 camp commandant, which overlooked the camp complex and enabled him to witness the murder of many prisoners, including members of his own family.
Ed was transferred from Plaszow to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he was almost beaten to death by one of the guards. “You considered yourself lucky if you had work. I was a strong young man, not afraid to try anything,” related Ed. “In Mauthausen I worked in a stone quarry. I had to climb 186 steps up and down while carrying rocks. If you stopped for a moment, they would shoot you or throw you off the cliff to your death.” When the American forces approached, the German guards from Mauthausen gathered the prisoners in a cave and tried to detonate it. The prisoners, Ed among them, were saved when the explosive failed to ignite. “Those that survived owe their luck to that,” Ed said.
On 5 May 1945 Ed was liberated, the only surviving member of his family. Due to his weak physical state, he was forced to spend some time in Italy before returning to Krakow, the city of his birth. There he met Cecile, a fellow survivor from his hometown, who had also lost her entire family in the Shoah, except for her father. Ed and Cecile moved to Belgium, where they wed.
In 1951, Ed and Cecile arrived in the US, where he became a successful businessman. The couple had three daughters, and devoted their time to the Jewish community, as well as to recovering, restoring and preserving many Jewish cultural artifacts lost during the Shoah. Among these treasures are Torah Scrolls saved from destruction during the Holocaust that today are preserved and used in many synagogues across the US and Israel. Ed also supports research into topics connected to the Holocaust. “I feel it is my duty to tell… lately I began to give testimony about my experiences during the Shoah because our numbers, the numbers of the survivors, are dwindling.”
Ed and Cecile Mosberg, members of the American Society for Yad Vashem, are recipients of the “Yad Vashem Prize for Commemoration,” presented to them for their dedication in preserving Holocaust Remembrance.
Righteous Among the Nations
Ivan (Ivica) Vranetic was born in Vrbas, Yugoslavia, in 1927.
In September 1943, after the German occupation of Italy and the territories under its control, the Yugoslav partisans arrived at the Island of Rab in the Adriatic Sea. They released the Jews interned on the island’s camp, and helped them reach the area in southern Yugoslavia that was under their control. Some of the Jews joined the ranks of the partisans, while the women, children and infirm among them stayed in the villages, principally in the village of Topusko in southern Croatia. Many of the village’s residents were connected to the Ustaša, the Croatian ruling party responsible for the murder of most of the Jews in Croatia. These residents ignored the distress of the Jews, and those that did help them only did so for fear of the partisans.
Seventeen-year-old Ivan (Ivica) Vranetic aided the Jews from the moment they reached Topusko. Vranetic befriended a number of Jewish refugees and found them places to live. He carried children and elderly people on his back over and over to their places of refuge. Among the refugees was Arna Montilio, whose husband had been killed in the Jasenovac camp, as well as her small daughter and elderly mother. Vranetic found them a hiding place.
At the end of 1943, a German army unit came to the region, and battles between them and the Yugoslav partisans began. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee the areas in which the battles were taking place, and to make their way from one place of refuge to the next. Vranetic used to warn the Jews of upcoming battles, find them new places to hide and even escort them to these places and take care of all their needs there. In one case, when a rumor broke out that the Germans were approaching, a number of Jews fled in error towards the Ustaša forces. Vranetic worried about them and after two hours found them and directed them towards safety.
In hiding the Jews and his actions taken on their beh