Holocaust History

[Sixties Fan]

Kindertransport survivor Walter Bingham, recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest living working journalist, celebrated his 100th birthday in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Born Wolfgang Billig in 1924 in Karlsruhe, Germany, Bingham escaped Germany after Kristallnacht in 1939 by way of the Kindertransport, which sent nearly 10,000 unaccompanied children, most of them Jews, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig to Great Britain.

Bingham served in the British Army, earning honors for rescuing soldiers in the Normandy Landings. He later worked as a translator, including interrogating former Geman Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.


(full article online)

WWII Survivor, Veteran, Journalist Celebrates 100th Birthday | United with Israel

Walter Bingham served in the British Army and as a translator for Nazi interrogators.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2024/01/06/holocaust-survivor-band-saul-dreier/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

 

[surada]

Have you ever heard that Christians are haters of Jews?

That is exactly why no country would absorb any of those Jews and allowed those who were expelled from immigrating to the Mandate for Palestine to end up in those concentration camps and murdered.

Roosevelt was taught not to care about Jews, like many other Christians. And his advisors were no better.

Therefore we got what we got.

History is made of cowards who just go along.

This was during the dust bowl and depression.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Old Mr Mandel, the carpenter, was one of the first to die on the train from Backa Topola, northern Serbia, to Auschwitz. For 60 years he had smoked 50 cigarettes a day. At first, crammed into the cattle truck, Mandel had “stared, blankly, deliriously at the surging mass of people all around”, Jozsef Debreczeni writes in his outstanding, vividly observed Holocaust memoir. Mandel’s cigarettes, like his money and jewellery, had been confiscated. But the decades-long habit somehow continued. Debreczeni watched as Mandel’s hand moved back and forth, as though still holding a cigarette. He raised his fingers and pursed his lips to puff the imaginary smoke. Then, after a while, Mandel’s head tilted to the side. His hands lay still.
Debreczeni was deported to Auschwitz on one of the first Hungarian transports in late April 1944. He was an accomplished writer, fluent in Hungarian and Serbian. Until then, like many of the Jews of northern Serbia, which was under Hungarian rule, he had lived a pleasant provincial life. That world, together with his wife and parents, vanished in the smokestacks of Auschwitz. The dead are remembered in quick sketches: Horovitz, the photographer; Lefkovitz, the menswear shop owner; Porzacs, the “morbidly obese” jazz pianist; Waldmann, the teacher of German and Hungarian; and many others. Debreczeni was moved from Auschwitz to other camps and somehow survived more than a year of slave labour before he was liberated by Soviet troops in May 1945 in northern Germany.

As Jonathan Freedland observes in his informed, thoughtful foreword, the Holocaust does not abide by the laws of physics. Usually, the farther away an object, the smaller it appears. Yet as the years pass and more accounts emerge, “the scale of the horror” becomes “more striking and more shocking”. The accumulation of new facts does not bring understanding; instead it only increases our incomprehension.


(full article online )

https://archive.is/EBnkd

 

[Sixties Fan]

On the one hand the film is an unashamed tear-jerker, much like the episodes of That’s Life which introduced Nicholas Winton’s story to the British public in the 1980s — scenes that lose none of their power when recreated. On the other hand, it manages to convey a great many complex things with commendable understatement, including the question of whether Nicholas Winton himself was Jewish. Born to a German Jewish émigré family, he was baptised into the Church of England as part of a protective assimilation process. “Does that make me a Christian or a Jew?” he asks a rabbi in Prague in the film, hoping to be trusted with a list of vulnerable Jewish children to be helped with visas and the chance of an escape. “A Jew,” replies the rabbi, handing over the list.

One thing bothered me though, watching the story unfold. Did the Wintons not approach the Jewish community in their heroic quest to find sponsors and foster homes for the children? Back at the office, I consulted the JC archive. The search engine is not always 100 per cent accurate. But I could find no trace of any appeals or letters in our columns from 1939.

The publicity for the film was criticised this week for “erasing” the Jewishness of the children that were saved, by referring to them as Central European refugees rather than Jewish ones. It is not a mistake made in the film itself, where one of the most chilling scenes comes when Nazis enter a train full of terrified children as it travels through Germany. They burst into mocking laughter at the very idea of importing Jews to one’s land.

Although the omission in the press release was undoubtedly unfortunate, in some ways it reflects the experience of Nicholas Winton himself, and many of the children he saved as well as others who arrived on the Kindertransport from Germany and Austria. For many of them the question of identity, the rift between their Jewish childhood and their non-Jewish foster homes meant they were never quite certain where they stood. For some it was not enough to escape from the Nazis, they felt the need to future-proof themselves by escaping from Jewishness.
In 1989 – 50 years after the outbreak of war — a Kindertransport refugee Bertha Leverton organised a reunion of the children who had been saved, including the ‘Winton children.’ Close on a thousand attended the gathering, reported the JC, “they queued uncomplainingly for over an hour on the hottest June day for 13 years.”
Vera Gissing was one of the Winton Kinder interviewed, and her story is told in One Life. “I will always be proud to be Jewish by race, Czech by birth and British by choice,” she told the JC.

Another Vera saved by Winton was Vera Apter. She described leaving her sheltered home in the Sudentenland for the squalid conditions in Prague — bed bugs, unsanitary overcrowding and Gestapo raids. In England she was fostered by a schoolmaster’s family who were “Christian but never pushy in their religion.” Nonetheless Vera, whose parents died at Auschwitz, converted to Christianity, “persuaded by her isolation and the example of the people among whom she lived. For her, conversion repaired a shattered life.”

The report points out that many of the children saved were “country folk” who fitted well into the rural homes they were sent to. The overall tone of the conference was “uplifting” with an emphasis on the positive way that the children had put down new roots. But some told of psychological anguish and feeling as though they had a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality.

One woman praised her parents for the Orthodox upbringing that had instilled in her a deep sense of her own Jewishness. Others had headed for Israel and made new lives in a new state. One refugee started out as a German Christian (but with a Jewish father) and made a choice to become Jewish and English, the Holocaust educator, teacher and psychotherapist Ruth Barnett.

The conference report like the new film makes clear, that in a time of emergency what counts is saving lives. Identity, already a complex, nuanced thing, can be further fractured in the process. Assimilation and even conversion may follow for all kinds of reasons, and Nicholas Winton’s family’s own story may have unintentionally set the pattern for many others.

(full article online)

Omitting Jewishness from Winton’s story is neither new nor surprising

The Jewish children rescued by Nicholas Winton often ended up having complicated relationships with their background

www.thejc.com

 

[Zebra]

This was during the dust bowl and depression.

sad …..

 

[Sixties Fan]

Born in Milan in 1930, Segre fled from Nazi persecution in Italy with her father in December 1943.

After failing to secure refuge in Switzerland, the pair were sent by train to the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland the following month, where her father and grandparents were murdered.

Along with other Jewish prisoners transferred from Auschwitz in January 1945, Segre was taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany.

Weeks later she was moved to another camp operated by the Nazis which was eventually liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

Segre was made an Italian senator for life by President Sergio Mattarella in Jan. 2018.

In her speech on Tuesday, Segre added that she was opposed to “wars, invasions, all that is violence.” She then issued a call for more “moderation” in politics, acknowledging that this term is “out of fashion” but “deeply needed.”

The commission also heard from the Italian Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, who noted with alarm the “net increase” in antisemitism in Italy over the last three months.

Between Oct. 7 and Dec. 31, 135 antisemitic incidents were reported, Piantedosi said. Approximately 28,000 Jews live in Italy.

“Antisemitism represents the paradigm of all forms of hatred, as it sums up all discriminatory matrices, from racial to religious hatred,” Piantedosi observed. “[It is] a hatred that has its roots in the history of humanity, in prejudice and in disinformation.”

Piantedosi also condemned a far right march over the weekend in which participants offered fascist salutes.

Sunday’s march, which drew about 1,000 protesters, “arouses indignation,” he said, but had not been banned because to have done so would have been “counterproductive.”

(full article online)

Italian Jewish Holocaust Survivor and Senator Speaks of ‘Deep Melancholy’ Following Hamas Pogrom in Israel - Algemeiner.com

The 92-year-old Holocaust survivor who sits as a senator in the Italian parliament on Tuesday spoke of her anguish following the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 200 seized as hostages. In an address to the Italian parliament's...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

“Family Treasures Lost and Found” is a visually stunning film, largely because producer Karen A. Frenkel inherited a formidable family archive of art and photos from her mother’s refugee grandparents, who escaped Berlin in 1941.

The film’s press release notes: “The audience is treated to vestiges of the once-thriving Polish Jewish urban upper-middle class culture that the Nazis obliterated, and may identify with this pre-war way of life, appreciate the warning signs of fascist antisemitism, and see how its vice clamped down on Jews who would not or could not leave.”

(full article online)

âFamily Treasures Lost and Foundâ Starts Streaming Friday at Miami’s Jewish Film Festival

“Unlike most children of survivors, my sisters and I inherited a treasure trove of documents, photos, and artifacts."

www.jewishpress.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Émigré | Feb 29–Mar 1 | NY Phil

A new oratorio tracing the story of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai to escape the Holocaust. Official Box Office. Feb 29–Mar 1, 2024.

nyphil.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[surada]

Well I will start that Hitler was Mary Poppins compared to Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky

Hitler killed 6 million..........Them?????.........40?....50.....60? million

So we must start this thread saying the Soviets were 10 times worse. You have to admit that reality before you think further

We don't learn that in public skewls even 50 yrs ago. It was forbidden

I did.

 

[Zebra]

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.

thank you for this great thread!

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Deadstick]

Yes we talk of numbers of victims but they all have faces they are not just statistics,the young couple who live next door to me have just returned from Warsaw they visited Auschwitz, i have never been but over the years have read a lot about it, before they went i told them prepare to be shocked by the size of that monstrous crime and they were.

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Deadstick]

On the 27th of January 1945 Red Army Soldiers of the 60th army of the first Ukrainian front entered Auschwitz and liberated the prisoners or i should say survivors, about 60% of those Red army Soldiers were Ukrainian, the sick part is on Saturday there will be a memorial service at Auschwitz for the victims, as in recent years the liberators still alive and the memory of those who have passed will be insulted because the liberators will not be invited, these days the west celebrate the Ukrainian Nazis and the memory of Bandera, some occasions are above politics this Saturday is one of them.

 

[Sixties Fan]