Holocaust Hero’s Granddaughter Continues His Legacy; L’Dor V’Dor

A Young Man Escapes Nazi-Occupied Poland

When Ben Zion Kalb (later “Colb”) escaped from Poland to Slovakia shortly after the German invasion of Poland (September 1, 1939), and then proceeded to rescue his fiancée and well more than 1,000 other Jews from death in the Holocaust, he surely would not have imagined that, 85 years later, his granddaughter, Sara Colb, would continue and honor his legacy via her own advocacy for the Jewish people.

From Ben Zion to Sara, the Colb family symbolizes the powerful, moving, often heartbreaking, and inspiring essence of l’dor v’dor, “from generation to generation,” as we pass along and embrace through family and community our learning, traditions, and commitment to the Jewish people and to social justice throughout the world.

The Colb family’s legacy is preserved in its own collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) – Jews Rescuing Jews: The Ben Zion and Clara Colb Collection, from which much of the content here is summarized or paraphrased.

The USHMM summarizes the collection as follows:

The Ben Zion Kalb papers consist of a diary, photographs, and documents related to the rescue work of Ben Zion Kalb (later Colb) who helped refugees cross the border between Hungary and Slovakia as part of the Slovak Working Group [an underground Jewish resistance organization]. The collection includes lists of names of those he assisted, photographs of Kalb with people he rescued, and correspondence with Itzak Zuckerman [a leader of the Jewish Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising] and Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl [part of the Bratislava Working Group, another resistance organization] as well as a partial typed copy of the Vrba-Wetzler report [part of the Auschwitz Protocols, the first eyewitness account of what was taking place at Auschwitz, written by two Slovak Jews who escaped the death camp.] The diary was kept by Ben Zion from September 4, 1944 to January 1945.

Ben Zion and Clara Lieber were engaged to marry in Poland in the summer of 1939, shortly before the German invasion, marking the beginning of World War II.

But when Ben Zion was beaten by a German policeman, he knew that Jews in Poland were doomed, and he managed to escape to Slovakia. His brother, Mendel, was killed by the Germans. Clara, somehow escaping death, was deported to a ghetto in Bochnia, Poland, and was arrested several times, miraculously avoiding execution.

Determined to reunite with Clara, in early 1943, Ben Zion managed to send her instructions, via her brothers, on how to escape from Poland to Slovakia. With a train ride and the help of two facilitators, one hiding her in a pigsty and one leading her over the mountains into Slovakia, where she received false identity papers for safety, Clara reunited with Ben Zion.

Wedding portrait of Ben Zion and Clara Kalb. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Ben Zion Kalb Saves More Than 1,000 Jews From Nazi Death Camps

After saving Clara, Ben Zion worked with urgency to rescue other Polish Jews, primarily children, likely totaling far more than 1,000 individuals.  He initially used his own funds to pay couriers and other facilitators of the life-or-death, emergency escapes. Rabbi Weissmandl later supplemented those funds through the Slovak Working Group and through funds sent to international Jewish organizations in Switzerland.

Typed list of names of Jews Ben Zion Kalb arranged to smuggle into Slovakia from Poland. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Family of Ben Zion and Clara Colb.

Though Ben Zion mainly rescued children, he also saved Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, the third Bobover Rebbe, who re-established the Hasidic dynasty in the United States after the war, along with members of his family; the nuclear physicist, Ludwik Wertenstein, who later died during the Russian siege of Budapest; and a Mr. Landau from the Bochnia Jewish Council resistance group.

Yitzhak and Alter Weinberg , two orphaned brothers Ben Zion saved, who went on to live in Israel. Credit: The Colb Family.

Ben Zion and Clara were married by Rabbi Weissmandl on July 11, 1943.  Both Ben Zion and Clara were liberated in 1945, eventually moving from Europe to the United States, where they raised three children, Mark, Melvin and Sherry.

Mark reports that his father, Ben Zion, had a great love of life, while also suffering from depression and guilt at having been unable to rescue his parents and brother, who insisted on remaining in Poland. Ben Zion passed away from heart disease in 1973, at the age of 63.

Clara Kalb (center) poses with two sisters her husband, Jewish rescuer Ben Zion Kalb, helped smuggle into Slovakia from Poland. Rita Schmidt (later Nussbaum) is on the left and Ruth Schmidt (later Gellis) is on the right. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Sara Colb is born

Roughly six years later, in 1979, Mark and his wife, Marie Turner, both physicians, welcomed their second child, Sara. 

As a musical family, the Colbs enjoyed sharing love of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and others of the 1960s rock genre.

Sara began singing and playing guitar live in her 20s, after graduation from McGill University in Montreal. She has continued to express herself musically through the present, performing as Sara Colb and the Sagamore James Band, including both original material and covers, largely rock, blues, and Americana. Colb’s music has a familiar yet hard to pin down sound, bringing to mind a variety of names – Janis Joplin, Norah Jones, Carrie Underwood, Jewel,  Dolly Parton, Etta James, and Lady Gaga, perhaps?

After working odd jobs and performing music for a few years after college, and with a vision of fighting for greater equity and to help protect and lower barriers for vulnerable communities, Sara chose to attend the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, compelled by its offering of the Innocence Project Law clinic. Through that clinical work, led by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, co-founders of the Innocence Project, Sara had a window into some of the harshest realities of the United States’ criminal justice system, in which Colb believes factors like class and race have an unmistakable and devastating impact on outcomes for the accused.

After graduating from law school, Colb worked for several law firms, taking on a substantial pro bono caseload, including a death penalty case, indigent criminal defense work, special education matters, and eviction cases.

In 2016, Sara changed career paths and joined the Civil Rights and then Trial Divisions of the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General, serving first under Maura Healey (now Governor) and then AG Andrea Campbell.

As an Assistant Attorney General, Colb worked on a wide range of state discrimination cases.  She also worked on cases challenging executive actions by the Trump administration, including litigation challenging the so-called “Muslim ban.”  Colb co-authored a brief on behalf of 15 State Attorneys General challenging the ban on transgender individuals serving in the United States’s military.  She also co-authored a legal brief to the MA Supreme Judicial Court in Lunn v. Commonwealth, in which the state’s highest court ruled that state and local law enforcement officers may not arrest or detain someone based on a federal, civil immigration order.

In 2018, Colb earned the MA Bar Association’s Access to Justice Prosecutor Award, with a public congratulations from Attorney General Healey:

The MA Bar Association wrote up Colb’s award as follows:

Since joining the public sector after years in private practice, Colb has found fulfillment in amplifying the voice of discrimination victims across the state, holding powerful entities accountable for financial damages, and affecting policy change to protect entire classes of people. The assistant attorney general has also taken on prominent roles in cases with far-reaching implications, helping Massachusetts maintain its reputation for adopting progressive stances and establishing national precedent on civil rights issues.

After the Trump Administration announced its intention to prohibit military service by transgender individuals, Attorney General Maura Healey entrusted Colb and two others with preparing a condemnatory amicus brief that was signed by 15 additional states and filed in U.S. District Court.

“I think the transgender military ban is an affront to our fundamental American values,” Colb said. “That our government would turn its back on transgender veterans and active service persons — people willing to do what so few of us are, risk their lives for their country — and essentially say, ‘You’re not fit to serve,’ is a disgrace to the nation.”

In the landmark Supreme Judicial Court case Lunn v. Commonwealth, Colb co-authored a brief for the Commonwealth arguing that state law does not grant local law enforcement officials the authority to conduct arrests at the direction of federal immigration authorities. This first-in-the-nation ruling by a state supreme court is still the only one of its kind, Colb said. 

Although she relishes her involvement in larger matters of federal significance, Colb is equally inspired to pursue justice for individual complainants, with one notable example being a $110,000 settlement she negotiated with Dell EMC to resolve allegations of discrimination against a transgender employee. 

“There’s a real need for this kind of work, and I find it to be personally and professionally the most rewarding,” Colb said.

In early 2024, as antisemitism went viral following the Hamas terror attacks on Israelis and others in October 2023, Colb moved from the Office of the Attorney General to the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

In doing so, Colb joins ADL New England in its long tradition of advocacy and cross-cultural relationship-building, in continuance of the legacy of the late Leonard P. (“Lenny”) Zakim, who, as ADL New England director, founded and led, with the Reverend Charles Stith, Boston’s annual Black-Jewish seder.

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The Zakim Bridge is lit in blue on April 16, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. Landmarks and buildings across the nation are displaying blue lights to show support for health care workers and first responders on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Since joining ADL New England, Colb has been focused on K-12 advocacy, including pushing for antisemitism and anti-bias education at the individual school district level, responding to individual incidents through engagement with schools, and advocating at the state level for policies to address the crisis of antisemitism in Massachusetts schools.

She also advocated for the budget amendment, ultimately signed into law by Governor Healey, that created the first-of-its-kind special state commission to combat antisemitism, as well as the mandate that DESE provide evidence-based educational resources and professional development on antisemitism.

Our Bruce Springsteen?

In 1974, music writer Jon Landau saw Bruce Springsteen perform in Cambridge, MA, and wrote prophetically, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen!”

Similarly, I have seen the future of the Jewish community in the diaspora, and her name is Sara Colb.

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BOSTON, MA – OCTOBER 4, 2002: Leonard Zakim’s widow, Joyce Zakim (right) and their children (from left) Deena, Shari and Josh (not visible) listen to Bruce Springsteen performing “Thunder Road” at the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge dedication ceremony in Boston, Massachusetts. The bridge is named in honour of Zakim, a civil rights leader who died of cancer in 1999. (Photo by Jacob Silberberg/Getty Images)

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The author thanks the Colb Family for providing information  and inspiration for this article.

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