To calculate the correct value, it is necessary to add eightyone flights to Eilat and Sinai (for the aforementioned purposes), twenty-four trips abroad (financing activities of commemoration and fund-raising in Denmark, Germany, England, Holland, the US, South Africa, etc.), for contribution, consultation, commemoration, demarcation, and investigation.
Between 1952 and 1972, the Company employed for payment forty-six sculptors, two hundred craftsmen (carpenters, tinsmiths, ironworkers, painters, speakers, cantors, burial society, flagmakers, artists, graphic designers, chauffeurs, researchers, interviewers, tape recorders, maintenance workers, etc.).
A consultant from the Bergen-Belsen Society was employed by the company for two years at full payment and there were also royalties for printed material-all that in the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. Maintenance-two hundred fifty thousand pounds. Memorial for the Holocaust cost a sum impossible to detail here. The average sum for a reasonable calculation is one hundred thousand dollars, but the final sum has not yet been set.
Until '62, and in general, many documents are missing. The Company was then the private business of Boaz Schneerson and was not listed properly according to corporate law, but it paid its taxes as a private person. The sum of taxes was calculated and the difference was paid afterward according to a judgment (see Appendix 11).
Exchange of foreign currency was done according to the usual rates. Nontaxable contributions were calculated separately, they are listed in Appendix 12.
There were problems of publicity. The statue by Tamarin, who specialized in various trends of commemoration, constituted a problem in itself that is illustrative of all the problems. The great nuances of artists like Tamarin pose an especially difficult challenge to an attorney trying to prepare a report like this. There are memorials whose purpose is no longer known. Tamarin's fame grew because of the memorials and his fee also rose, because some of the agreements with the committees of parents and ad hoc committees were made prior to that. Cataloguing fame in the context of the fervor of those concerned with the issue casts doubt on a proper investigation of the expenses. Sometimes the date of concluding the memorials is so important they no longer calculate the signed contract and pay whatever comes to hand, and then S.L.A. has to bear financial responsibility, while its taxes are set according to contracts and memoranda of agreement, or receipts whose evidence is contradictory. There are memorials that were paid for, even though they were not erected because of stubbornness, or a public scandal. Merely dismantling memorials cost the Company about three hundred thousand pounds, moving memorials from place to place cost a great deal (see Appendix 16). Shifting the border, correcting mistakes, all that was not brought into the first account, and now has to be corrected.
Clearing rubble cost a fortune, but the tax is not valid in that matter, since the tax law does not take account of dangers of fire, war, etc. Payment to the army for burned tanks for memorials is calculated according to a price list that does not correspond with reality. In the case of operas of grief, bereavement, and plays of mourning, there is no precedent in the income tax legislation, while the value-added tax is high. Memorial conferences of underground organizations or regiments of the War of Independence are calculated differently from conferences of existing regiments that the IDF still refers to by name.
I want to mention a few numbers as an example of what is written in Appendices 17 and 18. Five hundred forty-five pamphlets for schools were printed and distributed by the S.L.A. Company without cooperation with other bodies. Pamphlets for kindergartens (544); songbooks for youth (134); pamphlets for preparing assemblies in grammar schools (524); pamphlets for junior high schools and vocational high schools were printed in hundreds of thousands of copies. Pamphlets such as "What to Sing on "How to Arrange Flowers at the Ceremony of " were printed in thousands of copies and distributed free. Pamphlets for young people in the Diaspora were printed in six teen languages. The price list was high because of the costs of translation, editing, and printing on quality paper. Records, help in writing musical or dramatic works, radio and television programs, ninety-six films for the Diaspora in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and the Absorption Ministry. And if you add to all that the postponed payments, an unstable calculation of the rates of inflation and the cost of living, you will see the impossibility of a precise listing.
All the aforementioned does not take account of the personal contribution of Boaz Schneerson, his private expenses with regard to those activities and others are enumerated in the appendices. His activity on behalf of the committees of parents, the commemoration rooms, swimming pools in soldiers' homes, seminar rooms, youth hostels and their upkeep, mobile libraries in memory of the missing, and on this subject, see the letter of Jordana Etzioni of the Ministry of Defense and the letter of Mr. Obadiah Henkin, chairman of the Committee of Bereaved Parents and another letter of his vice chairman Isaiah Shimshoni.
Additional expenses with regard to lawsuits with artists, creators, craftsmen, committees of workers, the union of painters and sculptors, the union of engineers and architects were more than ten times more than a rough estimate. I attach to my letter the affidavit of Boaz Schneerson, given to attorney Bohan Tsedek, the letters of Henkin, Shimshoni, Jordana Etzioni, and others, and as a sign that these words are written innocently, three letters are attached above by members of the Committees of Bereaved Parents of World War II, the War of Independence, and the Six-Day War, separate from the central and national Committees of Parents. A letter from the Society of BergenBelsen in New York is also attached here, along with one from the Union of Fifty in England, a letter by Professor Israel S. Shauli on the sociology of bereavement, a letter by Mr. Nahum Naftali who teaches widowhood in three high schools (experimentally), and letters from three well-known intellectuals who have never taken part in any assembly or memorial book, and whose material has never been printed in this context and thus they have no axe to grind, and they are A. Galbovski, Avinoam Ha-Him, and D. N. Avigdor.
See also Appendices numbers 20-25-Commemoration, What Is It? (Jarushka and Aviram). "Bereavement and Insomnia," published by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Judaism. "Poetry of Mourning, Revenge for Bereavement," by S. Nahmiahu. "Songs and Hymns for Holidays and Celebration," by Even Hen and Atara Shaked, etc.
Sincerely, Gideon (Janusz) Kramer, Tel Aviv
I have translated the contents for you, not the appendices. The trial took place before a judge in the district court. Boaz pleaded guilty. After you judged in his favor, Boaz wrote a letter to the judge thanking him, he said he was writing on behalf of Menahem Henkin, may the Lord avenge his blood. And I? I was silent.
Tape / -
Rebecca Schneerson's house, afternoon. On the table stands a steaming samovar, on either side of the table sit an old woman and a man in a uniform, decorated with medals and sporting an unidentified military cap. They're drinking tea. An Arab boy named Ahbed brings a plate with pistachios, sunflower seeds, halvah, biscuits, dumplings, and goat cheese; he serves a pitcher of water and two glasses. The old woman puts a sugar cube into her mouth and sucks the tea through the sugar.