In rememberance
Allentown man recalls months at Auschwitz
He saw his parents led off to die. Sixty years ago, Soviets liberated the Nazi death camp in Poland.
For his part, Jacobs works to ensure that new generations will know what happened to Jews during World War II. He talks to hundreds of students every year about his experiences after the Germans invaded his native Poland in 1939.
At that time, Jacobs was 13. The fact he was as young as the students he talks to really makes an impact on them, he said. He gets letters from students who say they won’t forget his story.
”They will remember what I said for the rest of their lives,” he said, gratified that he could make a difference.
While it was the R Russians who first arrived at Auschwitz, this article highlights anti-Semitism in Russia:
Earlier this week, a group of nationalist Russian lawmakers called for a sweeping investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations and punishing officials who support them, accusing Jews of fomenting ethnic hatred.
In Poland, a recent survey indicated that only about half of the population was aware that the majority of Auschwitz victims were Jewish — a holdover mentality from the Communist era, when official historical accounts sometimes played down Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.
During Communist rule, a plaque that stood at Auschwitz- Birkenau failed to mention that Jews were killed there.
Russia’s not alone in that; as VP Cheney said, the Holocaust “took place not in a remote section of the globe, but in the middle of Europe.”
Additionally, Barcepundit sent this article (in Spanish) El gueto polaco de Lodz: Vivieron felices, pero engañados… También les mataron (The Lodz Ghetto: They lived happily, but deceived . . . They were killed, too) The article’s about Henryk Ross’s photographs. From Chris Boot Publishing,
In terms of its scope, all other photographic records of ghetto life pale in comparison… [these photographs] have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of ghetto life…” Thomas Weber
By turns poignant and deeply shocking, a unique historical document, as well as a crucial body of evidence.” Sean O’Hagan, The Observer
Henryk Ross (1910 – 1991) was a Jewish press photographer in Poland before World War II. Incarcerated by the invading Germans in the Lodz ghetto, he became one of its two official photographers. His duties afforded him access to photographic facilities which he used to secretly photograph the atrocities of Lodz, while also recording scenes of domestic life among the ghetto ‘elite’. As the Germans began the liquidation of Lodz in 1944, Ross buried his 3,000 negatives. Surviving the Holocaust, he recovered them and, from his post-war home in Israel, circulated images showing the horrors of Lodz. But until now, the bulk of his photographs remained unseen, including many of the milieu of the ghetto police. For an audience accustomed to dramatic photographs of Holocaust suffering, the quiet, domestic scenes he recorded are poignant and sometimes shocking, challenging us to rethink what we understand about ghetto society. With a foreword by bestselling Holocaust expert Robert-Jan van Pelt, and with an appendix of original documents, the book is introduced with an informative, illustrated essay by historian Thomas Weber.
As a final note, New Sisyphus today writes, The New Mein Kampf: Zarqawi Speaks
In the long run, we have hope. Because, like the Nazis before them, the Islamic leaders keep ruining the efforts of Western appeasers and cowards by continuing to bluntly state the bloody obvious: that they want to kill us and destroy our way of life.
Then, as now we fight for democracy.
