Part 7

(Continued from January 23)

From the Yad Vashem database I found an article about Beriha and their postwar activities. Alexander was active in that organization helping Jews to get to Palestine. Since the Beriha was funded by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, I tried to contact them. After almost an hour on my computer trying to find a human being to present my question to, I gave up. I searched their 500,000-name database with no luck. I was unable to find a way to contact anyone. Boris had also searched this site without success. After quite some further searching, Dorothy was able to find a phone number and an email address. The email address did not respond so I tried the phone number.

I wrote to Suzy Snyder at USHMM inquiring as to the meaning of the organization by the name of “Yaguda” that I had seen mentioned in connection with my research and also naturally raised the standard inquiries. A reply I received from Vincent Slatt at USHMM confirmed that Yaguda is the Russian pronunciation for Agudath. He also gave various suggestions of information available at USHMM, all of which I had covered previously.

I received a further report from Boris. He had contacted a private researcher in Belarus to look for personnel records in the Baranovichi passport-issuing office. He said he would see what he could find but at the same time mentioned that “the situation vis-à-vis KGB archives is bad. There is practically no chance to get any information out of there.” A similar sentiment was expressed to Boris regarding the Moscow KGB (now FSB) archives by a U.S. archivist.

Boris did find an Alexander Karpov as having received an award citation in 1944. But all the facts stated about that soldier did not match what we knew of Dorothy’s father. Nevertheless, Boris wrote a letter in Dorothy’s name on April 29, 2018, to the Russian Defense Ministry’s archives to try to find out more information. The letter was a follow-up to the required phone inquiry since they do not reply to emails. In the phone conversation the director’s secretary spoke to him as if he was a convict, saying that they could release the information only upon proof of relationship. Dorothy mailed the letter registered return receipt requested on May 2 and received a confirmation of delivery on May 14. But, as expected, that was all we heard from there.

Christa A. Lemelin of OGIS at NARA had suggested that I write to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. I received a prompt reply from Haley J. Maynard, archivist, telling me all the things that I already knew about the organization and that it is unlikely that they would have any information on the individual that I was referring to since he was not a U.S. citizen. Nevertheless, he searched the datebase and found the right name, but he was a U.S. State Department employee.

In the meantime, my own attorney came back to tell me that to hire a lawyer to force the CIA through the use of the court to disclose any information would be prohibitively expensive and that he could not find an attorney to do it pro bono. Even if a judge would order the CIA to disclose any information they might have, the CIA might nevertheless be able to justify a refusal.

On May 22, 2018, I contacted Rabbi J.J. Schacter (for full disclosure: his daughter Leah is married to Dorothy’s son, Rabbi Jonathan Knapp) to see whether, possibly through his world-wide contacts, he would know an attorney who might be willing to take the case pro bono. He did—a famous attorney whom he knew well was initially very excited about suing the CIA but suggested that his partner in his law firm should look into it.

I also asked Rabbi Schacter about the archives of the Vaad Hatzala that are maintained at YU. Rabbi Schacter introduced me to Shulamith Z. Berger, the curator of special collections and Hebraica-Judaica at YU. From an index of major topics that Berger made available to me, I picked out those that might be of interest to me due to their geographic description. I made an appointment to meet her in the library on May 31. (It turns out that Shulamith met Dorothy on a trip to Lithuania and she went to school with Dorothy’s sister, Pauline Zeitchik-Raiz—who says this is not a small world?)

(To be continued next week)

Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident and Englewood Hospital volunteer.