Holocaust History

[Dayton3]

In all fairness, History is very much the orphan of American public school curriculum (I taught it for 12 years). Everyone wants to focus students and the resources on them on STEM (Science, Technolog, Engineering and Math) so hopefully students will graduate and make lots of money.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Tomorrow, 25 May 2022, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, will host a ceremony posthumously honoring Kondratiy and Anna Lakotko of Belarus as Righteous Among the Nations. The couple risked their lives to save six Jews during WWII. Their youngest son, Panteley Lakotko, will attend the ceremony and accept the medal and certificate on behalf of his late parents. Also, in attendance will be Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan; Belorussian Ambassador to Israel H.E. Mr. Evgeny Vorobyev; Natalia Luksha, the daughter of Panteley Lakotko and granddaughter of the Righteous Among the Nations; Orit Tatarsky, the granddaughter of survivor Kalman Kotzer, who was rescued by the Lakotkos; members of the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations; and relatives and friends of the survivors’ families. Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan and Dr. Joel Zisenwine, Director of Yad Vashem's Department of the Righteous Among the Nations, will present the medal and certificate to Panteley Lakotko on behalf of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

(full article online)

Belarussian Couple to be Posthumously Recognized as Righteous Among the Nations Tomorrow, 25 May 2022

Tomorrow, 25 May 2022, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, will host a ceremony posthumously honoring Kondratiy and Anna Lakotko of Belarus as Righteous Among the Nations. The couple risked their lives to save six Jews during WWII. Their youngest son, Panteley Lakotko, will...

www.yadvashem.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Lily Ebert and her grandson Dov Forman. Photo: Matti Zoman/Wikimedia Commons.
A memoir co-authored by Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp survivor Lily Ebert and her great-grandson is number two this week on The New York Times best sellers list for paperback non-fiction.

“Lily’s Promise: Holding On to Hope Through Auschwitz and Beyond―A Story for All Generations” was published in the United States by HarperOne on May 10, a year after it was released in the United Kingdom. The date of the book’s US publication holds particular significance, as exactly 89 years prior, on May 10, 1933, Nazi supporters publicly burned roughly 25,000 Jewish books in Berlin.

(full article online)

Memoir by Auschwitz Survivor, TikTok Sensation #2 on NYT Best Sellers List

Lily Ebert and her grandson Dov Forman. Photo: Matti Zoman/Wikimedia Commons. A memoir co-authored by Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp survivor Lily …

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Bonder envisions each season of “Holocaust Histories,” which is serialized and debuted last week, will focus on a different theme. Season one focuses on professional boxers from across the globe whose careers were cut short by the Holocaust.

There are hundreds of films about the Holocaust, not to mention countless books and television series. But in terms of Holocaust history podcasts, Bonder found the available content underwhelming.

“There’s hundreds and hundreds of true crime podcasts, comedy, sports,” Bonder told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And I thought to have something that was needed right now, which is the education of the Holocaust — if someone like me wanted to find a podcast about the Holocaust, they would be disappointed, like I was.”

A new podcast chronicles the little-known stories of boxers from the Holocaust era

'Holocaust Histories' by Canadian sound designer Jonathan Bonder is already getting a warm reception after its first episode release; the series will have a new theme each season

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Isidore Zuckerbrod (left) and Renata Szyfner at the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem on May 25, 2022. (Yad Vashem)

Son of Holocaust survivors reunites with daughter of rescuer at Yad Vashem

'I wanted to fill in the blanks about my family's history, that only they knew,' says Isidore Zuckerbrod, whose parents hid in a Polish chicken coop belonging to the Szyfner family

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

With Kurt Becher and Karl Plagge, there were no two sides: Becher was evil and Plagge was righteous.

How so?​

Becher served in the SS in Poland in the early 1940s. He is guilty of the murder of many Jews. In Budapest in 1944, he extorted a fortune of money from Rudolf Kastner and helped get the Kastner train and some 1,600 Jewish refugees out of Hungary to Switzerland. Undoubtedly, some of them would have been murdered without Becher’s assistance (Anne Porter, The Kastner Train). But there was nothing genuinely good about Becher.


After the war, Becher was arrested and put on trial for war crimes. The sad irony is that Kastner, who survived and moved to Israel, traveled to Europe and testified at Becher’s trial on Becher’s behalf. Becher was exonerated of all crimes, set free to return to civilian life and went on to become a very wealthy man, using the fortune he extorted from the Jews as a foundation for his business ventures.


On the other hand, Plagge was a noble man. In his book, The Search For Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, Michael Good tells the story of Plagge’s nobility and kindness during his service with the Germans in Vilna, after 1941.


He used his position as an officer in the German army to employ Jews who lived in the Vilna Ghetto. When the Germans chose to liquidate the ghetto, he set up a forced labor camp where he saved many Jews by issuing work permits and advocating for the fact that these workers were essential for the German war effort. He also saved their wives and children, using the argument that they would work better if they would be motivated to keep their families alive.


When the SS decided to liquidate the work camp, he warned his Jewish workers and told them to hide. About 200 of them were able to survive in hiding. Only 2,000 of Vilna’s Jews survived the war. The largest number of them were beneficiaries of Plagge’s largesse.


Plagge was arrested after the war and put on trial. A good number of the Jews that he had saved testified on his behalf. The court exonerated him. The survivors later petitioned that he be designated among the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem. In 2004, he received that recognition.


There are many times in life when as students of history, (and we all ought to be students of history), we need to be able to see beyond what events seem to mean on the surface. Discerning people should be able to see both sides of the often complicated and ambiguous circumstances that we encounter, as was the case with Lord Caradon. In addition, we frequently also need to see beyond ambiguity and recognize either good or evil in the absolute sense of those terms.

(full article online)

Two Nazi officers and a UK UN representative - opinion

In today’s column, we look at two men who wore Nazi uniforms, but what a difference. But we need to view the two Nazis in the lens provided by the UN ambassador from the UK.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

A traveling exhibit about America’s response to the Holocaust will be at Bozeman Public Library until the end of June.
The exhibit includes several large, museum-style panels that touch on both the big picture and small details of how the United States dealt with the Holocaust, diving into what influenced the country’s lackluster response to the genocide and specific stories of Americans who tried to help.
The project is through the American Library Association and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has a handful of copies of the exhibit that travel from library to library.

'Recent history': Bozeman library exhibit aims to bolster Holocaust education

A traveling exhibit about America’s response to the Holocaust will be at Bozeman Public Library until the end of June.

www.bozemandailychronicle.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

To universalize the horrors of the Holocaust for skeptical—and, in some cases, anti-Semitic—American audiences, Froehlich didn’t actually identify the victims in his comic as Jews. As Ribbens explains in Beyond Maus, “The compilers of Bloody Record tried to give the victims a retroactive place as human beings in the visual narrative of the Holocaust.” Still, “[e]mphasizing the utterly inhumane acts of the Nazis … seemed more important than identifying the prime victims of the Hitler regime.”

Froehlich’s inclusion of Zyklon B in his captions “shows how detailed the available knowledge on the Holocaust was by then,” writes Ribbens. Most artistic depictions, however, were limited to editorial cartoons, which typically take a single-panel format and respond more directly to current events. Cartoonists such as Eric Godal and Fred Packer, for instance, bitterly criticizedthe American government’s inaction regarding the Holocaust, including the 1939 decision to deny entry to the M.S. St. Louis’ 937 passengers, most of whom were Jewish refugees from Europe.

October 1943 cartoon by Eric Godal showing U.S. State Department officials ignoring reports of anti-Jewish atrocities by the Nazis Public domain

A 1939 Fred L. Packer cartoon about the American government's refusal to allow Jewish refugees into the U.S. Public domain
Ribbens suggests that the medium of “Nazi Death Parade” may have been something of a last resort for The Bloody Record’s creators. “[They] realized, if their message comes only in words, it’s not going to make any difference, because if people at the time really wanted to know, they could,” he says.

“Nazi Death Parade” “definitely was not the first depiction of a gas chamber as such,” says Ribbens, “but a comic which illustrates the entire process, that’s something new.”


(full article online)

The Holocaust-Era Comic That Brought Americans Into the Nazi Gas Chambers

In early 1945, a six-panel comic in a U.S. pamphlet offered a visceral depiction of the Third Reich's killing machine

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Holocaust Started With My Great-Uncle’s Murder

Arthur Kahn is believed to be the first Jewish person killed by the Nazis. I’ve known the story of his death as long as I can remember, but I wanted to learn the story of his life.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Babi Yar massacre was the apex of “Holocaust by bullets,” a term used by historians to describe the shooting executions perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, which continued even after they began killing European Jews on a massive scale with poison gas in death camps such as the Auschwitz complex in Poland.

“What makes Kyiv’s Babyn Yar stand out within the Holocaust as a whole is that a metropolitan city in Europe lost virtually all of its remaining Jewish inhabitants to premeditated murder, for the first time in history, and more Jews died in it than in any other single German massacre,” explains Karel Berkhoff, an historian and co-director of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure.

(full article online)

What Happened at the 1941 Babi Yar Massacre?

A ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv was the site of a major 'Holocaust by bullets' carried out by Nazi forces during World War II.

www.history.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Four Holocaust survivors and three graphic artists have worked tirelessly to co-create a series of three autobiographical graphic novels about one of the darkest times in human history. Today, a multi-year global effort culminates in a beautifully rendered, one-of-a-kind collection that frames the enduring lessons of the Holocaust.

But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust is edited by Holocaust historian Charlotte Schallié, chair of the University of Victoria’s Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies and project lead of the UVic-based Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling in Holocaust and Human Rights Education. Here, Schallié speaks to the role of the visual arts in Holocaust education, the importance of survivor-centred storytelling practices and trauma-informed approaches to ethical testimony collection, as well as the urgency of preserving survivor experiences.

The UVic-based project, first announced in January 2020, involves an international team of researchers, students and institutional partners spanning three continents, supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and focused on the stories of Emmie Arbel (Israel), Nico and Rolf Kamp (Holland), and David Schaffer (Canada) through the unique, hand-rendered styles of graphic artists Barbara Yelin (Germany), Gilad Seliktar (Israel) and Miriam Libicki (Canada).

But I Live was released today by New Jewish Press, a division of University of Toronto Press (one of North America’s largest university presses).

(full article online)

Publishing Holocaust graphic novels - University of Victoria

Charlotte Schallié speaks in a new Q&A about the release of her edited collection of graphic novels pairing Holocaust survivors with artists to illuminate one of the darkest times in history.

www.uvic.ca

 

[Sixties Fan]

Enlarge this image
Adolf Hitler inspects the new Volkswagen "people's car" after laying the foundation stone of the new Volkswagen works in 1938. On Hitler's left is the car's designer, Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche.
Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
Germany's determination to "never forget" the atrocities of the Holocaust has been at the center of its postwar success. But the Nazi legacies of Germany's wealthiest families highlight the country's challenge to make good on that commitment, according to author David de Jong.

He tells this story in his new book, Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History Of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties. He said what shocked him most was the "brazen whitewashing" that still happened today by companies like BMW and Porsche.

"The families that control them ... are maintaining global foundations in the name of their patriarchs, such as Ferry Porsche, who designed the first Porsche sports car, or Herbert Quandt, who saved BMW from bankruptcy," de Jong said.

"Their business successes are celebrated, but the war crimes they committed or the Nazi affiliations they had, like being voluntary SS officers, are omitted on the websites of these foundations."

The Quandt family are the heirs of the BMW fortune, which has made them the richest family in Germany. Together, siblings Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten own more than 40% of BMW and are worth about $38 billion.

(full article online)

 

[bendog]

I have been seeing a lot of article and threads on the Holocaust but have not found one which deals with the History, before, during and after. Therefore I am starting one now.

Any Holocaust denier is welcome to post and discuss here. Discuss, not attack, or troll. Proof that it did not happen, just post it.


It is important to tell History as it happened. Lets go at it.

Ken Burns' next documentary is about the US response to the Holocaust - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The three-part series is scheduled for release on PBS this September.

www.jta.org

I'm looking forward to this. The deniers are simply liars for partisan (name it) gain. But the US response, at the time, to the holocaust is something we didn't learn much about mainstream until the 1970s or so. It was about the FDR admin being staffed by anti-semetics and opposed by Morganthau

Henry Morgenthau Jr. - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But then Britain also was curiously unconcerned with the Jews' fates.

 

[Sixties Fan]

In ‘Shmuel’s Bridge,’ a St. Louis poet retraces his family’s Holocaust journey

St. Louis-based poet Jason Sommer’s book “Shmuel’s Bridge” explores his father’s experience surviving the Holocaust — and that of an uncle who died just outside Auschwitz.

news.stlpublicradio.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

When U.S. soldiers fought Germany during World War II, there was one group that was particularly motivated—about 2,000 mostly German and Austrian Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis and then returned to Europe to take on their tormentors as members of American military intelligence.

(full article online)

The Jewish Refugees Who Fled Nazi Germany—Then Returned to Fight

As members of the Ritchie Boys, German and Austrian refugees offered language skills and knowledge that proved vital to American military intelligence during World War II.

www.history.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Why it was dangerous in Nazi Germany to be both a Jewish woman and a composer

Mezzo-soprano Andrea Schwab's 'Jewish Women Composers,' describes how the titular group faced challenges in Nazi Germany and the U.S.

forward.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

In this context, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq on April 2, 1941. He was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Since his arrival in Baghdad in October 1939 as a refugee from the failed Palestinian revolt (1936-1939), al-Husayni had been at the forefront of anti-British activity. Following the coup, the supporters of the deposed pro-British rule, headed by the Regent, Abd al-Ilah, and foreign minister, Nuri al-Said, fled to Transjordan. In Iraq, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani formed a pro-German government, winning the support of the Iraqi Army and administration. He hoped an Axis victory in the war would facilitate full independence for Iraq.

The rise of this pro-German government threatened the Jews in Iraq. Nazi influence and antisemitism already were widespread in Iraq, due in large part to the German legation's presence in Baghdad as well as influential Nazi propaganda, which took the form of Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin. Mein Kampf had been translated into Arabic by Yunis al-Sab'awi, and was published in a local newspaper, Al Alam al Arabi (The Arab World), in Baghdad during 1933-1934. Yunis al-Sab'awi also headed the Futtuwa, a pre-military youth movement influenced by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in Germany. After the coup d'etat, al-Sab'awi became a minister in the new Iraqi government.

(full article online)

The Farhud

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Eighty years ago, on June 1 and 2, 1941, the Farhud brought devastation on the Jews of Iraq. This pogrom was the culmination of the pro-Nazi uprising in Iraq. It took place on the harvest festival of Shavuot commemorating the giving of the Torah to the Jews. It occurred well before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. My family lived through the horrific violence.

The official Iraqi government report, written soon after the Farhud took place, states that “110 Jews and Muslims” were killed. Other reports state that “179 Jews of both sexes and all ages were killed.” However, a newly discovered document of the Religious Zionist Workers Archives, dated July 17, 1941, offers very different numbers along with a shocking new detail:

“The height of the slaughter occurred at the local hospital where poison injections were administered, causing the deaths of 120 Jewish patients. …The hospital director in charge had his privileges to treat patients as a doctor taken away for five years. Based on estimates, the number of murdered and disappeared is over 1,000 people.”

(full article online)

The Blogs: First came the Farhud: The 2-stage ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Jewry

Eighty years after slaughter, rape and robbery, after expulsion and dispossession, Iraqi Jews are denied access to a precious archive of their communal history

blogs.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Holocaust Survivor Lillian Riess Widess left Europe behind just two years before becoming an entrant in the 1948 Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant. Both her parents were murdered in the Holocaust along with her older brother Alfred. The story goes that they were murdered in the streets during a Nazi-sponsored pogrom in Taurogge, Lithuania. Of the other members of the family, only Lillian’s sister Hilda escaped death, having married and moved to South America with her husband’s family in 1933.

Lillian, my husband’s paternal first cousin once removed, survived the Kovno Ghetto and two labor camps, before landing in a DP camp south of Munich, in Landsberg. In 1946, sponsored by her aunt and uncle, she was at last able to leave the blood-soaked ground of Europe for Chicago. She came with nothing—bereft even of the comfort of a family photo. Surviving relatives and friends embraced Lillian by gathering up and sending her all the pre-war family photos they could find. Because of this, Lillian was at least in part, able to recover a portion of her collection: faces to go with the memories of loved ones stolen by Hitler.

Lillian was a beauty. Even the war had not robbed her of that. No one knows how she ended up a contestant in the Queen of the Palestine Emergency Show pageant or even whether she won. But everyone acknowledges that she had what it took to compete.

​

Lillian Riess, circa 1946-1948, Chicago

Little could be found by this writer of the Palestine Emergency Show that featured the beauty pageant. The competition for "queen" was an obvious draw for residents of local Jewish neighborhoods, a way to encourage attendance at the rally, to be held in Chicago Stadium. Lillian Riess competed as a representative of the Southwest Side of Chicago.

​

Lillian Riess, at bottom right

What did the new Jewish State mean to someone like Lily Riess, who was caught and treated like vermin to be crushed, her family murdered in the streets, only because they were Jews? Was her participation in the pageant a statement of survival against all odds--her contribution to ensuring that her people could and would be restored to their homeland, never to be at the mercy of evil again? From this distance, we can only guess at Lillian's reasons for taking part in a 1948 beauty contest in Chicago. But there is no doubt that she once again felt a part of a community, and was glad to play an active role in local Jewish life.

(full article online)

A Holocaust Survivor Competes for Queen in the Palestine Emergency Show Pageant (Judean Rose)

The story of Lillian Riess Widess and a special 1948 mass demonstration for Israel.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com