Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles

Doris Wise Montrose, right, the President of the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles (CJHSLA), with Nonie Darwish.

The Daily News profiles the remarkable Doris Wise Montrose, the head of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles.

"I always knew I was different," says Montrose, who by her own admission typifies [the second generation] complex, even if her parents tried to protect her from any past trauma by enveloping her in the safe environment of the 1950s and 1960s San Fernando Valley.

"They had a joy of life as I was growing up, and they didn’t go down the road of remembering (the Holocaust)," recalls Montrose.

"When they talked about it, it was part of our back-noise.  They and their friends spoke Yiddish, and sometimes they would say words in Yiddish that we knew had to do with camp.

"They were vivacious.  They were beautiful.  They laughed.  They sang.  They smoked.  They drank.  They ate.  That’s what we got from them.  What we got from my parents was something any other child would hear."

But that changed when Montrose, as a high school student, interviewed her father for a term paper.

"That’s when he told me about the details . . . about the Holocaust," says Montrose.  "I was shocked to hear about it and about my mom being smuggled out of Poland.  I guess I always knew, but it wasn’t until then that I learned about the horror and later when I started studying (the Holocaust) because my parents hadn’t wanted me to know how horrible it was.  They protected me from it."

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[Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles] began with a protest over the 2006 abductions of Israeli soldiers Gilad Shalit, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser by the extremist Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah, which sparked the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

Montrose’s group wrote to the International Red Cross urging it to intervene, reminding the organization that it kept silent during the Holocaust — a fact admitted by the Red Cross in 1997 when it handed over 60,000 pages of World War II-era documents to Israel.

"As an activist, these are the kinds of positions we must do in remembering the Holocaust and to avoid another one," says Montrose, who prides herself on pulling no punches. . . . "I get calls from people who think I am (doing) education, and I will direct them to other places," says Montrose.

The website of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles is an essential resource for those wanting to arm themselves with the information necessary to act.  It currently features the complete audio of Daniel Gordis’s extraordinary April 2 presentation at Sinai Temple and Caroline Glick’s brilliant presentation at Congregation Beth Jacob on January 19. 

Prior events sponsored by CJHSLA include a debate on "Prospects for Middle East Peace Post Annapolis" between Dr. Michael Berenbaum of AJU and Steven M. Goldberg of ZOA,  and a debate on "The Next President and the Jewish People" between Larry Greenfield (California Director of the Repubican Jewish Coalistion) and Andrew Lachman (President of Democrats for Israel, Los Angeles).  Coming up on May 25 and June 17:  Ariel University of Samaria and Dr. Andrew Bostom. 

You can check out more events and action opportunities here.  Or contact Doris directly at doris@cjhsla.org. Or mail a check to CJHSLA, 20058 Ventura Blvd., #198, Woodland Hills, CA 91364. It would be a good action to take on Holocaust Remembrance Day, as a start.