NMHS Holocaust Studies Make History With Holocaust Memorial Dedication

On April 10 , 2013, Tambuscio and this year's group of students took part in the dedication of the Holocaust Memorial to honor the people of Trsice who hid the Wolf family during the Nazi occupation and also to remember Jewish residents murdered by the Nazis.

The monument was established as a cooperative project by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of American Heritage Abroad, the Czech Republic towns of Trsice and Olomouc, the Czech Republic Organization for Support of Burned Villages -- villages and towns destroyed during World War II -- and the Holocaust studies students of New Milford High School. 

The inscription on the memorial reads:

When the Nazi Germans imprisoned and killed large numbers of the Jewish population of Europe, citizens of Tršice hid members of a Jewish family - Berthold, Ružena, Felicitas, and Otto Wolff - from 1942 until 1945 at great risk to their own lives.

Initially, this heroic act was done by Jaroslav Zdařil of hn. (house number) 172, František and Marie Zbořil of hn. 21, Ludmila Chodilová nee Tichá of hn.290 and Oldřich and Marie Oher from Zákřov of hn.1. As time went on many other citizens of Tršice learned of the hiding place and kept the secret.

This monument honors them and the memory of Jewish residents Tršice Anna, Blanka, and Eliška Kornblüh who were found and sent to the Terezín camp on 26.6.1942, and then on 20.8.1942, to Riga, Lithuania, where they were murdered.

The Jewish community of Olomouc, the town Tršice, the Olomouc Regional Government and the Organization for Support of Burned Villages with support from the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad made possible by member Joan Ellyn Silber and by Sherman J. Silber.

In 2012, New Milford High School students who sojourned with Holocaust Studies teacher ColleenTambuscio to Trsice, Czech Republic, were present for the dedication of a memorial in a forest--a memorial that classes before them had worked hard to make happen.

The memorial marks the place where the Wolf family, a Jewish family of four, hid from the Nazi's for three years to avoid Nazi capture.

Tambuscio and the Holocaust Study Tour group first visited the hiding place of the Wolf family in 2008. Tambuscio recalled that when she first visited, there was no memorial that marked the historical significance of the place. That is when Tambuscio and her students decided that they wanted to establish a memorial. 

"With the help of the local Jewish community in Olomouc, we managed to identify the family's cave-like shelter," Tambuscio said. 

"No one knew why the spot wasn't marked," Tambuscio said. "It seemed to us that they just never really thought about marking that spot."

Tambuscio said that it took three years of dedicated work both the United States and in the Czech Republic, (fundraising and working with the Czech Republic to obtain the appropriate approvals to move forward with the memorial) for the memorial to be dedicated during the time that the 2012 Holocaust Studies Group would be there. 

Let Patch save you time. Get local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone everyday with our free newsletter. It’s simple and fast: sign-up here.