Holocaust History

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Leonid Berenshtein’s life story fascinated director Roman Shumunov from the moment he first learned about it. A Soviet Jew, born in Ukraine, Berenshtein became a legendary partisan commander during World War II.

In 1944, he located a factory in Dembica, Poland, that produced Hitler’s dreaded secret weapon, the V2 rocket. The factory was subsequently bombed by the Red Army, delivering a key blow to the Third Reich. Decades later, Berenshtein relocated to Israel.

The former battalion commander’s story is shared in Georgian-Israeli director Shumunov’s new eponymous docudrama film, “Berenshtein.”

(full article online)

Film lauds WWII partisan chief who found Hitler’s V2s, died in Israel in obscurity

Director Roman Shumunov tells the story of Leonid Berenshtein, who climbed the ranks in the underground, eventually discovering the factory producing Hitler's dreaded V2 rockets

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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A film-maker comments on Ken Burns' Holocaust documentary (Martin Ostrow)

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

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WATCH: A Yom Kippur 'Violin Recital' in Auschwitz | United with Israel

This gripping video about an other-worldly violin recital is a must watch - especially before Yom Kippur.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

[Mindful]

In my film J’Accuse! about the Lithuanian holocaust I rely significantly on archive photography to tell the story; black and white prints, often grainy, that somehow escaped the inferno. Many of the photos may be familiar to you, but their primal power remains: two small, fearful brothers, yellow stars on their filthy clothes; an inconsolable grandmother; a naked young woman being escorted to her death; a class of little girls stripping by the pit; the doomed Jewish orchestra in the Kaunas ghetto; Ponary.

The photographic detail is astonishing and reveals so much about these children. Look closely. Note the the rocking horse, the shoes, the pressed pinafores and aprons, the creative play materials, the careful haircuts. The faces of obviously loved children.

And then imagine, if you can bear it, the day just four years later when these children would wake up to discover that they were no longer human. And how, after weeks of deranged savagery all about them they would be ripped from what remained of their homes and imprisoned in their once-beautiful synagogue. How they would be held there, without food or a drop of water for three weeks in the summer heat. How their last days would be endured amid the stench of excrement and rotting bodies. And how the survivors would be carted off to pits and shot, bludgeoned or asphyxiated to death.

Archive and memory

From the blog of Michael Kretzmer at The Times of Israel

blogs.timesofisrael.com

 

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A time when Tbilisi, Georgia, had a rich Yiddish cultural life

A look at the rich Yiddish cultural life of the Jewish community in Tbilisi, Georgia, which dates the 19th century.

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They fled the hell of Auschwitz, but that was not the only catastrophe they faced

Jonathan Freedland's 'The Escape Artist' recounts the saga of how Walter Rosenberg and Alfred Wetzler became the first to escape Auschwitz.

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They fled the hell of Auschwitz, but that was not the only catastrophe they faced

Jonathan Freedland's 'The Escape Artist' recounts the saga of how Walter Rosenberg and Alfred Wetzler became the first to escape Auschwitz.

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The large majority of readers of the Oct. 2 and Oct. 6 JNS articles on the events marking Lithuanian Holocaust Memorial Day were likely convinced that the Baltic country is doing an excellent job of commemorating the destruction of its Jewish community.

That is a consoling thought, but nothing could be further from the truth. It downplays the very significant role played by local collaborators in the annihilation of Lithuanian Jews; the more than 5,000 German, Austrian and French Jews deported to Lithuania to be murdered by Lithuanians; and the at least 20,000 Belarussian Jews shot near their homes by the men of the 12th Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion.

Moreover, since it regained its independence in 1990, Lithuania has played a major role in promoting the dangerous phenomenon called “Holocaust distortion,” which is currently rampant throughout post-communist Eastern Europe. For those unacquainted with the term, it refers to the rewriting of the narrative of the Holocaust to achieve four goals:

1. Hide completely or seriously minimize the role played in the Holocaust by local collaborators. On this issue, it is extremely important to note that only in Eastern Europe did collaboration with Nazi Germany include participation in the systematic mass murder of Jews.
2. Promote the canard that communist and Nazi crimes are equivalent and officially categorize the former as genocide. This has serious repercussions because, if it is accepted, anti-Semites can portray “Jewish communists” as perpetrators of genocide against the peoples of Eastern Europe. And if everyone is equally guilty, no one can be accused.
3. Allow the glorification of individuals who fought the Soviets after World War II as national heroes, even if they collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust.
4. Establish an International Memorial Day for All Victims of Totalitarian Crimes on Aug. 23, the day of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which would certainly make International Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan. 27) redundant.

Member of the Lithuanian parliament Emanuel Zingeris, for example, who was interviewed at length in the Oct. 6 article and expressed great concern for Holocaust education, was among the architects—and the only Jew to sign—the infamous Prague Declaration of June 3, 2008, which is the manifesto of Holocaust distortion.

(full article online)

The Lithuanians still deny their participation in the Holocaust

We should not allow the Baltic country to whitewash and distort their complicity in the murder of over 95% of its Jews.

www.jns.org

 

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The forgotten ghetto in the heart of Gdansk

Residents of this Polish city and tourists who visit it should know about the hell that some people inflicted on other people in this place during World War II

blogs.timesofisrael.com

 

[Mindful]

For decades one of the most incredible tales from the Holocaust has been virtually unknown outside of Poland. The writings of Witold Pilecki, a Polish patriot who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, were published in English only a few years ago. His incredible bravery and heroic actions deserve to be better known.

Breaking into Auschwitz - aish.com

Witold Pilecki heroically volunteered to enter Auschwitz where he organized a secret resistance.

aish.com

 

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“To remember happy days, which were not really happy at all,” reads the inscription on the back of a photograph of a Jewish swim team taken moments after its victory in a championship.

The image of the Vienna-based Hakoah team in the late 1920s was owned by Hubert Nassau. The message was sent by him to fellow teammate Fritz Lichtenstein seven years after the defeat of the Third Reich.

Like Lichtenstein, Nassau managed to escape the Nazis’ effort to annihilate European Jewry, emigrating to Britain months after the Anschluss.

(full article online)

In London exhibition, snapshots of Jewish life soon to be shattered by the Holocaust

The Wiener Library’s display of Jewish refugee family photos, running through November 4, shows happy times – and dark clouds on the horizon

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Two Polish women, Renata Rostborowska and her aunt Kristina Wojwodzka were posthumously named “Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum. Chairman Danny Dayan and Director of the Yad Vashem Righteous of the World Department, Dr. Yoel Zysenwein, presented the honors at a ceremony held Sunday at Yad Vashem to Rostborovska’s son and Wyvobodzka’s granddaughter in the presence of the Holocaust survivor who the family saved, Stanislaw Shlomo Aronson, his family members, the military attaché at the Polish embassy and other family members and friends of his rescuers.

The Righteous Among the Nations, explains Yad Vashem, are non-Jews honored for taking great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Their acts of heroism took many forms and they came from different nations, religions, and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.

Persons recognized as a “Righteous Among the Nations” are awarded a specially minted medal bearing their name, a certificate of honor, and the privilege of their names being added to the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

And the story of how these two Polish heroes came to save Stanislav Shlomo Aronson is remarkable in and of itself.

Born in 1925 in Warsaw, Aronson spent most of his childhood years in Lodz, where he lived with his family on the eve of the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.

After the Germans invaded Poland, the Aronson family decided to flee to the east and eventually made it to safety – temporarily – in Lviv, Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. A few months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began in June 1941, the family members were forced by the German occupiers to move to the Warsaw ghetto. In the fall of 1942, they were put on a freight train and sent to concentration camps.

Stanislav, however, managed to escape from the train and returned to Warsaw where he joined the ranks of the underground under the pseudonym Ryshard Zhurawsky and later changed his name to Zhukovsky.

During this time, he was sworn into the Polish underground organization “Army Kryowa” and only a few of its other members knew that he was Jewish. One of the few who knew was Renata Papenhauser Bernstiren – later Rostborowska – who rented him her apartment to live in, in 1944. By keeping Stanislaw’s secret, Renata not only protected him from being rounded up and executed by the Germans, but she also protected him from other members of the Polish underground who were no lovers of the Jewish people themselves. There were instances during the war where Jews in the underground were killed by their own comrades simply because they were Jews.

‘Righteous Among the Nations’: 2 Polish Women Honored by Yad Vashem | United with Israel

Renata Rostborowska and her aunt Kristina Wojwodzka saved Holocaust survivor Stanislaw Shlomo Aronson.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

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Daniela Lavender, Sir Ben Kingsley, Halina Silber, Mushka Efune and Dovid Efune at the 6th annual Algemeiner gala in New York City, Sept. 27, 2019.
Photo: PMC / Sean Zanni for The Algemeiner.


Helen “Halina” Silber, who attributed surviving the Holocaust to being transferred from Auschwitz to an ammunition and enamelware factory owned by Oskar Schindler, died on Tuesday. She was 93.

Born in 1929, Silber and family fled their home in a rural area of Kraków, Poland, to a ghetto in Słomniki when she was just ten years ago. After hearing that the Nazis would relocate Jews living there, Silber’s mother told her to travel alone back to Kraków and voluntarily join the Płaszów labor camp, where her siblings were already interned. She never saw her mother again.

“I saw endless rows and rows of barbed wire. I could smell the stench of burning flesh,” she described arriving at Auschwitz to members of the Young Israel Shomrai Emunah synagogue in 2019. “I felt to myself; there is no more room here for hope. There is no room here for miracles.”

Not having identification papers delayed Silber’s registration at Płaszów, but she was eventually assigned to laundry duty. Later, she was selected to by the camp’s Gestapo officers to work in Schindler’s in factory.


(full article online)

Halina Silber, Holocaust Survivor Saved by Oskar Schindler, Dies at Age 93

Daniela Lavender, Sir Ben Kingsley, Halina Silber, Mushka Efune and Dovid Efune at the 6th annual Algemeiner gala in New …

www.algemeiner.com

 

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2 Nazi-looted paintings, returned to heirs of owner, to be auctioned for charity

Works by artist Egon Schiele, seized from Jewish cabaret artist Fritz Grunbaum during the Holocaust, are expected to fetch $2.8 million

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Hanneli Pick-Goslar (Hannah Goslar), a Holocaust survivor and childhood friend of Anne Frank, attends an exhibition at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, October 11, 2012. (Marcel Antonisse/ANP/AFP)

The two girls lost touch in 1942 when the Frank family went into hiding to escape the Nazis.

Goslar and her family were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and deported to Bergen-Belsen the following year.

(full article online)

Hannah Goslar, friend of Anne Frank who moved to Israel after war, dies aged 93

Holocaust survivor was one of diarist's closest friends before Nazis invaded Amsterdam, met her again in Bergen-Belsen, survived and raised family in Jerusalem

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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We Will Never Die premiered at Madison Square Garden on March 9, 1943, with two performances before an audience of 40,000. Written by Ben Hecht with music by Kurt Weill, and produced by Billy Rose, its purpose was to make America do something to stop the destruction of European Jewry—which was well underway. “These are the 2 million Jewish dead of Europe today,” the show began. “The 4 million left to kill are being killed, according to plan.” After the debut, it was performed in five other cities, including before Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. According to historian Rafael Medoff, the dramatic pageant helped shatter the curtain of silence surrounding the Holocaust, by drawing attention to a crisis that much of the mainstream news media were ignoring. Listen to the Los Angeles radio performance from July 1943:

Treasure Trove: A weekly piece of our history from the collection of David Matlow—second year archive (2022-23) - The Canadian Jewish News

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Unzer Sztyme, the monthly newspaper of the Holocaust survivors in the British Zone of occupied Germany, was published in Yiddish at Bergen-Belsen’s Displaced Person’s Camp from 1945 to 1947. This illustration of “The Modern Haman” was published on March 17, 1946—the date on which Purim falls in 2022. Adolf Hitler is depicted leading a Jewish soldier on horseback: “This is what is to be done to the person the king wants to honour,” a passage from the book of Esther. The drawing depicts 10 Nazi leaders hanging from gallows like the 10 sons of Haman—the caption notes this punishment was the Jewish dream during the time of Hitler. The artist was survivor Berl Friedler who published his sketches in a book called Back from Hell.

Treasure Trove: A weekly piece of our history from the collection of David Matlow—second year archive (2022-23) - The Canadian Jewish News

The latest items via @TheCJN on Instagram.

thecjn.ca

 

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Night of Stars was an annual benefit performance by New York’s film and entertainment industry to raise much needed funds for the development of Eretz Yisra’el and refugee relief and rehabilitation. The first production was in 1934, before a crowd of 45,000 at Yankee Stadium—donated for the evening by team owner Col. Jacob Ruppert—with proceeds sent to help German Jewry. Macy’s department store owner Nathan Strauss was the key driver behind the event, which inspired large-scale fundraisers by the U.S. Army and Navy, the Red Cross and others. This program is from the 1948 performance, the first after Israel’s independence.

Treasure Trove: A weekly piece of our history from the collection of David Matlow—second year archive (2022-23) - The Canadian Jewish News

The latest items via @TheCJN on Instagram.

thecjn.ca

 

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Israel's Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor (2nd-R) and Berlin's Deputy Mayor Bettina Jarasch (L) present Anne-Marget Schmid (2ndL) and Gundela Suter, descendants and grand-daughters of four German 'Righteous Among the Nations', with medals from Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial during a posthumous ceremony in their honor at the City Hall of Berlin, on November 2, 2022. (Jens Schlueter/AFP)

BERLIN (AFP) — Germany and Israel on Wednesday paid posthumous tribute to two married couples who rescued Berlin Jews from the Nazis, at an emotional ceremony attended by four generations of the families’ descendants.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor presented granddaughters of the rescuers with Righteous Among the Nations medals from Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial at the Berlin City Hall in the first such ceremony there in seven years.
Prosor, whose own family fled the Nazis for Israel in the 1930s, called the couples — Bruno and Anna Schwartze and Friedrich and Helene Huebner — “heroes in the fight for freedom.”

(full article online)

In Berlin, 2 married couples who saved Jews from Nazis given honor by Yad Vashem

Israel, Germany hold ceremony to recognize Bruno and Anna Schwartze and Friedrich and Helene Huebner, who helped neighbors survive the Holocaust: 'Heroes in the fight for freedom'

www.timesofisrael.com