A plea on FACEBOOK illustrates why I have worked so hard to get the WWII materials released from the safe where they are currently decaying under my hands of the executors of my Dad’s estate.
The plea by Barbara Matto is to ask anyone who knows if the children in this picture are still alive. She asks: “If anybody knows the names of these boys and whether they are alive in Israel today, please share in the comments.”
The situation with my Dad’s role in Buchenwald is a bit different and even sadder.
Seventy years ago when Captain Robert Schwartz, USA Medical Corps, led his men into the camp, there were children like the two in Barbara’s photo. Some of these Buchenwald children , including Elie Wiesel and Yisrael Meir Lau (the former chief Rabbi of Israel) are still alive and surely deserve their chance to see the pictures. Others who still live include some of the American soldiers who entered the camp on that day almost 70 years ago. These men violated Patton’s orders in order to help relieve suffering. My Dad went further, disobeying the order by Eisenhower to not photograph the camp.
The inmates and soldiers who still survive are now in their nineties They too deserve a chance to see these pictures.
My goals are simple:
1. The pictures and other materials are now decaying. They were developed under battlefield conditions and need to be properly preserved and digitized. This should be done by a proper museum or institution able to store the materials, exhibit them and make them publicly available under the normal academic rules of open access.
2. Once digitization is done, I wish to assemble the pictures with the inscriptions my Dad wrote on the backs of the prints. I will place these in an ebook for distribution to and comment by the survivors ..soldiers and inmates. Left: Rabbi Israel Lau is one of those survivors.
3. I will ask for any additional comments by these heroes and will add these to the ebook. The book, of course. will be offered to publishers for distribution under the usual terms for materials whose copyrights would then be held by the host institution. Alternatively, I would look into the difference between self publishing vs traditional publishing and see which was the best option for me.
4. Brandeis University, my brother’s alma mater, offered to host the materials and provided the usual boiler plate agreement that all universities and museums use. My wife and I discussed the book with Brandeis and this is exactly within their normal terms. My brother and sister rejected Brandeis’ offer because they will not agree to the normal terms of open access. My brother’s wife, a corporate attorney specializing in intellectual property, has held her self out as an expert in academic law. Her statements, perhaps appropriate for some firm fighting over its copyrights, violate the principles practiced by Brandeis.
This should not be an issue under the terms of my Dad’s will and the terms of an agreement all the heirs signed. Those terms even included a donation by the heirs, including my two children and my Dad’s widow, to my brother. This donation was for $120,000 worth of autographs that he wanted to have. The same agreement commits the three of us, my brother Hugh Schwartz and my sister Stephanie Schwartz Quick, to donate the materials to a public institution where they will be made freely available to the public a standard of practice called “open access.”
Instead, my brother Hugh Schwartz and his co executor Martin Miasserian have determined to store the materials in a lawyer’s office with no preservation or even an inventory. I do not even know who has access to them or whether such people understand how to handle fragile materials like these.
My brother in law, William Quick, has gone further … creating a website where he calls me “fos” and denigrated my Dad by denying my Dad’s own account of his role at Buchenwald.
My brother has threatened to let the pictures rot before he will let me ever see them again.
This is appalling! What is your brother’s problem?!!! These materials are a unique resource that should be available both as documentation of the Holocaust, but also as educational materials for teachers and activists to use.
I believe Hugh has a bad and sad case of sibling rivalry. That is the reason I agreed to his demand that we place these at Brandeis, Hugh’s alma mater. Brandeis is rather equivocal about the story told here since they do not have a major program built around the camps. They offered to store the materials. They are supportive of my idea for a book, but do not seem committed to studying the materials form WWII. However, the medical school my Dad attended, Middlesex, closed after WW II. Its campus became Brandeis and the University sees his story as part of its heritage.