Remembering the Holocaust is crucial to stem the tide of antisemitism here and abroad
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
www.thestate.com /opinion/article257774803.html
Remembering the Holocaust is crucial to stem the tide of antisemitism here and abroad
Trudi Gilfillian 4-5 minutes 1/27/2022
Holocaust Memorial at Memorial Park in Columbia, South Carolina on Jan. 27, 2022.
In sacred memory of the 6 million …
Columbia’s Holocaust Memorial offers a detailed timeline of the years before and just after World War II and the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Poland, and other camps built for the same sinister purpose.
But the images on the memorial, designed to give even those unable to read an idea of what atrocities took place, are perhaps more haunting.
They depict a man’s gaunt face behind barbed wire, a crematorium with smoke coming from its chimney and men, women and children wearing the Star of David on their clothing as they get out of a cattle car toward an unknown fate.
Dr. Lilly S Filler, Chair of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust, who worked on the effort to erect a memorial here, said it was important that anyone could visit the memorial and walk away with some understanding of what took place.
Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the need for that understanding remains.
“We’re seeing a rise in antisemitism. We’re seeing a rise in overt antisemitism worldwide,” Filler said.
Her parents, now deceased, were among the survivors of the Holocaust. They moved to South Carolina when Filler was a child.
Filler’s father Ben Stern was liberated from Allach, a sub camp of Dachau by the American Allies on April 30, 1945. Her mother Jadzia Szklarz Stern was liberated from Leipzig by the Soviet army in early May 1945.
Both were initially sent to Auschwitz, her mother in August 1943 and her father in August 1944.
Erecting the memorial was important to them, Filler said, because it offered a way to show that even here, thousands of miles away, there were community members living with memories of the Holocaust.
But the presence of memorials in places like Columbia, South Carolina isn’t enough as year after year surveys find knowledge of the Holocaust and the events that led to it continues to decline.
In 2018, for instance, Smithsonian Magazine reported that a survey found , “A substantial number of the survey’s respondents were unaware of basic facts about the Holocaust. Forty-one percent did not know what Auschwitz was. Nearly one-third of respondents (31 percent) believed that less than 2 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust; the actual number is closer to 6 million.”
NBC News reported just last September that a nationwide survey showed “a ‘worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge’ among adults under 40, including over 1 in 10 respondents who did not recall ever having heard the word ‘Holocaust’ before.”
Those statistics should concern all of us.
“(Antisemitism used to be on the fringes, but now it’s coming into the mainstream,” Filler said. “It’s not a problem of the past. It’s a problem of the present.”
That’s why observances like today’s remain crucial.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers more on how to learn about the Holocaust and is using social media including the hashtag #HolocaustRemembranceDay to reach a wider audience.
In addition to visiting the museum website, Filler urged South Carolinians to speak up when they encounter bigotry and hatred, to visit Memorial Park and to visit the state’s Holocaust education website.
Her words etched on a bench at the Columbia memorial, survivor Cela Miller stressed the importance of remembering.
“Do not take your families for granted; keep them close to you. No matter how we feel today, what we lived through can happen again. We must never forget.”
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It is hard to believe that massive scale genocide could recede in collective memory, but there is some evidence that people under 40 are uninformed about the holocaust.
Indeed, many are totally uninformed. But the there are some that are misinformed:
Responding to the surge in anti-Jewish hate and physical assaults, President Biden issued a statement on May 28 saying, "These attacks are despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop. I will not allow our fellow Americans to be intimidated or attacked because of who they are or the faith they practice."
While the ADL's Greenblatt praised the president's long-standing commitment on this issue, he was dismayed that high-profile public condemnation had been slow in coming.
"It took too long," he said, "and too much happened before we had leaders speak out. ... We would hope to see, whether you're a college president, you're a chief executive, to stand up squarely and unapologetically for a besieged Jewish community, just like they do for other marginalized groups."
A hierarchy of racism
So, what explains the reluctance?
"It took too long," he said, "and too much happened before we had leaders speak out. ... We would hope to see, whether you're a college president, you're a chief executive, to stand up squarely and unapologetically for a besieged Jewish community, just like they do for other marginalized groups."
A hierarchy of racism
So, what explains the reluctance?
I found his explanation to be quite thought-provoking:
The key, Baddiel argues, is that antisemitism has to be understood as racism. It has very little to do with religion.
The British writer and comedian David Baddiel, who is Jewish, offers an answer in a recently published book titled Jews Don't Count . It's aimed specifically at the progressive left.
"I think progressives find it very hard to see Jews as victims," Baddiel said in an interview.
He attributes this aversion to the myth that Jews are rich, powerful and privileged — an antisemitic trope in itself that has also come down through history.
"And the problem is that if you have any trace of that in your consciousness," he said, "and trust me, a lot of people on the left do, then it's hard to think of Jews as being inside that circle of people you need to protect, because the Jews are not in need of protection."
(cont'd from comment # 1. 1 .1 , above):
"And the problem is that if you have any trace of that in your consciousness," he said, "and trust me, a lot of people on the left do, then it's hard to think of Jews as being inside that circle of people you need to protect, because the Jews are not in need of protection."
Or, as he put it in his book, Jews find themselves pushed outside of the "sacred circle" that the "progressive modern left [is] prepared to go into battle for."
The key, Baddiel argues, is that antisemitism has to be understood as racism. It has very little to do with religion.
"Because no racist asks whether you keep kosher before they set light to your house," he said. "I am an atheist. It would not have given me a free pass out of Auschwitz. It would also be irrelevant to any white supremacist wanting to kill me."
Baddiel speaks with the weight of family history behind him: His grandparents fled the Nazis with his mother when she was an infant, and many other family members were murdered in the Holocaust.
In Jews Don't Count , he writes, "The sense, perhaps, is that Jews don't need allies."
But, he concludes, "That isn't true: it never was."
The ADL was established specifically to combat antisemitism, and originally it did so with fervour, but Greenblatt is with the progressive liberals, more compromising, and notwithstanding his words, he is much less effectual than ADL should be.
This article speaks of Holocaust memorials in America, but I wonder how many members here have actually attended any of them. In fact I'll bet I'm the only NT member, or at the very least one of very very few, who has toured Yad Vashem in Jerusalem - the ultimate Holocaust memorial. One leaves it with deep sadness, if not tears.
When I went to university, I really don't recall antisemitism happening there, but these days at universities it is rampant and scary for Jewish students. I keep in touch with and am informed by those who are on the front lines of it in universities in Ontario, and there is enough evidence of it existing in many Canadian and American universities (McGill and Ryerson in particular), where the leaders of tomorrow are obtaining their training, and unfortunately, their prejudices.
IMO the continuation of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity, because the song that was sung by those who were to be cremated in the fires of the Nazi concentration camps might well have to be sung again...
Vi a hind zolech gahyen....Tell me where can I go.....
Tell me where can I go,
There's no place I can see,
Where to go, where to go,
Every door is closed to me.
To the left to the right,
It's the same in every land
There is no place to go
And it's me who should know,
Won't you please understand?
On the SS St. Louis they tried to go, and America turned them away
To Canada they tried to go, and the then Prime Minister McKenzie King was asked how many Jewish refugees would he allow to come to Canada, his reply, that became the title of a book about that time, was "None is too many."
The world is getting dark again, very dark.
Never forget,
Evening Buzz..
Yes I have been to Yad Vashem...
Also a truly moving place that can leave you in the depths of despair...
But also, a tiny glimmer of light and hope for humanity in such overwhelming darkness....
If I remember correctly 20,000 trees are planted there, in memory of the many European families who helped and sheltered Jewish people...to the detriment to them and their own families..
I don't know about 20,000 trees. but I walked along the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem and saw the trees that had been planted by many of the "Righteous Among the Gentiles". Many of them had stones placed around the trunks. I particularly took note of the tree that Oscar Schindler himself planted, and there were many stones piled up at his tree, many more than any others.
I haven't visited any memorials because there are none where I live and I don't travel that much. I would like to visit Yad Vashem, tho.
I think it's worth noting that when you see memorials of the holocaust today you find monuments and memorials to the victims, large stone stars of David with Hebrew names or sayings printed on them. You don't see any massive bronze statues of German Generals on horseback, stone swastikas or proud statues of Hitler at these holocaust memorials, yet we're still able to "never forget" even though the memorials do not lionize the Nazi's.
Yet any time we discuss removing large bronze monuments or memorials of Confederate Generals or soldiers we're told by white right wing conservatives that they need to stay or else we're forgetting our American history. But if we don't want to forget and also don't want to honor racist losers, why don't we replace those confederate monuments with the statues honoring and memorializing confederate victims, black American heroes or Union Generals so we "never forget"? Put up statues to Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, General Sherman etc. Why can't we wave flags that perhaps rightly pronounce that black lives matter instead of flying confederate flags that declare the exact opposite?
A false equivalence.
What I fascinating is that it seems the U.S. is the only country that erects monuments honouring those who have committed treason!
Well whether or not you personally feel that its a "false equivalence"-- the fact is that that's the reason most Right-wingers givefor not removing monuments honouring those who committed treason against the U.S.!
It is clearly a false equivalence.
Why would one country erect monuments memorializing another countries bad deeds? Especially a country that did so much to destroy the government who perpetrated such deeds.
It makes no sense.
None at all.
Try again...it was not treason. They had seceded...remember?
Illegally, remember Greg, or was it too long ago to remember?
A Republic, with rules right?
All men are created equal, remember?
Except slaves were only 3/5s of a person for taxable purposes, remember?
Remember Fort Sumter being fired on without provocation?
Knowing they had no fuses and could not fight back?
Yet the aggressors bombarded them for 33 fucking hours.
In short, what the fuck is wrong with you?
You would not give up a single "right" granted you by the FF, why allow secession?
Secession was fucking treason.
Bullshit, it's the same. Why should we memorialize traitors, I thought you were a US vet... not a confederate. What other traitors did we memorialize?
The Confederacy wasn't a government made up of bad deeds? They formed their government based on preserving a very bad deed
Secession was fucking treason.
Bullshit, no it isn’t.
Another thing that doesn’t apply in anyway. My military service.
I didn’t serve during the Civil War. Did you?
Shouldn’t have to repeat this but ...... The Confederacy was in the USA, the German Nazi government was not. Again, why would the US put up Nazi memorials?
It’s bad enough some people in the US these days want to define their lives via things that happened 150+ years ago but now we are using Nazi Germany as an American equivalent to our Civil War?
Ridiculous!
Hardly. The 'equivalence' is not false. It is too true.
And those "noble" Confederate soldiers-- what did they do? Made war on the United States! Their goal was not to parade around in pretty uniforms. No-- it was to kill as many American soldiers as possible...some may think that to be "noble"... but I personally am not a big fan of those who make war on my country!!!
No where in my comment did I indicate that the holocaust memorials honoring the victims instead of the deplorable Nazi's had to be in the US. And I didn't say all memorials to the civil war should be removed or destroyed, I simply questioned why any patriotic American would choose to memorialize the losing treasonous Confederacy instead of their victims. If you need a monument to remember the civil war then it certainly shouldn't be a large proud bronze statue of a Confederate General, it should be of the Union Generals or soldiers who fought against the confederacy or the slaves that the piece of shit racist Confederate Generals were fighting to keep enslaved.
If an American is in love with the Confederacy, flies confederate flags and wants to see monuments to Confederate Generals in public spaces and buildings and street names named for their favorite Confederates then they're not really an American at all, they're a confederate sympathizer and just one act of sedition, like we saw on January 6th, away from being a constitution hating traitor to America.
If all of America had to be “in love” with all of our history, there would be a lot less “history.” I think some people here need to refresh themselves on the purpose of history.
The purpose is to remember all of what happened not just the parts that fit comfortably within the latest partisan narrative du jour.
You seem to be saying that we should respect those who "love" the parts of our history that most Americans today recognize as inhumane and are ashamed was ever part of our American legacy. Should we really respect those who love Confederate ideology and are proud their ancestors fought to conserve their imagined right to own other humans as cattle?
Do you feel the same of Germany? Should we respect those who love Nazi ideology and are gleeful at the thought of wiping out 7 million+ human beings? Should we as a society just "agree to disagree" with Nazi's and not be disgusted when we see them waving their swastika flags and march in our streets chanting "Jews will not replace us!"? Should we allow some towns or cities in America with large German immigrant populations to erect monuments to Hitler without any protest? Would Americans be well within their rights to tear down any statues to Hitler that are erected on public property? Would there be many Americans defending those Nazi's right to erect proud statues of Hitler if the Nazi's were saying they were really holocaust memorials so we "never forget"? Sadly, the answer to that last question, from listening to many right wing conservatives here and elsewhere, apparently the answer is yes.
We can remember all of what happened without glorifying those who chose to champion genocide, slavery, misogyny, eugenics and racial superiority. If we celebrate such ones, if we don't discourage, challenge and protest against those who continue to love such things then we are fated to repeat those mistakes and society will have to come together once again to defeat another deplorable uprising of the worst that humanity has to offer.
Hardly, what I am saying is if a statue offends some peoples delicate sensibilities decades or even centuries later, it’s not an automatic reason to remove them.
Myself I could care less either way but think the people who are triggered by such things could learn to relax and concern themselves with current matters more.
I think they would survive just fine .....
www.foxnews.com /us/maus-book-holocaust-banned-tennessee-school-district
'Maus' book about the Holocaust banned in Tennessee school district: report
Associated Press 3-4 minutes 1/27/2022
ATHENS, Tenn. — A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to "inappropriate language" and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.
The McMinn County School Board decided Jan. 10 to remove "Maus" from its curriculum, news outlets reported.
Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the work that tells the story of his Jewish parents living in 1940s Poland and depicts him interviewing his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.
In an interview, Spiegelman told CNBC he was "baffled" by the school board’s decision and called the action "Orwellian."
"It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’" he said.
The minutes from the school board meeting indicate objections over some of the language used and at first Director of Schools Lee Parkison suggested redacting it "to get rid of the eight curse words and the picture of the woman that was objected to."
The nude woman is drawn as a mouse. In the graphic novel, Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are drawn as cats.
next
Artist and author Art Spiegelman gets some help with his lunch from Francoise Mouly, of Random House, Inc., during a signing of Spiegelman's new book "In the Shadow of No Towers" at the Book Expo America convention, Saturday, June 5, 2004, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey, File) ( )
prev
This cover image released by Pantheon shows "Maus" a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. A Tennessee school district has voted to ban the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. (Pantheon via AP) ( )
Instructional supervisor Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, said she thought the graphic novel was a good way to depict a horrific event.
"It’s hard for this generation, these kids don’t even know 9/11, they were not even born," Goodin said. "Are the words objectionable? Yes, there is no one that thinks they aren’t. But by taking away the first part, it’s not changing the meaning of what he is trying to portray."
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers , which does not play a role in McMinn County, noted the timing of the news on Twitter. Weingarten, who is Jewish, pointed out that Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"Yes it is uncomfortable to talk about genocide, but it is our history and educating about it helps us not repeat this horror," Weingarten said.
The board emphasized in the minutes that they did not object to teaching about the Holocaust but some were concerned the work was not age-appropriate.
Although they discussed redacting parts of the book, that led to copyright concerns and board members ultimately decided to look for an alternative book about the subject.
It wasn't banned. More left wing nonsense to stir up anger. .
Just yet another case of HDS!
(AKA "Hitler Derangement Syndrome")
Ain't it amazing how so many people on social media make comments based on their political views-- and not on facts! (I'm talkin' here of "true facts"-- not some Kelly Anne Conway's so-called "Alternative Facts".. AKA the actual MAGA-style lies).
I often wonder why-- when people post total falsehoods-- they think they can get away with that.
When I read that comment about how it was "More left wing nonsense to stir up anger. . " I checked John's comment-- what was in fact the source-- not some lying attempt to con us by some typical MAGA liar....(or should I say " Mega Liar"?)
And guess what I found about the blatant Mega lie that was yet another sleazy attempt to foist some nutso political conspiracy upon us, eh Dear Reader?)
2 seeder friend JohnRussell 2 hours ago
www.foxnews.com /us/maus-book-holocaust-banned-tennessee-school-district
'Maus' Book About The Holocaust Banned In Tennessee School District: Report
Source: Fox News . Fox News-- a "Left Wing" Site? Fox News-- peddling typical "left wing nonsense"
Why are some people on social media just so fuckin' stoopid??? Seriously-- its beginning to become tiring...
Tennessee School District Bans 'Maus,' a Children's Book About the Holocaust - Truth or Fiction?
OMG!, Mostly, almost 99% true....
Looks like they "banned" it to me. So what is a more "age appropriate" book to teach this? Any suggestions?
The Diary of Anne Frank? Maybe the "The Holocaust" series? It was produced in the 70's but it's age appropriate, I watched it when I was a teenager.
Ok...I'm being a facetious asshole. I find it despicable that they banned this book. If your child doesn't understand that some of the "objectionable" language used is not appropriate to use in social settings, then you haven't done your job as a parent.
Do you live anywhere? Ever pay attention to any news from the US States?
Also look at who agrees with/votes up such ignorance and stupidity
Jews are drawn as mice
Actually that's a common, re-appearing theme i n anti-Semitic propaganda (Jews as Mice or rats...who should be exterminated).
Whoops-- forgot to attribute the source:
The cartoon above, from Arab News, depicts rats wearing Stars of David and skullcaps. They scurry backwards and forwards through holes in the wall of a building called “Palestine House.” Arab News, an English-language daily widely read by expats in Saudi Arabia, is widely-regarded as a moderate publication. It is published by a state-owned Saudi corporation. The imagery in the cartoon may well be inspired by a well-known scene from the Nazi film “Jew Suess,” to which it bears a close resemblance – a scene in which Jews are depicted as vermin to be eradicated by mass extermination.
© Copyright Tom Gross
And then there's the conspiracy theory that of course The Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks:
In this cartoon, from Al-Watan newspaper in Qatar (June 23, 2002), Ariel Sharon is shown watching on the sidelines as an Israeli plane crashes into New York’s World Trade Center.
This cartoon restates the widely held myth in the Arab world that Israel and the Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks which were in fact of course carried out by al-Qaeda.
More far right Christian nonsense.
Never forget.
Unfortunately, a sizable per cent of the US population can't forget something they never knew.
The history of the Holocaust should be taught to our children but there are better materials to accomplish that.
The Destruction of European Jews by Raul Hilberg comes immediately to mind.
A truly comprehensive, serious work of that sad history.
in 1959 while serving in the US Army in Germany I visited Dachau, 14 years after the end of WWII this was before it was somewhat of an attraction. I saw it all there from the ovens to the gallows and more. I took a few photos and put them away in a box. When my kids were old enough I showed them the photos and explained what the Holocaust was. The photos went back in a box and there they remain never again did they see the light of day.
There are two places that I've been to that made my blood run cold, Dachau is one of them.
''Never Forget''
Here is a photo from Dachau.
Evening..
Yes I to have been to Dachau...
One of the most haunted and sacred places on this earth...
The overwhelming presence of the lost souls that have gone, is truly heart breaking...
The deathly silence on this patch of earth and the others like it..
Is humanities horror and shame..
Never to be forgotten....
Even if one has never toured a Nazi concentration camp, they can get a concept and feeling of one if they watch the TV movie QB VII, in which Sir Anthony Hopkins played a Dr. Mengele type figure.
We can't and won't ever forget.
I have related this story before. My family was victimized by the Nazi death machine. My paternal grandfather came from a small village in Belarus. He left before the Russian Revolution to avoid being drafted into the Czar's army, which would have been a 20 year stint. He came to America alone when he was only 14 or 15 and stayed with an uncle who lived in Detroit. He went right to work after arriving.
The village he came from enjoyed generally amicable relations between the Christians and the Jews. My grandfather left behind his mother, eight brothers and sisters, cousins and other relatives who remained in his village. His father had owned a grinding mill, but died there before the war in an accident with the machinery.
My grandfather in Detroit and his family in Belarus wrote to each other. I wish those letters still existed.
After the Germans invaded and took control of his village, he never heard from his family again. We later found out that they continued to live in their village until the day the Nazis rounded up all of the Jews, marched them into the forest and shot them to death.
In the early 1960s a friend of my grandfather visited Israel and met someone with our family's last name. When he returned home, he told my grandfather. It was my grandfather's youngest brother who was a baby when my grandfather came to America. He left Belarus for Israel in 1939 before the Germans invaded. Neither my grandfather or his brother knew that the other one was alive. Of course, my grandparents immediately went to Israel to see my grandfather's brother and his family. It turned out that we have quite a few Israel cousins. Many of them have visited us in the U.S. I did meet my grandfather's brother when he came for a visit in the 1960s. It's truly wonderful that our family is there in Israel and we are in contact.
My grandfather also learned that two of his cousins managed to escape from the Germans and spent the rest of the war living in the forest fighting with the partisans against the Nazis. They both survived and lived in Israel after the war.
One distant cousin who is Canadian (his grandmother was my grandfather's first cousin and moved to Canada before the war) visited the village in Belarus. There are no Jews living there now. He also wrote a family tree. Sadly, some of my grandfather's older siblings who were killed by the Nazis are listed in the family tree as "son/daughter name unknown". There is no record of their names that we know of, and no one had thought to ask my grandfather, his brother or the cousins of his generation before they passed away. I sure wish we knew their names.
So, we were not completely exterminated by the Nazis. We survived. They lost and they failed.
Because of what I knew of our family history, I studied the World War 2 era in depth from a very young age.
My family's history and my life long studies have made me totally intolerant of even the hint of fascism. Some have no awareness or understanding. I know that we must remain ever vigilant.
Holocaust survivors warn people to 'forever be vigilant' (providencejournal.com)
Never forget, be forever vigilant..
btw, I lit three candles...
That is how it has to be. We owe it to the memory of our ancestors and to future generations so they may always live in freedom.
That is very nice, SP.
The one extended family member and two other tattooed survivors I have met
that have since passed many years ago.
Never forget
Exactly.
For those who say "it can't happen here"---there was actually a pro-Nazi Rally held in NYC, in Madison Square Garden!
The Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden
One of the comments on the video:
A man is seen rushing the stage was Isadore Greenbaum, a 26-year-old Jewish plumber’s helper from Brooklyn. Greenbaum, who had sneaked into the rally, charged at Kuhn, yelling “Down with Hitler!” After being dragged off the stage by the police, Greenbaum was fined $25 for disorderly conduct.
The New York Times reported the young man’s exchange with the judge at his sentencing: “I went down to the Garden without any intention of interrupting,” Greenbaum said, “but being that they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution I lost my head and I felt it was my duty to talk.”
“Don’t you realize that innocent people might have been killed?” the judge asked.
“Do you realize that plenty of Jewish people might be killed with their persecution up there?” Greenbaum replied.
Two years later, when the United States had entered the war, Greenbaum enlisted in the U.S. Navy, first serving as deck engineer and later as chief petty officer. As for Kuhn, in December of that year he was arrested for embezzlement and deported.
The Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden
While nothing on that scale could happen today, the are still some weirdos who do "celebrate" International Holocaust Remembrance Day in their own obnoxious way. In today's news:
Evening...
Sadly we lost one of our most treasured gentlemen here last year...a Holocaust survivor...
Edward Jaku OAM was a survivor of several German concentration camps during World War II, who wrote of his wartime experiences after emigrating to Australia. This memoir is called The Happiest Man on Earth and was published when he was 100 years...
Eddie Jaku OAM, born Abraham Jakubowicz in Germany in 1920.
His family considered themselves German, first, Jewish second. On 9 November 1938, the night immortalised as Kristallnacht, Eddie returned home from boarding school to an empty house. At dawn Nazi soldiers burst in, Eddie was beaten and taken to Buchenwald.
Eddie was released and with his father escaped to Belgium and then France, but was again captured and sent to a camp, and thereafter to Auschwitz. On route, Eddie managed to escape back to Belgium where he lived in hiding with his parents and sister.
In October 1943, Eddie’s family were arrested and again sent to Auschwitz where his parents were both murdered. In 1945, Eddie was sent on a ‘death march’ but once again escaped and hid in a forest eating slugs and snails until June 1945 he was finally rescued by.
Eddie has volunteered at the Sydney Jewish Museum since it’s inception in 1992. Self-proclaimed as ‘the happiest man on earth’, he saw death every day throughout WWII, and because he managed to survive, made a vow to himself to smile every day.
Edie has been married to Flore for 73 years, they have two sons, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Eddie was finally rescued by......? He was rescued by whom?
I have read about many stories of Holocaust survivors. One of things that I noticed was that many Jews weren't worried about the rise of Nazism at first because they weren't religious (and since the Nazis were persecuting Jews, considering their religious beliefs (some were actually Atheists) initially they felt safe.
But the Nazis didn't care if they were religious Jews-- or moderately religious-- or Jews who were Atheists. Because for the Nazis it wasn't some conflicting religious views, but rather pure rascist hatred.
There are many people who are under the false impression that the Nazis only went after the Jews. But in fact they were racist, so they went after other 'races" they felt to be "inferior"-- amongst those being Slaves, the Roma ("Gypsies") and several others.
I've been looking at tweets from The Holocaust Museum- - its quite striking that in addition to Jews, a large numbers of people murdered in camps such as Auschwitz were Poles (who were not Jewish).
Thanks for posting that...fascinating story!
I just googled it and found this video of him speaking accompanied by an article:
The happiest man on earth: 99 year old Holocaust survivor shares his story | Eddie Jaku
Eddie Jaku
TEDxSydney 2019 · 24 May 2019
When I was a high school student in NYC the Nazis had a rally at the New York City Public Library (a Ghostbusters location). In preparation for the rally, I put six eggs in the pocket of my ski jacket. I arrived early so I could get on the front row. There were police barricades on both sides of the street (5th Ave). Mounted police were keeping us behind the barricades. The Nazis assembled across the street on the steps of the library.
I had the record for the longest softball throw at my school. When the Nazis started spewing their racist bullshit I waited until none of the cops in my vicinity were looking my way. My first egg hit the steps and splattered a couple of Nazis. When I threw my last egg, a cop turned his head and saw me throw. He watched the egg sail across the street and splattered on the loudspeaker next to the asshole at the podium. I was getting ready to run when the cop looked back in my direction. Fortunately, he smiled so I knew I was okay.
What I did was wrong. The Nazis were exercising their freedumb of speech. They did not help their cause. The crowd around me was also exercising their freedom of speech by yelling "FUCK YOU!" and other pleasantries. It was obvious that the Nazis managed to alienate everyone on my side of the street. The people around me who saw me throwing eggs, patted me on the back and smiled at me. When extremists exercise their freedumb of speech, they usually fail to convert anyone to their way of thinking. Until Donald Fucking Trump was able to hijack the Republican Party in 2016.
When extremists exercise their freedumb of speech, they usually fail to convert anyone to their way of thinking. Until Donald Fucking Trump was able to hijack the Republican Party in 2016.(a Ghostbusters location)
In recent years there have been a few Nazi marches in the U.S. And not only have the turnouts been really really small-- but more often than not the counter-protesters lining the sidewalks have usually outnumber the Nazis by a large number!
There is a group of people in NYC called "Improve Everywhere". They go to public places and do improvisational theatre in the form of public flashmobs) . One of my favs is the "Ghost-Busters" flashmob that you mentioned-- definitely a few big LOLs there!
Movies In Real Life S1 • E13 Who You Gonna Call? - Ghostbusters - Movies In Real Life
(A little Easter-Egg for NYT- some nice SEO "clickbait" for this site
)
And you were exercising your freedom of expression.. You weren't wrong.
Nah.
I have told this story before, but it bears repeating here. When I was very young, I had an elderly neighbor who was very quiet but very nice. One day I noticed a set of numbers tattooed on her forearm. I asked her what they meant. She said that she would tell me the story, but only if my Mother was with me. She phoned my mother to discuss it with her. My mother felt that I could handle the reality so we went to her house the next day. She then told us her story of being a Holocaust survivor and how she was the only survivor of her family. She spared us the details of the horror she and her family endured, but why she was imprisoned. I didn't fully grasp some things, but I remember crying silent tears as my heart broke for this kind and gentle lady. From that day on, I made it my mission to help her with any small thing I could do, from running errands, walking her dog, and watering her garden. In return, she would cook me some of her traditional Jewish dishes. My fav was her soups. I just wished to show her some kindness that she was deprived of all those years ago.
That's great. As horrible as these stories were, IMO its important that children learn about what happens when totalitarianism takes over....
I was lucky in that most my family had always been strongly anti-racist.
I did have a relative who was a "real" Nazi...in fact an officer in the German army in WWII (but a relative only by marriage). In fact his youngest brother was quite a rebel. He had been in the Dutch Underground, he and his wife came to live with us after WWII was ended after Westerbork, the Dutch camp she was in, was liberated).
When I was pretty young my family gave me a book they insisted I read..."Cry the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton. (Just googled it, it was first published long ago-- 1948). It documents the absolute brutality of the South African Apartheid regime. I was quite upset by what I read (didn't wasn't to finish it but my parents insisted).
Then some books about The Holocaust-- I found the details sickening-- never before could've even imagined such brutality. Early I told my parents i didn't want to continue, but they insisted i finish it.
Recently discovered this about Westerbork:
The best known person to pass through Westerbork was Anne Frank . After the Franks’ hiding place was discovered on August 4, 1944, the Franks and the other occupants of the Secret Annex, where the Frank family spent two years in hiding, were sent to Westerbork. They were then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on September 3, 1944, in a transport with 1,019 deportees.
Because of my interest in the topic at a young age, I first read "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" in the 5th grade. I read it again in high school, and a third time many years later. It is really so informative. I've been thinking about reading it again.
We happened to be in Amsterdam on Liberation Day, which celebrates the end of Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and follows right after Remembrance Day. Liberation Day was the day we visited the Anne Frank house. I almost couldn't go in because the thought of it is so horrifying, but I'm glad I did because it was interesting. I know that many people visit concentration camps when they are in Europe. I don't think I will ever be able to bring myself to do that.
I feel the same way.
I visited Amsterdam for a few days when I was in my 20's, I don't remeber why but for some reason I never got around to visiting the Anne Frank House. (It wasn't because I thought it might be unpleasant, but I think time was short, and it was in the Fall and getting cold...and I wanted to go to warmer countries.
I've known a few people who, in recent years, visited Auschwitz. And some of them had read a lot re; the Holocaust, or even knew Holocaust survivors. But despite that, everyone was still upset by what they saw there...
(I have no desire to go).
I have visited Israel, and never got to Yad Vashem either...actually I wanted to, but was so busy touring other things there...and much of the times i was a volunteer on a Kibbutz (a communal farm)
Bravo Paula.
That encounter so many decades ago has never left my heart or my memory.
You're a beautiful person, Paula.
Careful, some conservative Christians might see that as reverse racism because you weren't running errands, walking dogs and watering gardens for free for white conservative Christians too... According to them we're not supposed to give those who've been historically discriminated against and abused any free hand up or free help that we don't also give to white conservative Christians because if we do then that wouldn't be fair to white conservative Christians today...
Affirmative action is necessary.
Reparations are long overdue.
Nothing can "make up" for slavery (and Jim Crow) butt we need to do whatever we can to make African Americans equal. Education is a good place to start.
Anyone that saw what happened when they tried to integrate schools knows why it was/is necessary.
I agree with you completely.
Affirmative action is a necessary tool in fulfilling the goal of providing equal opportunity.
Reparations are long overdue. I've believed for a long time that a comprehensive program of reparations is essential in dealing with the problems created by generations of oppression.
Affirmative action and reparations are vital to overcome the deleterious effects of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow.
Had any neighbor asked me for help, I would have. I was just a kid but was always willing to help out whoever and whenever I could.
And through it all, the MAGA still breathe.
We must never forget!
Oh wait-- we must now pay tribute to the god we all all worship-- the 24 hour news cycle! Holocaust Remembrance Day is now over-- so it is time to forget after all.
But only for a year. One year from now we can remember again-- at least for a day!
Happens to the Veterans and every other group. In general the public has a very short attention span. A few seconds then they move on to the next shiny object.
There are many heroes...who did what they could to rescue potential victims. Someone recently sent me this-- the story of one such man who rescued some Jewish children in Czechoslovakia. A fascinating story:
Saving the children from the Holocaust | 60 Minutes archive
In 2014, 60 Minutes met Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who in 1939 traveled to Czechoslovakia and saved 669 children from the Holocaust.
Note: This is a condensed version, only 15 minutes.
And-- wait 'till the end!
And then was the Kindertransport:
The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig.
The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government. Importantly the British government waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil.[1][2]
The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom.
United Kingdom and the United States:
One Thousand Children In contrast to the Kindertransport, where the British Government waived immigration visa requirements, these OTC children received no United States government visa immigration assistance.
Furthermore, it is documented that the State Department deliberately made it very difficult for any Jewish refugee to get an entrance visa. In 1939 Senator Robert F. Wagner and Rep. Edith Rogers proposed the Wagner-Rogers Bill in the United States Congress. This bill was to admit 20,000 unaccompanied Jewish child refugees under the age of 14 into the United States from Nazi Germany.
However, in February 1939, this bill failed to get Congressional approval.
In the above article re: The Kindertransport, I noticed two references to Norbert Wolheim:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport (2000), narrated by Judi Dench and winner of the 2001 Academy Award for best feature documentary. It was produced by Deborah Oppenheimer , daughter of a Kindertransport child, [70] and written and directed by three-time Oscar winner Mark Jonathan Harris . This film shows the Kindertransport in very personal terms by presenting the actual stories through in-depth interviews with several individual kinder , rescuers Norbert Wollheim and Nicholas Winton , a foster mother who took in a child, and a mother who lived to be reunited with daughter Lore Segal . It was shown in cinemas around the world, including in Britain, the United States, Austria, and Germany, and on HBO and PBS . A companion book with the same title expands upon the film.
and
See also
There's an entire Wikipedia page about him. Here's part of it:
After the night of the November Pogroms known as Kristallnacht in 1938, he helped to organise the transports of Jewish children to Great Britain and Sweden. In 1939, he also personally accompanied Kindertransports to Sweden, but immediately returned to Berlin after leaving the children in safety.
[...]
On March 8, 1943 Wollheim with his sister Ruth Wollheim (born in 1910), his wife Rosa (née Mandelbrod, born in 1912) and their son Peter Uriel (born in 1939) were arrested by the Gestapo and brought to the gathering point for Jews in the Große Hamburger Straße [de] in Berlin, Germany. On March 12, 1943 the whole family was deported to Auschwitz. While Wollheim was singled out for slave labour, his sister, wife and child were gassed in the concentration camp.
[...] In 1950 Norbert Wollheim sued I.G. Farbenindustrie AG in liquidation for his salary as a forced labourer and compensation for damages. His lawsuit was the first test case of a former forced labourer against a company in Germany. In 1953, Frankfurt's Landgericht convicted IG Farben i.L. and ordered them to pay, at the first hearing, DM 10,000 in punitive damages to Wollheim. At the second hearing, Frankfurt's Oberlandesgericht settled the lawsuit with a global settlement awarding several thousand of the former slave labourers of I.G. Farben DM 30 million. The settlement apart from the parties of the lawsuit involved the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. The settlement was accompanied by a law (German: Aufrufgesetz) in 1957 passed by the West German Bundestag.
There's a lot more on that page.
So why am I mentioning all this?... because I have actually met the man (after he immigrated to the U.S.). occasionally played with his kids who were my age! An amazing human being!!!
There was recently an article about a school district "banning" a book from it's curriculum over a picture and 8 'offensive' words.
‘Maus’ Tops Bestseller Lists After Tennessee School District Yanks It From Curriculum (msn.com)
Karma.
Good for Art Spiegelman.
I read about that. What I think help get it going was a man that decided he was going to give a copy of the book to any school kid that wanted one.
And "the beat goes on"....
;Florida governor DeSantis under fire for refusal to condemn Orlando neo-Nazi rallies
Antisemitic rallies were held near Orlando, Florida, on Saturday and Sunday, with some two dozen people in neo-Nazi gear waving swastikas, stomping on Israeli flags, and yelling antisemitic epithets at passersby.
In videos and pictures shared on social media, the demonstrators can be seen waving Nazi flags and banners, calling someone filming them a “devil” and a “fucking kike” and making Nazi salutes.
While various officials in the state condemned the protest, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came under fire as his spokesperson expressed doubt over whether the demonstrators were actually antisemitic, and raised the possibility that they were in fact Democrats trying to make the governor look bad.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that the group shouted other antisemitic slurs, and an array of Florida officials, including Republican Senator Rick Scott and Democratic House Rep. Val Demings, condemned the gathering.
Yeah,
It was a false flag.