What a blessing from sadness

Nazis stole this Holocaust victim’s books. How his grandson unexpectedly got them back: Project in Germany aims to return books to their rightful owners

Eighty years, and what have we learned?

This haunting memorial is found in Budapest, Hungary. It is called 'Shoes on the Danube Bank'. Conceived of by film director Can Togay and created in conjunction with sculptor Gyula Pauer, it commemorates and honour the memories of the Jews and others who were massacred by fascist Hungarian militia during the Second World War. Men, women, and children were told to take off their shoes, which were valuable and could be resold by the militia afterwards, whereupon the people were shot at the edge of the water so their bodies fell into the water and were carried away.  These represent the shoes that were all that were left of the lives lost. 60 pairs of period shoes made of iron are attached to the ground. Sometimes you will see pebbles or stones stacked atop the shoes. This is not part of the sculpture. It is an act of grief often found in Jewish cemeteries.

Most of the shootings took place in a period of only a month, between December 1944 and January 1945.  During that time the Arrow Cross Party police also took as many as a further 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto and executed them along the river bank.

These acts were not carried out by hard-core German Nazis. They were radicalised Hungarians in a society already inured to the ideas of anti-Semitism. Pogroms were popular in Eastern Europe. And Hungary had been part of an empire cut up like a steak after WWI by the victors. There was the same resentment and feeling of powerlessness there for the taking as in Germany, and Jews were a historically convenient scapegoat because they were different

So beautiful: "Shemà" by Primo Levi

Came across this poem while going through a book I have out from the library [100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch, ISBN: 978-0-544-93188]. The Shemà is a Jewish prayer recited first thing when getting out of bed in the morning after waking and before retiring to bed before sleep. He took the name of that prayer as the title for his poem. The word Shemà means 'Listen' or 'Hear'. Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, wrote this in 1946 after surviving the hardships of Auschwitz. In my Holocaust Studies class, we read his book, If Not Now, When? This is translated from the original Italian. Here it is in the original language, as taken from WeSchool:

Testo di Shemà
Voi che vivete sicuri
nelle vostre tiepide case,
voi che trovate tornando a sera
il cibo caldo e visi amici:
considerate se questo è un uomo
che lavora nel fango
che non conosce pace
che lotta per mezzo pane
che muore per un sì o per un no.
Considerate se questa è una donna,
senza capelli e senza nome
senza più forza di ricordare
vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo
come una rana d'inverno.

Meditate che questo è stato:
vi comando queste parole.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
stando in casa e andando per via,
coricandovi alzandovi;
ripetetele ai vostri figli
O vi si sfaccia la casa,
la malattia vi impedisca,
i vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia...

This is the quote of contention, now restored, from Elie Wiesel's Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech in 1986:

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Mr. Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor who wrote numerous moving books. I particularly suggest his book Night, which chronicles his experiences as a teenager during the Holocaust.

Librarian says he was told to remove poster of Holocaust survivor’s quote for violating Central Bucks ‘advocacy’ policy

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'--George Santayana

We are failing to teach the Holocaust, not only as a country, but as a world.

Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before World War II, 102,000 were killed during the Holocaust, according to the U.S. State Department

Though most Dutch respondents – 89% – were familiar with Anne Frank, 32% of millennials and 27% of all adults surveyed did not know she died in a concentration camp. Anne Frank was a German Jewish girl whose family hid in an attic of her father's Amsterdam business office until they were betrayed to the Nazis and sent to a series of camps. Anne and her sister Margot died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp of typhus in 1945 just months before the camp was liberated near the end of the war in Europe.

Netherlands joins 'disturbing' trend of decline in Holocaust knowledge, new survey finds

We must never forget...

'Never again': Anti-Semitism surges as memories of Holocaust fade: “Young people are the ones that have to carry the memory of our loved ones forever,” said Auschwitz survivor Sonia Klein, 94.

A wonderful short film

Courtesy of Aish.com

It is called 'Porcelain Unicorn', and is a film by Keegan Wilcox and winner of the Philips 'Tell It Your Way' competition.

Interesting on several levels

Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes: New finding is clear example in humans of the theory of epigenetic inheritance: the idea that environmental factors can affect the genes of your children

Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations.

The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.

They also analysed the genes of their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders, and compared the results with Jewish families who were living outside of Europe during the war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.

Her team’s work is the clearest example in humans of the transmission of trauma to a child via what is called “epigenetic inheritance” - the idea that environmental influences such as smoking, diet and stress can affect the genes of your children and possibly even grandchildren.

I may request this through interlibrary loan, assuming I can begin to understand it.

So sorry to hear this, but what a life!

Nicholas Winton, 106, savior of Jewish children, dies

Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106.

It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their Maidenhead home in 1988 — a dusty record of names, pictures and documents detailing a story of redemption from the Holocaust — that he spoke of his all-but-forgotten work in the deliverance of children who, like the parents who gave them up to save their lives, were destined for Nazi concentration camps.

Something to check out

. . . Congress Disposes: ‘FDR and the Jews,’ by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman

FDR AND THE JEWS
By Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman
Illustrated. 433 pp. The Belknap Press/Harvard University Press. $29.95.

Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed the overwhelming support of American Jews during his presidency, and the reasons are clear. In his three-plus terms from 1933 to 1945, he led the war against Hitler, supported a Jewish homeland in Palestine, appointed a Jew to the Supreme Court, chose another to be his secretary of the Treasury and surrounded himself with Jewish advisers who helped shape the laws that revolutionized the role of government in American life — what some critics sneeringly called the “Jew Deal.” Then, of course, there was Eleanor Roosevelt, whose concern for minorities fused the bond even tighter. When Roose­velt died in 1945, the Rabbinical Assembly of America described him, almost supernaturally, as an “immortal leader of humanity and a peerless servant of God.”

Born to Protestant wealth and privilege, the Roosevelts were hardly immune to the prejudices of their time. Before entering the White House, Eleanor described the future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter as “an interesting little man but very Jew” and, after attending a function for the Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, complained: “The Jew party was appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels and sables mentioned again.” Franklin went even further, using anti-­Semitic banter to charm world leaders like Joseph Stalin who were known to fear and hate Jews. Indeed, it was the ability of the Roosevelts to set aside these prejudices that seemed to distinguish them from so many others of their class. When it mattered most, their nobler instincts took over.

This seems to be a well-researched and balanced look at what FDR did (and did not do) to mitigate the Holocaust, according to The New York Times. The Kindle version is $9.88. I'm considering purchasing it.

Chronicling the true scope of the Nazi machine

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Excellent article; I want to read the book

The 'Iranian Schindler' who saved Jews from the Nazis

Thousands of Iranian Jews and their descendants owe their lives to a Muslim diplomat in wartime Paris, according to a new book. In The Lion's Shadow tells how Abdol-Hossein Sardari risked everything to help fellow Iranians escape the Nazis.

Fariborz Mokhtari's book is available on Kindle right now, and in print in April 2012.

Never underestimate the power of books....

A 67-year reunion of wartime survivors, inspired by Google Books

Imagine the surprise of a Jewish Holocaust survivor searching her family name on Google to find that her family was discussed in a memoir of an American bomber pilot who hid in the same safe house to avoid capture by the Nazis. The woman, who was a little girl at the time, the author, and the author's father, who was the pilot, were reunited through Google Books.

Thanks to Alisha Miles for tweeting the link.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this case

I'm all for bring Nazis to justice (what ones remain), no matter how old and frail they may be now. Period. Their frailty now does not excuse their past crimes.

There's some reasonable doubt about one of the documents--the hinge of this entire case. And that is troubling, because even five years is a death sentence for a frail 91-year-old. The case has hounded this man for 30 years--when there were more witnesses alive, and there should have been a stronger case, but the man was exonerated by the Israelis for being 'Ivan the Terrible' of Treblinka. Instead, he has been tried as a low-level Nazi guard at Sobibor, as an accessory to murder. About 250,000 people were killed at Sobibor. He was tried for his role in the deaths of 27,900 and today he was sentenced.

My gut reaction is yes, he was a camp guard. While he may have been a prisoner of war, sent to the camps to maintain order, I cannot simply dismiss him as a victim of the Nazis as his defence would like us to believe. There comes a point where you must refuse to do something, at the risk of your own life, because it is right. It is most likely that he was, indeed, an accessory to the murder of thousands. If that is the case, the sentence is appropriate, given the man's health. Otherwise I would have expected more. In all likelihood he will be given credit for time served, or at the very least, it will be tied up in appeals. I know his family would like to see him exonerated, but I think there is enough evidence that that is not going to happen.

There is the question as to whether one of the documents is real or forged. A recently declassified document from the FBI states that they believed it to most likely be fabricated. But no one seems definitive on whether it is real or forged. The American Justice Department believed it to be true. Certain the Germans do. So this will go down in history as no open-and-shut case, but rather a murky one.

I certainly think his citizenship should have been revoked and he be deported, as he was. He concealed his work at Sobibor on his application. Earlier, he had stated on a displaced persons application that he was a truck driver at Sobibor, claiming later that another person suggested it who had an atlas and there had been a lot of Soviets at Sobibor (he was Ukrainian, and was conscripted into the Soviet army). It does look like he was trying to conceal his real work at Sobibor, for obvious reasons.

John Demjanjuk found guilty of helping kill Jews in Nazi death camp: Verdict closes latest chapter in more than 30 years of legal wrangling

John Demjanjuk guilty of Nazi death camp murders

A day of reflection, and of remembrance

Barak: IDF will guarantee never again--Israel remembers victims of Holocaust with moment of silence, reading aloud of names at Knesset

Holocaust Remembrance Day was honored Monday morning with a siren marking a moment of silence throughout Israel at 10 am.

As on every year, flower wreaths were laid at Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. The Knesset held its annual ceremony of the reading out of victims' names.

Today is Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Heroism. It is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising according to the Hebrew calendar.

It is a day of reflection of what was lost to the Jewish community, remembering those who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime. Please take a moment from your day to remember those killed in the name of hate, the genocide of 6 million souls.

Sadly, there are those who refuse to believe this ever happened. I don't think anything can truly change that--their minds are closed to truth. But for the rest of us, we must learn our history, and remember, so that it never, ever happens again.

For more information on the Holocaust, visit:

Yad Veshem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

It would be nice to go

I don't really have the money, and besides, tonight's showing is sold out, and unfortunately I can't go to Sunday's. But perhaps you can...

Holocaust survivor tells UK cast of her wartime part in 'Brundibár'

Ela Weissberger greeted the cast of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre's production of Brundibár on Tuesday afternoon. "I was very lucky to be cast as the cat in this opera when I was 11 years old," she said. She was very lucky, because she was in a Nazi concentration camp at the time.

From the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre page:

Brundibár

A Special Presentation, Co-production with Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra

Dates: March 11 & 13, 2011
Time: 10:00am and 12:00pm (on Mar 11); 2:00pm and 4:00pm (on Mar 13)
Location: Singletary Center for the Arts

Tickets: Regular: $18; Children (Under 12): $10; *plus SCFA handling fee

Purchase Tickets Online or call 859.257.4929

"A children's opera performed for children by children." Brundibár was performed during the Holocaust at Theresienstadt Camp. It was used by the Nazis as a propaganda tool to show the world how "happy and productive" the detainees of the camps were. The opera's symbolism of the once helpless children overcoming the bully Brundibár was not lost on the audience and yet not viewed as a threat by he Nazis. It is our great honor that Ela Weissberger, a survivor and one time performer of this opera, will visit Lexington and speak with audiences after the performances.

Wonderful

Jewish Texts Lost in War Are Surfacing in New York

In 1932, as the Nazis rose to power in Germany, a Jewish librarian in Frankfurt published a catalog of 15,000 books he had painstakingly collected for decades.

It listed the key texts of a groundbreaking field called the Science of Judaism, in which scholars analyzed the religion’s philosophy and culture as they would study those of ancient Greece or Rome. The school of thought became the foundation for modern Jewish studies around the world.

In the tumult of war, great chunks of the collection vanished. Now, librarians an ocean away have determined that most of the missing titles have been sitting for years on the crowded shelves of the Leo Baeck Institute, a Manhattan center dedicated to preserving German Jewish culture.

After I got my undergraduate degree in History and Sociology with the Honours Programme (a 'Great Books' curriculum), I went back and finished a major in Classical Civilisation and a minor in Judaic Studies. I'm not Jewish, but I've been drawn to the study of the Jewish people, especially the era of the Holocaust (I don't know, a past life?) since I was a teenager. I did even consider conversion at one point, although paganism won out for me.

I'm so glad this collection has, despite the odds, survived those tumultuous years when the Nazis attempted to eradicate anything Jewish from the world. It is a boon for scholars, but also for the Jewish people, as these books are not only a testament to their history in their content, but in their story of survival as well.

Thanks to Great Western Dragon of LISNews for the link.

Visit the Secret Annex online

Go to: http://www.annefrank.org/secretannex to explore as they celebrate 50 years of caring for Anne Frank's legacy.

Although it was yesterday among the Diaspora

in Israel they marked the day today...

Israel mourns and remembers victims of the Holocaust

Israel came to a halt as citizens marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II.

Sirens rang out across the country bringing drivers to halt, and they stood by their cars for two minutes' silent reflection.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the occasion to warn against what he called a new threat to Jews from Iran.

There are more than 207,000 holocaust survivors living in Israel.

There are 63,000 fewer survivors remaining compared to two years ago, figures show.

Yesterday was Yom haShoah, the remembrance day for the Holocaust

Holocaust lessons stated anew: Services emphasize preserving memory

I confess that although I knew it was coming soon, I forgot the exact date. But I will never forget the millions killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Tonight I'll light a candle for those who died, and those who survived--dwindling now, as age and death takes them one by one. But this article also talked of how those who came after, the legacy of hope that remained with each survivor, chose to remember their families' struggles each year anew.

'We will remember' in Hebrew in Nizkhor. We should never forget the martyrdom of those who died due to such terrible hate and desire to rid the planet of those different. Genocide, unfortunately, has not been eradicated as a result of the Holocaust, but we are more aware of it, and nothing to the scale of Hitler's plan has surfaced yet. But we must have constant vigilance to protect the future, and in order to avoid repeating history, must remember those who died or underwent the horrors of the Holocaust.