Before they died, they lived: real estate entrepreneur sheds light on Holocaust victims

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 9, 2002 by Natalie Keith

On the walls of Aaron Ziegelman's office is a small black and white photograph of two little girls standing on the street in what seems to be a distant land.

It is one of many items -- or more accurately, artifacts -- that he has displayed in his Midtown office overlooking Sixth Avenue. And it would be indistinguishable from the others if it weren't for one fact -- the girls, named Tova and Chaye, are Ziegelman's cousins and two of the many victims of the Holocaust.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about those little girls. It haunts me," Ziegelman said.

Ziegelman's professional life, as an entrepreneur and founder of Gala Resources, has long gained him recognition in the New York City real estate industry. He figured prominently in the co-op and condo conversation craze of the 80's and 90's. Gala Resources is now a short-term mortgage lender. But in recent years, Ziegelman's personal quest to shed light on life in his hometown of Luboml is earning him recognition across the county.

Luboml, a rural market town or shtetl as it's known in Yiddish, was once located in Poland and is now in the Ukraine. Of the 5,000 Jews that lived there in 1938 when Ziegelman left with his family to move to America, only 51 remained after the war. But it's not the sheer numbers impacted by the atrocities of Hitler's Third Reich that motivated Ziegelman to illuminate life in Luboml. It was the human beings - like the two little girls in the photograph Ziegelman eyes daily - that spurred him to share memories of the town he knew as a boy.

"I don't have to think of five million or six million Jews killed during the war," he said. "All I have to do is think of those two little girls. They were my age."

Ziegelman has spent the last few years compiling 2,000 photographs and artifacts from his hometown, a collection that has been shown around the world in a traveling exhibition. The traveling exhibition, curated by noted historian Fred Wasserman and managed by Dr. Jill Vexler, has toured America, Europe and Israel to critical acclaim. Ziegelman decided to donate the collection to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. On Oct. 30, a ceremony will be held with a symbolic presentation.

"I did it because I felt there has been a lot of emphasis on the horrors of the Holocaust but these are just statistics," he said. "I wanted to show the people."

The exhibition was the impetus behind a recently completed documentary called "Luboml; My Heart Remembers" which is set to air on New York's PBS station WLIW, Channel 21, this fall. The film was produced by Ron Steinman, a former NBC News Saigon, Hong Kong and London Bureau Chief and Eileen Douglas, longtime news anchor on New York's WINS Radio. The film chronicles the everyday life - from school and work life to the rituals of weddings and funerals - of Luboml's Jewish community prior to the Holocaust. Ziegelman admits that there was nothing special about Luboml. But said it was typical of the many shtetls decimated by the war.

"I wanted to put a name, a face to the town," he said. "They were just hard working people they were killed for no other reason than for being Jewish."

He said the project has taken on special significance since Sept. 11 - when almost 3,000 people were murdered simply for their Western style of life.

"After watching the film, I think people will share a sense of loss that comes when people you know, or get to know through this film, are murdered," he said. "I would imagine it's not dissimilar to the ache survivors felt after their coworkers died in the World Trade Center."

He also wanted to debunk the romanticized version of shtetl life depicted in the movie "Fiddler on the Roof."

Ziegelman moved from Poland to the United States in 1938 at the age of 10 with his mother and sister, both of whom are currently living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Germany invaded Poland a year later.

Ziegelman still has a photograph of the crowd of friends and relatives who gathered at the train station to say goodbye to the young family before they departed for the United States. But he sadly points out that except for him, his mother, sister and one other woman, everybody in the photograph was killed. Ziegelman said about 100 family members, including his two grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins, died during the Holocaust.

"The world needs to know about people in the camps before they were brought there," he said. "It's very important that everyone realize that these people were first individuals and then they became victims."

In addition to being a real estate entrepreneur, Ziegelman is a philanthropist, largely to Jewish causes. He has served as chairman of the Real Estate Division of the New York UJA-Federation, on the Executive Committee of AIPAC and as vice chairman of CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership). At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ha has served as general chairman of the Board of Governors since 1986. He is responsible for the founding of the West End Synagogue in New York City, and is chairman of the American Society for the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv.