MetaFilter posts tagged with jews and holocaust

To tell the story to someone else...

zarq — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:15:17 -0800

In 1974, Leon Leyson was one of a group of Jews who greeted Oskar Schindler when he visited Los Angeles. It was the first time the two had seen each other since the war. He began to introduce himself, but Schindler interrupted: "I know who you are," Schindler said, grinning at the middle-aged man before him. "You're Little Leyson." On Sunday, the youngest name on Schindler's List passed away at the age of 83. "The truth is, I did not live my life in the shadow of the Holocaust," he told the Portland Oregonian in 1997. "I did not give my children a legacy of fear. I gave them a legacy of freedom." Mr. Leyson was interviewed at a "Day of Remembrance" event in April 2010. (video) He was also interviewed by his daughter-in-law for 89.3 KPCC (Southern California Public Radio) in May, 2011. ("Listen Now" link is on the left.) The list. Also. Mr. Leyson's name was originally Leib Lejzon. Chabad.org: On Schindler's List: Leon Leyson's Story of Survival. "People should know the Nazis did not murder numbers. They murdered individuals," said Leyson. "Somebody's brother , somebody's uncle. Somebody's aunt. Somebody's grandchild. Somebody's grandfather." Leyson saw it as his duty to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, and to highlight the decency of people such as Schindler. "It's not going to be very long before there won't be any witnesses," said Leyson. "And if I tell my story and there are 100 people in the audience and many of them telling the story to somebody else then somebody else will tell the story to someone else."

Honor and Error

furiousxgeorge — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:14:33 -0800

In a high profile gaffe President Barack Obama has recently caused anger in Poland by referring to a Nazi death camp as a "Polish death camp" during a ceremony honoring World War II hero Jan Karski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “The White House will apologize for this outrageous error,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted. Sikorski said that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “will make a statement in the morning. It’s a pity that this important ceremony was upstaged by ignorance and incompetence.” The White House quickly expressed regret for the incident but Tusk does not feel the anger over the mistake is entirely out of line. “We always react in the same way when ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions lead to such a distortion of history.” Sikorski was quick to place the blame on White House staffers who prepared the speech rather than the President himself. The debate over which words to use to refer to camps located in Poland is an old controversy. "Some 6m Poles died during the war, half of them Jews. The country is sensitive to anything that might imply, wholly incorrectly, any complicity in events that occurred when it was under Nazi occupation."

“I had reached the point of no return. You finally get fed up … I finally wanted to speak the truth.”

zarq — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:47:40 -0800

Last year, the unofficial Dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, spoke about the State of Israel on camera. (Previously) Her replies: "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," and that the Jews "can go home" to "Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else," sparked media outrage, prompted her to issue an apology and retire. After months of being out of the the public spotlight, she has now given her first long-form interview, which will appear in the April issue of Playboy Magazine. In it, she explains what she meant, tells us how she would like to be remembered and expands upon her positions regarding Israel, Jewish political influence, Presidents Bush and Obama, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the Death Camps, Muslim Leaders Grapple With Jews’ Pain

empath — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 12:35:05 -0800

"We pray to God that this will not happen to the Jewish people or to any people anymore." -- a group of American imams visits Dauchau and Auschwitz.

Poetry in Hell

zarq — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:37:01 -0800

Poetry in Hell contains a complete collection of poems recovered from the Warsaw Ghetto's Ringelblum Archives. The project, which took ten years to complete, gives English translations of poems that are shown in their original Yiddish. Background on the Ringelblum Oneg Shabbat Archives During the Holocaust, dozens of Jewish men and women trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto chose a special form of resistance: they chronicled their path to doom for future generations. Led by Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, an historian, 35,000 paper documents were collected that showed how the Nazis had deprived Warsaw's Jews of their rights, then tormented and finally killed them in the death camps. On Aug. 2, 1942, while German soldiers combed the streets outside, two young men buried 10 metal boxes and several metal milk cans containing this extraordinary archive in the basement of an elementary school inside the ghetto. They were recovered from the rubble in 1946 and 1950. Approximately 25,000 of the documents survived and are now housed in the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland and the United States Holocaust Museum. "The Archives comprise government documents, materials concerning the ghetto resistance, testimonies of the fate of Jewish communities during the Holocaust, literature, works of art and private correspondence collected by victims of the Holocaust in order to pass on information about the Holocaust to future generations. This collection is absolutely unique, both in terms of its origin and its historic value. It mainly concerns the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe (approximately 500,000 inhabitants), but in fact it covers the whole of occupied Poland, documenting the Shoah, the fate of its Jewish community of 3.500,000 people. Nearly all the creators of the Ringelblum Archives perished, either in the ghetto or in the extermination camps."
The archive recovery and restoration efforts were documented in a 2007 book by American historian Samuel Kassow: "Who Will Write Our History?: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto". Some of it is available to view online at Google books, here. Book reviews and background on the recovery project: * Video: C-Span Book TV with Samuel Kassow * Los Angeles Times * Spiegel International * The Guardian * New Jersey Jewish News Background on the Poetry in Hell Project * Preface * Forward * Author's Note * Interview with Dr. Sarah Traister Moskovitz on J-Wire: "Warsaw Ghetto Poetry Now Online"

Hero of WWI. Traitor of WWII. Honored in Milltown, NJ.

zarq — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:55:17 -0800

A Local Street and a Lesson in History Background: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was a revered and honored hero of WWI in France, but after the War, "the glorious savior of Verdun (pdf)" rose to head the Vichy state, which collaborated closely with the Nazis. After WWI, a Milltown, NJ street's name was changed to Pétain, in honor of his military leadership. (See: "What's a Name.") But a recent campaign by a local teenager asking that the name of the street be changed gave borough officials something to consider: should Pétain's subsequent actions as head of the Vichy government outweigh his prior heroism?

"Arbeit Macht Frei" Sign Stolen

zarq — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:14:21 -0800

Poland has declared a state of emergency, after the infamous bronze sign reading "Arbeit Macht Frei" at former Konzentrationslager (concentration camp) Ausch witz was stolen yesterday. In Brussels, European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a former Polish prime minister, appealed to the thieves to return the sign: "Give it back out of respect for the suffering of over a million victims, murdered in this Nazi camp, the biggest cemetery of humankind," Buzek said.
According to the Auschwitz Memorial / Muzeum Auschwitz Facebook page, "the Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum with approval of Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski has promised a reward of 100,000 zlotys (around $34,000)" for information about the theft leading to the sign's safe return. The Jerusalem Post reports that the Museum has replaced the original with a temporary duplicate.

The last ones leave us now.

allkindsoftime — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:19:50 -0800

Fewer than 100 survived Treblinka. I am the last one.

Bacterial marketing: the other Oskar Schindler

goodnewsfortheinsane — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:20:23 -0800

Upon the Nazi invasion of Poland, pediatrician Eugeniusz Łazowski and his friend Stanisław Matulewicz fabricated a fake typhus epidemic to save Polish Jews from the Nazis. Knowing that typhus-infected Jews would be summarily executed, non-Jews were injected with the harmless Proteus OX19, which would generate false positives for typhus. Anglicising his name to "Eugene Lazowski", the doctor moved to the United States after the war. He lived and worked in Chicago from 1958, and passed away in late 2006 at the vernerable age of 92, in Eugene (!), Oregon. Oddly little is written about Lazowski and Matulewicz on the web; although apparently there has been work on a documentary titled "A Private War" by a filmmaker named Ryan Bank. So feel free to add supporting links if you are aware of any.

Holocaust study is a sensitive subject

netbros — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 21:22:23 -0800

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.

“I study dead Jews”

elgilito — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:59:59 -0800

"So much for “never again.” So the problem has obviously not disappeared."
Raul Hilberg (1926-2007, NYT obit) explains why he added a chapter on Rwanda to the last edition of The destruction of the European Jews, a work that took him a lifetime and 3 editions to complete, meeting with indifference, then with criticism from those who didn't share his (at the beginning) functionalist view of the Holocaust. Hilberg became involved in other controversies about the Holocaust, but "The Destruction..." remains the "the closest of any work in print to being the Summa of Holocaust studies" (Christopher Browning). Also: Hilberg intervied by Claude Lanzmann in "Shoah" (YT) (previously).

Irena Sendler, humble hero(ine)

cerebus19 — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:51:38 -0800

You've heard of Oskar Schindler. You've heard of Raoul Wallenberg. But you've probably never heard of Irena Sendler (or Sendlerowa). Sendler, who turned 97 in February, saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. She doesn't think she's a hero, but she's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, largely due to the attention brought to her story by four girls from rural Kansas.

Uncle Leo and the Nazis

sotonohito — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:52:13 -0800

This Sunday will be Yom HaShoah "Holocaust Martyrs' Remembrance Day" in Israel. A month ago Eric Muller, a law professor at UNC, went to Germany to find what he could about his great uncle Leopold Müller. Today he got something unexpected in the mail. (via)

What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?

turducken — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 18:55:38 -0800

"F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." The ugly truth about Mel Gibson's drunk-driving arrest oozes out, with exquisite timing. (Enter his name on linked form.) Apple/tree, etc. (via tmz)

Write this one in your diary Anne!

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 10:07:20 -0800

When Iranian paper Hamshahri (in Persian) launched a contest for Holocaust cartoons, an Israeli group responded in turn with a contest of their own for cartoons that make fun of Jews. Too bad it closed yesterday, or the Dutch branch of the AEL could submit theirs. (WARNING: some of the linked content may be offensive to readers' ethnicities, cultures, religions, or tastes.)

19 Princelet Street

plep — Thu, 01 May 2003 10:59:41 -0800

19 Princelet Street , Spitalfields. A permanent celebration of London immigrant life.
'Described as the nation's answer to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, 19 Princelet Street in London's East End was refuge to hundreds of Jews fleeing persecution from the Nazis.