsmark, was about one-third of what the collection was worth. Under international law principles, sales of property by Jews in Nazi Germany are also presumed to have been done under pressure and therefore invalid, said the heirs' attorney, Nicholas O'Donnell.

Leiber's grandfather, Saemy Rosenberg, and the two other Frankfurt art dealer firms he joined with to purchase the Guelph Treasure did sell other pieces of the collection outside of Germany. But their timing was unfortunate. The Great Depression hit soon after they purchased the collection. Some of the pieces were sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art or private collectors. The Nazi-controlled state of Prussia bought the remaining pieces in 1935. The two sides disagree on whether the collection was ultimately presented to Hitler as a gift.

Leiber says his grandfather never said anything to him about the collection, though the two played chess together on Sundays from the time he was 5 to when he was 11.

"He never spoke of the war. He never spoke of what he lost. He never spoke of the horrors that he and the family experienced. ... I think it was very important to him to keep moving on, to move forward," Leiber said.

Rosenberg reestablished his art business in New York. When he died in 1971, The New York Times called him a "leading international art dealer," noting that his clients had included oil tycoon Paul Getty, CBS Chairman William S. Paley, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the nearly 50 years since his grandfather's death, Leiber has had his own star-studded career. In 1992, he founded NightBird Recording Studios at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, where his clients have included Madonna, U2, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber. He's particularly proud of his work with guitarist Jeff Beck and the late Aretha Franklin. But his grandfather was a singular influence on him.

"He's a super-human figure in my life," Leiber said. "And I decided that I had to do whatever it took to have returned what was taken from him."

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The five-part docuseries is set to hit Netflix on Nov. 4.

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In the 1980s, a group of Holocaust survivors claimed that John Demjanjuk, a family man and respected member of his community, had allegedly tortured and killed nearly 1 million Jewish prisoners as a Nazi death-camp guard in the Treblinka extermination camp during World War II. While he did serve as a guard, it remained questionable as to whether he was that guard.

He was arrested and extradited to Israel, where he stood trial for crimes against humanity.

He died at a senior home in Germany on March 17, 2012 at the age of 91.

The docuseries, "The Devil Next Door" examines whether Demjanjuk really was "Ivan the Terrible" or if it was a case of mistaken identity, as well as covers the media frenzy around his case. The series includes raw footage from Demjanjuk's trial, in which he claimed he was innocent, and shows Holocaust survivors testifying on the stand.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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The ceremonies began at 4:30 a.m. in the small town of Wielun, site of one of the first bombings of the war on Sept. 1, 1939, with speeches by Polish President Andrzej Duda and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

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Few places saw death and destruction on the scale of Poland. It lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its 3 million Jewish citizens.

After the war, its shattered capital of Warsaw had to rise again from ruins and Poland remained under Soviet domination until 1989.

"As a German guest, I walk before you here barefoot. I look back in gratitude to the Polish people's fight for freedom. I bow sorrowfully before the suffering of the victim," Steinmeier said at an event later in Warsaw.

"I ask for forgiveness for Germany's historical guilt. I profess to our lasting responsibility."

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence paid tribute to the courage of the Polish people.

"None fought with more valor, determination, and righteous fury than the Poles," Pence told the gathering of leaders that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

For some in Poland, the conflict and its commemorations are still a live political issue, just weeks before a national vote.

For Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, the memory of the war is a major plank of its "historical politics", aiming to counteract what it calls the West's lack of appreciation for Polish suffering and bravery under Nazi occupation.

Pence attended the ceremony instead of U.S. President Donald Trump who canceled his trip due to the arrival of Hurricane Dorian, a disappointment to the PiS government which is seen as one of Washington's biggest allies in Europe.

Pence underlined that relationship, saying: "America and Poland will continue to call on our allies to live up to the promises we have made to one another."

Trump and the PiS government share views on issues such migration, energy, and abortion, but the Warsaw government faces mounting isolation in Europe over accusations that it subverts democratic norms.

Despite the theme of the day looking back 80 years, present-day politics was, as ever, to the fore.

"We know that Europe needs to become stronger and more self-confident," Steinmeier said. "But we also know: Europe should not be strong without America - or even against America. Rather, Europe needs partners. And I'm sure America needs partners in this world too ... So let's take care of this partnership!"

Poland was holding a series of commemorations during the day. Parallel events, attended by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and European Commission deputy chief Frans Timmermans, were held in the coastal city of Gdansk, site of one of the first battles of the war.

Morawiecki spoke of the huge material, spiritual, economic and financial losses Poland suffered in the war.

"We need to talk about those losses, we need to remember, we need to demand truth and demand compensation," Morawiecki said.

PiS politicians have repeatedly called for war reparations from Germany, one of Poland's biggest trade partners and a fellow member of the European Union and NATO, and several onlookers yelled "reparations" after Steinmeier spoke.

Berlin says all financial claims linked to World War II have been settled but Steinmeier continued with his theme of responsibility. "Because Germany - despite its history - was allowed to grow to new strength in Europe, we Germans must do more for Europe," he said.

Critics say the PiS's ambition is to fan nationalism among voters at a time when populists around the world are tapping into historical revisionism. PiS says the country's standing on the global stage and national security are at stake.

Wartime remembrance has become a campaign theme ahead of the national election due on Oct. 13, with PiS accusing the opposition of failing to protect Poland's image.

"Often, we are faced with substantial ignorance when it comes to historical policy … or simply ill will," Jaroslaw Sellin, deputy culture minister, told Reuters.

Opinion polls show PiS is likely to win the October ballot. The party's ambition is to galvanize voters and disprove critics by winning a majority that would allow it to change the constitution.

Poland marks the outbreak of World War II rather than its end because it fell under Soviet domination shortly afterward.

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Eighty years ago, Germany invaded Poland and the world changed forever. To mark the outbreak of World War II, high-level dignitaries from 40 countries arrived in Warsaw to participate in special memorial events on Sunday, including US Vice President Mike Pence and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, who is hosting the events, sat down with Israel Hayom for a lengthy interview to discuss how his nation was coping with the effects of the deadliest of all wars, during which the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, including 3 million Polish Jews.

Duda says the traumatic effects of the war are very much felt today in his country. He also insists that Poland never collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The following is a transcript of the interview, which was edited for clarity.

Q: Eighty years ago Germany attacked and invaded Poland, leading to World War II in Europe. Eighty years later, what does this day mean for Poland and for you personally?

"It is one of the saddest and most tragic dates in the whole world history. One has to remember that for 123 years there was no Poland. It was divided between its three neighbors – Russia, Prussia, and Austria – and it disappeared. The Poles tried to regain their independence in three bloody uprisings. After World War I, in 1918, Poland finally regained its independence, reappeared on the map of Europe and developed dynamically until September 1, 1939. You can only imagine what Poland would have become if this Nazi German invasion wouldn't have taken place. This day started a conflict that claimed the lives of 6 million Polish citizens, in fighting but first and foremost murdered by the Nazis and the Soviets. Among those 6 million, and this has to be stressed, were 3 million Jews of Polish nationality who were the victims of the German-perpetrated Holocaust. For me personally, September 1 is the most tragic day in the history of the Polish nation as a whole. Remember that after the war, we became part of the Soviet sphere of influence, we were betrayed in Yalta, and for another 40 years, we were not a sovereign country. That was the Poland I was born in. I can say that up until this day we can witness the negative effects of World War II, both socially and economically."

Q: Could you be more specific on that?

"You can see the effects of the war today especially on the economy. Poland and Warsaw were totally destroyed by the war. Of course, we have rebuilt Warsaw with our own hands and own resources. But not as it was before the war. If you take into account that for 40 years we were living behind the Iron Curtain, you must realize what kind of an economic situation we inherited. You might find it hard to believe but in 1986 my father, who was at the time teaching at a technical university, had a monthly wage of $13. We are still not as well off as people are in Germany, France, or the rest of Europe. We are still trying to make up for the time and resources we have lost. One of the side effects is that many Poles, especially young ones, go abroad to look for work and a better life. World War II dispersed Polish society throughout the whole world. Many didn't return to Poland. We can simply say that we have lost them, and among them, a lot of talented and intelligent people. Most of all, we have lost 6 million of our citizens, including 3 million Jews. Jewish life, which was flourishing in Poland before World War II, simply disappeared. It is an important element of the tragedy Poland experienced during and after the war."

Q: What would you like the Israelis to know more regarding the Polish experience during World War II?

"First of all, I would like Israelis and Jews from all over the world to come and visit the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It's a museum of our history. There is no doubt that World War II was one of the most tragic periods of Polish history, perhaps even the most tragic period, because of the loss of 3 million Polish Jews and another 3 million Poles who were not Jewish. Every Polish family lost someone in that war. I would like the Israelis to remember that before these tragic six years, Poles and Jews coexisted peacefully throughout 1,000 years of joint history. They were part of one nation. The Jewish culture was part of the Polish culture. I would like young people in Israel to be aware of this long history and to know that Poland was where many Jews found a peaceful place to live in. "Polin" means a place where you can rest. Poland has the biggest number of Righteous Among the Nations, despite the fact that only in Poland any assistance to Jews was punishable by death under the German occupiers. Not only were those individuals who were helping the Jews executed but also all the members of their family. There were tens of thousands of such families. The Israelis, who ask why Poles didn't do more, should bear in mind that it was really a dramatic situation and that the death penalty was unavoidable for every person who assisted the Jews. Those Poles who were assisting Jews, hiding them and supporting them, were heroes because they were risking their lives and the lives of their families.

"The efforts to save Jews were also undertaken on the political level. The Polish government-in-exile and the Polish underground movement were dispatching couriers, like Witold Pilecki and Jan Karski, who revealed to the world what kind of atrocities were unfolding in the German concentration and death camps. The Polish government-in-exile and the Polish underground formed Żegota, an organization whose only aim was to assist Jews in Poland and help them survive. They were doing it because Polish citizens were at stake. It was something normally done to save Polish citizens. Those who were targeted by the German-perpetrated Holocaust fought for Polish independence, they served in the Polish military between the world wars. They actively participated in the process of rebuilding Poland. They were great engineers, poets, architects, the creators of Polish culture. They saw Poland as their homeland. We remember that and all the places in which they were murdered."

Q: On the other side, what would you like the young Poles to know about the Jewish experience during World War II?

"Actually, young Poles are perfectly aware of what happened because in Poland we focus on the history of the Holocaust and pay special attention to all the anniversaries – like those of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, of the liberation of Auschwitz, and of the martyrdom of the many Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust. It's an obligatory item on the curricula of Polish schools to visit Auschwitz. When school children visit Warsaw they usually visit the POLIN Museum, too. Furthermore, the Polish state takes care of sites where the Holocaust took place and spends vast sums to ensure that they are preserved."

Q: Do you see a risk of a renewed war in Europe today?

"The risk is always there. Just look at what is happening in Ukraine, with the Donetsk area being occupied, and  Crimea annexed. People are being killed in this conflict all the time. The most important thing is to react politically in such a way as to ensure that no party benefits from starting a conflict in the world today. Basically there is a dual-track approach to that: First, we should try to create economic conditions ensuring welfare to everyone so that no one is willing to wage a war; second, if someone starts to behave aggressively, then the international community has to react quickly and decisively. We shouldn't forget that such an attitude was lacking before World War II."

Q: The German invasion of Poland was facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which assured Germany would not be attacked by the Russians and divided Poland between these two dictatorships. Is the world aware of the way the communist Soviet Union is also responsible for the outbreak of World War II?

"We should say it loud and clear – the Soviet Union at that time was an ally of Germany, who attacked and invaded Poland. I have no doubt that without the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which guaranteed that the Russians would invade Poland from the East, the Germans would have thought twice and would have been afraid of invading Poland. This pact was one of the main reasons for the war."

Q: Poland was reoccupied after the war and couldn't negotiate independently the conditions of peace with Germany. Poland was a too young a democracy when further negotiations took place after the fall of communism and the reunification of Germany. Are there still unresolved issues between Poland and Germany?

"In the light of the horrible destruction during the war – Warsaw was ruined as revenge after the Warsaw Uprising – it is not surprising that a lot of Polish people still have the feeling that we were not compensated, as a society and individually. People believe that reparations are still an open issue. This is an issue that should be discussed, and this discussion is going on at the level of the Polish parliament. It contains two dimensions: historical and legal."

Q: Since we are talking about reparations, could you explain the Israelis the Polish position on restitution?

"Let me reiterate, we have not received any compensation and reparations from those who started the war and destroyed Poland. This should be the starting point of this whole discussion. That is to say, we were not the instigators of World War II. We were the victims, we were attacked and we were destroyed. We were not the aggressors and we never collaborated either with German Nazis or with the Soviets in any institutionalized way. The Soviet Union was an ally of Nazi Germany. This situation changed when Germany attacked Russia.

"As far as the property is concerned, let me describe the situation after 1990 when Poland became a sovereign and independent country. The process of restituting property that had been taken illegally started and it is still ongoing. This issue concerns all those who lost property, irrespective of their nationality."

Q: How can Poles and Israelis develop a joint historical narrative regarding World War II?

On both sides, those who look at history in an objective and reasonable way are developing this kind of honest narrative. It seems to me that there are enough such people. But of course, other voices are also heard, and unfortunately, these are very often harmful voices. For that reason, I stress that during World War II there was no institutionalized cooperation whatsoever between Poles and Germans. I also stress the fact that entire families in Poland were punished with death for helping Jews. This is important for the assessment of the situation in those times. It's easy to be courageous when nothing threatens you.

"The Holocaust targeted the Jewish nation. Part of this nation was part of our national community. Therefore we consider it as part of our national memory.

"That's why we find it very important to jointly pay tribute to the memory of those murdered. For this reason, I joined Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in the March of the Living. But, please remember that when we talk about the concentration camps, we need to bear in mind that Polish people perished there as well, next to the Jews. In Poland, almost every family lost a member.

"Even in Katyn, where thousands of Polish officers were murdered by the communists, there were Jews. They were representatives of the Republic of Poland. The chief rabbi of the Polish Army was among them, and last year I decorated him, posthumously, with the Order of the White Eagle to mark the centenary of Poland regaining its independence. I did it precisely in order to stress the joint elements of our two nations and the value of the Jews to our society."

Q: France and Great Britain were quick to react by declaring war on Germany after it invaded Poland. However, it took both countries a long time, too long, before they became really engaged in the war. Poland was left alone, despite mutual defense treaties it had with other countries. What lessons are to be drawn from this experience and are they relevant for today's reality as well?

"Historians, especially military historians, stress that if France and Great Britain not only declared war on Germany but also attacked Germany as a response to the German attack on Poland, World War II would have come to a quick end and the Germans would have had to defend their own territories. If that would have happened, we wouldn't use the term "World War II" but rather "the Polish-German War." However, things happened differently and this is a tragic lesson which also demonstrates the importance of allied cooperation. This also has to do with NATO and our membership in this alliance, and Article V [the part in the NATO's founding treaty in which members of the organization vow to defend each other from aggression]. We always stress this element: It is not enough to declare certain actions, concrete action must follow."

Q: The world is now marking the 30-year anniversary for the successful anti-Communist uprising that had its beginning in Poland's Solidarność (Solidarity) movement in 1981. What has changed since?

"I was 8 when the movement began, back in 1980. It's a history that I still remember well. When I look at it from the perspective of 40 years I can say that I am very proud. I am proud because I am sure that to a great extent thanks to Solidarity not only Poland but other parts of Europe have changed and regained liberty. In June 1989 I remember myself, a student of a secondary school,17 years old, running in the streets of Kraków asking people to vote for Solidarity. Those were not fully free elections at the time, they were controlled by the communists. The biggest success was that Poles turned out to vote en mass and they voted against the communists. It became clear that the Poles rejected communism. It started a positive change. This rejection was not expressed with guns or use of violence but through legal voting. We started the movement in Europe, which is referred to as the Autumn of the Nations, which led to the liberation to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

"I also feel proud of what we have achieved since. We must remember what was the starting point, in 1989. We were a poor society. A big price was paid by members of our society for the transformation. Not all reforms have been painless or successful. However, the Poland that we have today is the result of a huge effort of immense work and sacrifice done by the people here. I do not want to omit or belittle, of course, the contribution of foreign investors, who invest their money here. I am grateful to them for creating jobs here. However, Polish people are the ones working in these jobs."

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The company announced the measure several months ago following years of litigation.

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More than 102,000 Jews were transported by NS trains during the Holocaust and according to various estimates, the company made some $2.8 million in revenue from the Nazis' use of its cars.

Each Holocaust survivor will now receive $16,700, while surviving spouses of someone who was sent on NS trains will receive $8,400.

Surviving children who were born before May 8, 1945 – the day World War II ended in Europe – will get $8,400, whereas children of survivors born after that date will be able to claim $5,600. In 2005, the company apologized for its role in the transportation of Jews to the death camps.

The The World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) welcomed the development. "The compensation program is a significant acknowledgement of the role the NS played during WWII in the suffering endured by Dutch Jews transported on NS trains," WJRO Chair of Operations Gideon Taylor told Israel Hayom.

"In consultation with WJRO and the representative body of the Dutch Jewish community, the NS should now designate additional funds to fulfill its committee's recommendation to provide a collective expression of recognition of the suffering and fate' of the vast majority of Dutch Holocaust victims who did not survive following transport by NS or are not covered by NS's compensation program," he continued.

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Shocked at what he had found, Haim ran up the basement stairs, his mind racing. "Could my mother have unknowingly married a Nazi?" "What else is he hiding from us?" "What crimes was he involved in?" Panting and out of breath, Haim entered the kitchen and yelled out, "Mommy, Daddy is a Nazi!" Haim's mother smiled. That was the moment when he learned his family's big secret.

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Haim is my uncle. I have known about his stepfather for a few years now, and every year I am reminded of his past on Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, though, I decided to look into the matter. Over the past few weeks, I have been collecting countless documents from personal archives and a few institutions in Israel and the US. Naturally, not everything was preserved in full. Some of the stories lack detail, while in other instances, there are discrepancies between the various documents and Haim's childhood memories. But nevertheless, what I have been able to learn makes for a fascinating and inspiring story.

This is the incredible story of William Zeev Brickman, a professor of education, an American spy and an emissary behind the Iron Curtain.

William Wolfgang Brickman was born in June 1913 in Manhattan, the son of Shalom-David, a German Jew, and Lahia-Sarah, a Jewish woman originally from the Polish town of Jedwabne, the infamous site where the Polish locals murdered their Jewish neighbors.

As a member of an Orthodox Jewish family, Brickman mostly spoke Yiddish at home, while he learned English and other languages out on the street. His father died when he was young, apparently the result of a self-inflicted umbilical hernia aimed at helping avoid the military draft back in Europe.

William was a towering, vibrant boy. When he registered for college, he decided to play it safe and major in something he knew he would be good at. With a background in German and Yiddish, he decided to register for the German and education programs at the City University of New York.

Agent 004

During the 1930s, Brickman got his doctorate in German, Latin, and education, managing to overcome the hostility and often anti-Semitism of some of the academic staff. His knowledge of Yiddish from home and knack for languages in general allowed him to develop great expertise in a number of languages, including full mastery of various local dialects. According to his academic resume, he could read 20 European languages, in addition to Latin and ancient Greek, three Asian and two African languages.

By the late 1930s, Brickman had a blossoming academic career, but World War II broke out and threw a wrench in his plans. In March 1943, one year after the US entered the war, he was drafted into the air force as a historian and German-language expert. In a letter of recommendation for an officers' course, Brickman's direct commander at his base in Fort Worth, Texas described him as "a scholar turned soldier, who proudly made the transition from civilian to military life."

Brickman had requested to be drafted as an officer in the air force's medical or chemical warfare units. All signs point to him having been convinced the war would serve as a sort of continuation of his academic career, but once again, fate would have other plans.

In late 1944, following the Allied invasion of northern France, it was clear the demise of the Third Reich was a matter of time. The US military was on the lookout for German speakers, when Brickman's name came up. He was summoned to interviews that were presented to him as ascertaining whether he would be a good fit for the occupation forces in Germany after the war. Brickman was supposed to serve in the occupation forces' postal service, where his knowledge of German would be considered an advantage, they said.  He scored high marks on the language exams, and of course, was accepted to the role. Though he did not know it at the time, his peaceful life was about to get a lot more interesting. A few weeks later, when he received his new draft order for his unit, it was clear to Brickman that the war was going to be an entirely different experience for him than he had expected.

According to the military documents, Brickman was to be stationed with the US Counter Intelligence Corps 970^th division, which operated in liberated territories in order to catch Nazi agents that had stayed behind. Between Jan. and Feb. of 1945, Brickman took an intelligence course at Fort Ritchie base in Maryland, in preparation for his being stationed in liberated Germany. According to his son Haim, at this stage, there was yet another change in plans and Brickman was drafted to the Office of Strategic Services, the US intelligence agency that would later become the CIA.

At first, Brickman was alarmed. Beyond the challenges of being stationed overseas, he did not want to leave his mother, who was alone and suffering from a serious illness, behind. As an Orthodox Jew, he also feared that on such a mission, he would not be able to maintain his religious way of life. Nevertheless, Brickman would soon be identified as Agent 004. Later on, his relatives would joke that Brickman had in fact preceded Agent 007, otherwise known as James Bond.

Setting the trap

Service in the OSS was particularly challenging, and Brickman's unit was to be stationed inside Germany, behind enemy lines, in the twilight of the Third Reich. Their objective: to capture senior SS officers that tried to escape and evade capture. The plan was to parachute into the border area between Germany and then-Czechoslovakia – an area known for being a center where Nazis would head in order to flee the country, in particular to Argentina, and pose as senior officers to catch those attempting to flee. For reasons that remain unclear, instead of parachuting in, the forces crossed the border by foot, setting up camp in Regensburg, Germany. This was made easier by the fact that the allied forces had already made significant progress, and the battle for Berlin was already in its advanced stages. The Germans began to destroy documents and archives, and the chaos that pervaded made it impossible to check the identities of agents posing as Nazi officers, thus allowing the agents to carry out their missions.

The official military documents I found while researching this article do not add any information or details about this period. All I know is what Brickman himself said about this time in conversations with his stepson. As Brickman told it, his unit offered Nazi officers a way out of the country, interrogated them and then foiled their escape plans. Their working assumption was that the only people in the area with the means and desire to leave Germany would be senior officers in the SS and the Wehrmacht.

Their method went something like this: Some of the agents in the unit would go out in public, mainly to the bars the Nazi officers were known to frequent. After having given the appearance they had been drinking, the agents would begin to brag about how they could help those who had the money flee the country for South America. When someone would turn to the agents and ask for their help, they would direct them to a specific cabin, where the agent would say they would find a Nazi officer with the connections and ability to get them out of the country. The Nazis would arrive at the cabin at night, where they would be greeted by a secretary who would ask them a few questions about where they served, their ranking and the like. The secretary would then call Brickman, who would be waiting in the office inside.

Brickman would be dressed in SS fatigues, on his shoulder the insignia of a military rank higher than that of his guest.

According to Haim, his stepfather "made sure not to take things too far. He wanted to remain credible, but he wanted to be more senior than the Nazi in order for him to obey him and treat him with respect."

In his conversation with the Nazi, Brickman would investigate the officer over his actions in the war and the places where he had served, before agreeing on a payment for his evacuation. Eventually, Brickman would send him a rendezvous point on the Czechoslovakian border and an agreed upon date when a group would prepare to leave for South America. When that date arrived, the Nazi officers would show up to the meeting point. But instead of finding their guides for the trip out of the country, they would find other OSS officers, who would take them hostage and transfer them to allied prisons. Other senior officers were taken to Nuremberg.

In one case, Brickman's unit had received information about the presence of very high-ranking SS officer in one of the villages in the area, and the agents set out to arrest him. Brickman entered the room, gave him two minutes to pack before leaving. The officer protested, saying he had many possessions and needed more time. Brickman made it clear that if he was not ready, he would be arrested and dragged through the streets naked. Two minutes later, the officer was ready.

Brickman was involved in a mission to catch Martin Bormann, one of the heads of the German Nazi regime. While the allies suspected he was hanging around the Czechoslovakian border, there were no pictures of him available, so he could not be identified. Brickman arrived at the village where Bormann was born and located the school he had attended as a boy. It was there he found a photograph of Bormann, which he distributed to his fellow agents. According to Haim's account, his father managed to get to the village where Bormann had apparently been hiding, although he did not ultimately succeed in catching him.

After the war, Brickman went back to working with the Counter Intelligence Services, where he was made responsible for Germany's Deggendorf district. At one point, he was stationed with the security unit tasked with securing the area where the Nuremberg trials were being held in 1945. In this role, a disguised Brickman would try to infiltrate the site in civilian clothes, with the aim of exposing weaknesses in the security system there. From time to time, when he would walk around among the Nazis' cells, he would run into a prisoner he had helped capture. He would take the opportunity to remove his military hat and reveal his kippah underneath. "He wanted to show them that fate had been reversed, and the victims had become the masters," Haim said.

In the months after the war, Haim would often serve as a witness at Jewish wedding ceremonies for concentration camp survivors conducted by a rabbi from the US military.

Brickman set himself a goal of collecting as many materials as possible from the Nazi era during his stay in postwar Germany, in order to preserve and document them for the sake of historical remembrance.

Among these documents, some of which are now at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, others now housed in Brown University's archives, one can find a collection of files and pamphlets from the Nazi era. There is also a copy of the Nazi party's 1933 campaign platform, numerous Reichsmark bills, various limericks and everyday documents distributed by the regime. One of the more important findings that Brickman managed to take with him from Germany was an elegant album produced by the Gestapo that detailed the various torture methods used by the secret police. The album was donated to the Yad Vashem archives in 1960, along with uniforms, flags, pins, a collection of stamps and various other items from that period.

Postcards from behind the Iron Curtain

Upon his discharge from the army in April 1946, Brickman returned to the academic track. He studied with the well-known philosopher John Dewey, and during the 1950s, taught at New York University's Department of Education, where he headed the department's history program. In 1960, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as the head of the comparative education department.

Taking advantage of his knowledge of a variety of languages, Brickman's research focused on the comparison of different education systems around the world. He wrote dozens of books on education, published dozens of articles in periodicals and Jewish magazines and edited a journal in the field.

In 1958, Brickman married Sylvia Mann, the daughter of a Jerusalemite family that had immigrated to the US. Mann was divorced with two children, Haim and his sister Simcha. It was in the early 1960s, when Brickman became a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania that the family moved to that house in Philadelphia, taking with them William's large collection of books and various objects that would expose Haim to his past.

According to Haim, William didn't talk much about that time in his life. But Haim does recall how his stepfather would embarrass him whenever they would go see a James Bond movie together. "He would erupt in laughter in the middle of the movie. It really embarrassed me as a child," Haim said.

Haim also recalled how his stepfather had refused to hire an attorney when he was called into court for some matter or another. "I underwent interrogation training, and I can get along just fine on my own," William explained.

Just like at the outset of his military service, quite a few surprises were awaiting Brickman in his academic career. As an expert on comparative education fluent in world languages, the US State Department hired him to asses education systems around the world. It was the beginning of the aviation era and the status of the US was rising in the world, and America was contending with an influx of students coming to the country to get a higher education.

In order to assess their academic level and intellectual capability, there was a need to carry out in-depth surveys of education systems in their countries of origin and develop methods for comparing high-school graduates from different places. Brickman joined many such delegations, including to Israel, and compiled reports on the subject for the State Department as well as the Dept. of Education.

Of particular interest are his journeys to the Soviet Union, China, and countries in Eastern Europe. On these travels, Brickman would not suffice with meeting senior officials in the nation's capital and writing down the official version provided by the authorities but rather would try as much as possible to tour the schools themselves and gain a first-hand impression of what was happening out in the field.

A troubled Jewish heart

While we don't know whether Brickman was working for the intelligence service on these journeys, we do know for certain that he had developed an independent line of Jewish intelligence. After learning of the difficult situation the Jews in the Soviet Union faced, he began to bring religious articles and books with him on his trips and distribute them to members of the local community who were doing whatever they could, and at any price, to preserve their identity. Because the authorities would not check the contents of his suitcase upon entering the country, he could smuggle in large amounts of material. Upon departing, Brickman would take with him letters to the West, which he would conceal under a heavy pile of Soviet propaganda material so that during the security check at the airport, no one would get suspicious.

In one of his reports, Brickman describes how he was almost caught. In Jan. 1972, while at the airport, waiting to depart for Leningrad, the decision was made to carry out a thorough check of his items.

"That was the first time my belongings were examined. They found a few copies of the Pravda newspaper, some writing by ... Lenin, speeches by Brezhnev," he said. As the officials seemed suspicious, Brickman showed them his library card for the Lenin Library and that made the necessary impression. I was allowed to continue in the direction of the bus."

Brickman's frequent journeys to the Soviet Union led him to connect with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who invested great efforts in preserving ties with the Jews in the Soviet Union at that time.

On one of his visits to Moscow, Brickman went to a synagogue on Friday night. Moscow's Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, who knew of his guest's identity but feared the KGB agents planted in the crowd, gave a sermon in Russian in which he praised the authorities for supporting Jewish education, synagogues, religious institutions, and so on and forth. But in the middle of his speech, he looked directly at Brickman and under his breath, muttered the words of the kaddish, the mourner's prayer. That was all it took for Brickman to understood that Soviet Jewry was on its deathbed.

Within the framework of his activity in the Soviet Union, Brickman forged ties with the Israeli Embassy in Moscow. One of the Pentateuch's in William's possession contains a special dedication from Ambassador Yaacov Sharett, the son of Israel's second Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, dated the eve of Rosh Hashanah, 1960. The dedication reads: "To the dear, dedicated and brave Professor Brickman, in memory of many other Pentateuchs."

Brickman died in the US in 1986 and was buried in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery. He now has 25 great-grandchildren who reside in Israel. At his funeral, he was lauded for his contribution to Jewish education in the US and his efforts to obtain federal funding for Jewish day schools.

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Mixing history lesson, entertainment and solemn remembrance, the ceremony was a large-scale spectacle involving troops, dancers and martial bands, culminating in a military fly-past. But the stars of the show were the elderly veterans of that campaign who said they were surprised by all the attention: They were just doing their jobs.

"I was just a small part in a very big machine," said 99-year-old John Jenkins, a veteran from Portsmouth, who received a standing ovation as he addressed the event. "You never forget your comrades because we were all in it together," he said. "It is right that the courage and sacrifice of so many is being honored 75 years on. We must never forget."

Jenkins was among 300 WWII veterans, aged 91 to 101, who attended the ceremony in Portsmouth, the English port city from where many of the troops embarked for Normandy on June 5, 1944.

The 93-year-old queen, who served as an army mechanic during the war, noted that when she attended a 60th-anniversary commemoration 15 years ago, many thought it might be the last such event.

"But the wartime generation – my generation – is resilient," she said. "The heroism, courage and sacrifice of those who lost their lives will never be forgotten," the monarch said. "It is with humility and pleasure, on behalf of the entire country – indeed the whole free world – that I say to you all, thank you."

The event, which kicked off two days of D-Day anniversary observances, paid tribute to the troops who shaped history during the dangerous mission to reach beachheads and fight in German-occupied France.

D-Day saw more than 150,000 Allied troops land on the beaches of Normandy in northwest France on June 6, 1944, carried by 7,000 boats. The Battle of Normandy helped bring about Nazi Germany's defeat in May 1945.

Wednesday's ceremony brought together presidents, prime ministers and representatives of countries that fought alongside Britain in Normandy: The United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Denmark, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland.

Trump read a prayer that President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered in a radio address June 6, 1944, extolling the "mighty endeavor" Allied troops were engaged in.

British Prime Minister Theresa May read a letter written by Capt. Norman Skinner of the Royal Army Service Corps to his wife, Gladys, on June 3, 1944, a few days before the invasion. He was killed the day after D-Day.

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Lutheran Bishop Ilse Junkermann unveiled the memorial Monday in the eastern German town of Eisenach in conjunction with several members of state Lutheran churches from across Germany whose predecessor organizations founded the institute in 1939.

The institute had aimed to delete all positive references about Jews in the bible and to push out Jewish converts from the church.

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The graffiti comes after a spike in anti-Semitic acts which surged by 74% in 2018, according to Interior Ministry figures. In February, President Emmanuel Macron visited a Jewish cemetery after vandals daubed swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans on dozens of graves.

The vandalism sent thousands of people into the streets of France for a protest on Feb. 19.

France is home to the biggest Jewish community in Europe – around 550,000 – a population that has grown by about half since World War II, but anti-Semitic attacks remain common.

The incident comes after a memorial in Strasbourg commemorating a 19^th-century synagogue destroyed by the Nazis in 1940 was vandalized over the weekend. Police were investigating the incident, which Strasbourg Mayor Roland Ries said "undermines the values of the republic."

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