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Abe Rich (died November 25, 2008) was a wood craftsman and Holocaust survivor. He was inducted into the International Cuemakers Hall of Fame for the quality of the pool cue sticks he produced.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=International Cuemakers Hall of Fame )〕 ==The Holocaust== Abraham Rutzisky was the son of Chaim and Hodel Rutzisky (sometimes rendered as Rutzaisky), a woodworker in Lithuania. Chaim Rutzisky was a ''Spundturner'', making bungs for beer kegs. A secular Jew, he was well-educated and spoke Lithuanian and Polish. In World War II, Germany invaded Lithuania (earlier absorbed by the Soviet Union) on June 22, 1941. Rutzisky was recruited by partisans because of his non-Jewish appearance, education and language skills; the partisans promised to help get his family to safety. He, however was recognized, denounced as a Jew, and shot. His wife and his youngest son, two-year-old Shlomo, were also killed during the war. His other sons, Morris and Abe, were assigned as woodturners in the workshops established in the Kovno Ghetto (July–October 1941). These were issued two of the 5000 Jordan passes (''Jordan-Scheine'') given to "useful Jews" and named after the ghetto’s S.A. ''Hauptsturmfuehrer'' Fritz Jordan.〔Klein 22〕 The brothers were seen as valuable for their ability to make chess pieces and toys for the children of SS men. One day, an SS officer came in to demand a repair or replacement to an ivory cigarette holder which had been a gift from his father. He struck Abe. Abe never recovered from this injury, and became a deformed hunchback, 5’ 3’’ tall as an adult. His appearance somewhat accounts for the fact that he never married. Having nearly starved to death, he suffered from chronic gastritis.〔Martinez〕 Morris created a perfect replica of the cigarette holder out of cow bone. Impressed by the workmanship of the finished object, the officer declared, "Hitler lied." Until his transfer, this SS man smuggled food to the boys, which proved important to their survival. The Kovno Ghetto was destroyed in October 1941, with 10,000 Jews being shot dead at the Ninth Fort on October 29. Approximately 3,000 of the 37,000 Jews living in Kovno survived the war, 500 of them by hiding in the forest, and 2,500 in German concentration camps. The boys were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria. Their woodworking skills again proved invaluable to their survival. They made clogs and canteens, and later internal scaffolding for the hangars the Germans erected to shield their aircraft from Allied reconnaissance and attack. Survival was by the barest of margins: Morris weighed and Abe when they were liberated in April 1945. They were sent to the Benedictine St. Ottilien Archabbey in Landsberg to recuperate. Morris was an invaluable witness in the Dachau War Crimes trial because of his photographic memory and the length of time the brothers had spent in the ghetto. Morris personally identified the former commandant, Martin Gottfried Weiss, who was hanged on May 29, 1946. By the time the proceedings ended, the window for Jewish refugees provided by the Truman Declaration had shut. Abe moved to Israel, where he worked in the Negev from 1948-1960 on road construction. He emigrated to the United States in 1960. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Abe Rich」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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