YAD VASHEM– Still so much to learn and remember

Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is the Jewish People’s living memorial to the Holocaust.

It safeguards the memory of those who were slaughtered and teaches future generations about the unspeakable horrors.

Many people think that if they’ve visited it once then there’s no point in going again – but they are so wrong. The area that Yad Vashem covers both physically and emotionally, is vast and there are new exhibits constantly being organized.
On a recent visit I saw  the shul/ synagogue.

Apart from being used for regular prayers it is also used for people who want a place to say  Kaddish, or to sit down and pray after an emotional visit.

It contains various items of Judaica from shuls all over Europe including  four Arks for storing the Sifrei Torah which all came from Rumania and were procured for Yad Vashem with the help of  Rumanian government.





Next door to the shul is a new exhibit to honor the Righteous Amongst the Nations who saved Jews during the Holocaust.


Inside there are five areas with seating to watch different films depicting the different ways in which people were saved, including those who took in children and returned them to the Jewish authorities after the war, those who hid families in cellars, countries where someone in the the government intervened and rescued them and those where both the Jews and the non-Jews were discovered by the Nazis and killed.

The stories are both fascinating and very moving and shed a new light on the history of Jews saved by Gentiles.

We then visited the new Learning Centre also known as the “Center for Major Questions Arising from the Holocaust,” which attempts to discuss and give opinions on  the many  theological, societal and military questions raised by the Holocaust.



Some are just not answerable, i.e. Why did G’d let the Holocaust happen, but are still discussed. Others are given a selection of answers from various appropriate people / authorities, i.e. Why did the Allied Air Force not bomb the tracks to Auschwitz.



Yad Vashem has also launched a new more urgent collection of personal items that are, or were,  in the possession of survivors. Our guide told us many stories of items that children of survivors thought were of not much interest, but for others provided an only link to their parents/ grandparents who perished.

Yad Vashem works very hard to trace people ( or their descendents) mentioned in letters/ notebooks or identified on photos it receives.

As Eli Wiesel once said- Anyone who listens to a witness, becomes a  witness himself.

Fifty Years since Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem

“When I stand before you O Judges of Israel, to lead the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone. With me are six million accusers. But they cannot rise to their feet and point their finger at the man in the dock with the cry ‘ J’accuse’ on their lips for they are now only ashes – ashes piled high on the hills of Auschwitz and the fields of Treblinka and strewn in the forests of Poland.”

With these words, fifty years ago this month, Israel’s Attorney General Gideon Hausner opened his case against Adolf Eichmann, one of the prime instigators of the Final Solution ( annihilation of  the Jews in Europe.)

Eichmann was found and kidnapped by the Israeli Mossad ( secret service) after a long painstaking search  in Argentina. He was smuggled aboard a  plane and brought to Israel, to Jerusalem, to stand trial for the crime of genocide of the Jewish people.

 

Throughout his trial he sat, totally expressionless, in his bullet-proof glass cage – through grave accusations and grueling, horrifying testimonies.

Eichmann’s trial was a turning point  for many people:

It had a profound effect on the world’s outlook on the Holocaust. Live television coverage kept viewers all over the world informed   day after  day constantly hearing about the horrors that the Germans  perpetrated.                                                                      It also gave holocaust survivors in Israel ‘permission’ to retell the terrors  they went through.   Until then they had felt they had  to suppress their stories and to try to become the consummate  ‘sabra’ – tough, brave and responsible for their own destiny.

This facade didn’t mesh well with the picture of the  victims of  the gas chambers and concentration camps, and so they had been encouraged to ‘forget’ their past.                                              

But when the trial opened, the nightmares and memories resurfaced and flooded out and the silence of thousands of  survivors was finally broken.

The new generation of Israelis looked at their relatives /neighbors/ fellow soldiers / work colleagues who had survived  Hitler’s inferno in a completely new light.

They learnt that bravery and courage doesn’t always have to show itself in physical fighting, but can be seen in retaining a human character in the face of inhuman treatment; in helping others under conditions when you could barely keep yourself alive.

Eichmann’s capture and televised trial showed  the world to what depths of depravity  human beings can descend.

Now  50 years later, there are people who want to deny that it ever happened.

No Holocaust.

No ghettos.

No round-ups and transportations in airless cattle trucks to suffocate to death,en route to being slaughtered

No concentration camps where millions were beaten and tortured to death and  fatal medical experiments were carried out.

No gas-chambers spewing human  smoke.

No death marches.

No  total destruction of hundreds of Jewish villages and communities.

Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust, has now put 200 hours of  the Eichmann trial  on YouTube so the testimony and the truth can be heard once again  by all. ……… But  probably the only ones  who want to hear it  are those who  know that it’s true.

We must continue to bear witness and show the insidious lies of the Holocaust deniers.

KRISTALLNACHT

The night of November 9th / 10th, known as  kristallnacht  ( the night of the broken glass) is the anniversary of  one of the most  terrible and horrifying  events that led to the   intensifying of Nazi pogroms against Jews and the ‘final solution’ of the Holocaust.

In one night  over 1600 synagogues were ransacked and torn apart and 267 were burnt to the ground. Jewish homes and businesses in Germany and Austria were destroyed  and broken glass from shattered windows littered the streets.

Thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps, amongst them, my grandfather.

There is no shortage of  terrifying and heart rending  stories – many of which  almost defy belief  - about  the suffering that Jews went through and the  sacrifices they made to help each other and retain their own sense of humanity.

 

And there are stories of people who survived the Nazi hell and  took their horrifying experiences and used them to ensure that others would not have to suffer the  feeling of being without family or home – like Hanna Bar Yesha below.

 

 

The story told below ( which you may have seen as it went viral on the internet this month) is slightly different as  Alice Sommer Herz was a concert pianist and this saved her life when  she was chosen to be in the camp orchestra in Theresienstadt.   Theresienstadt  was  a ‘so-called’ model  concentration camp that the Germans built to  try and convince the world that  all their concentration camps were as  humane and holiday-camp like as this one . Here the  starving inmates, under threat of immediate extermination,  had to play   music, sing in choirs and perform plays to show how cultured and fun their life was. 

Her love of life and appreciation of everything she has is an inspiration to us all. She bears no hatred for  anyone which could be the reason that at 106, apart from being the oldest Holocaust survivor, she also still plays her beloved piano regularly and entertains her many friends every day in her flat. Her ‘simchat chaim’  joy of life on a daily basis is an inspiration to us all.

UNFORTUNATELY THE 12 MINUTE VIDEO IN WHICH ALICE DESCRIBES HER LIFE IN THE CAMP,  HER MUSIC AND HER LIFE NOW   HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE INTERNET SINCE THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN.

I HOPE YOU MANAGED TO SEE IT SOMEWHERE IT WAS TRULY INSPIRING .

 

In a post several months ago I told  of another  story that took place in Theresienstadt , the  setting up of a  beautifully decorated, hidden synagogue.

The descendents of Asher Berlinger  who risked his life to build and decorate this shul are still looking for anyone who actually  saw this shul while they were in the camp during the war.

Thank G’d my parents and both sets of grandparents  escaped from Germany and, compared to so many others, did not suffer  torments at the hands of the Nazis. The Holocaust  was rarely mentioned in our home when I was a child, as far as I can remember, and it was only as a teenager that I started to think about it.

Nevertheless, in some way I still think of myself as a 2nd generation survivor with an obligation to ensure that our children and grandchildren  don’t just think of this as another part of  Jewish history.

The reverberations of the Holocaust are still with us. Holocaust denial is an accepted contagious  disease  spreading throughout the Western world and neo-Nazism  and anti-Semitism, in  many forms and disguises, are  getting stronger every day.

We’d be blind  fools to think it couldn’t happen again.

Lady Jakobovits – a very special lady.

Like everyone, I was really shocked to hear of Lady Jakobovits’ death last Friday and I immediately thought back to my first real meeting with her.

It was the late 1970s and The Chief Rabbi Sir Immanuel Jakobovits ( as he was known then) and his lovely wife Amelie were coming to stay with us for Shabbat. I was so nervous I could hardly breathe.

My husband was the Rabbi of a community in South London and our shul had invited the Chief Rabbi and his wife to be our guests and they had agreed.

All of the officers of the shul lived in homes far larger and more comfortable than ours but the Chief Rabbi ad his wife had agreed to be our guests in our small toddler filled home.

On both Friday night and Shabbat lunchtime we hosted a large group of youth from the community , but that wasn’t what I remember about their visit.

I remember all the little ways Rebbetzin Jakobovits put me at my ease with her every thoughtful touch .

Before she arrived she had first called to ask if I minded if she brought her own home-made challot, as it was her custom to bake them every week. “ Mind” I was honored and thrilled . She arrived with gifts for me and our oldest son, a book about a child’s experience in the holocaust in which she had inscribed “ To Shai, with best wishes to be read in about two year’s or so” a book which I later read and ,knowing her background as a holocaust survivor, I well understood her choice. As a mother herself she knew that our son wouldn’t appreciate the book yet but knew it would have far longer lasting worth that a toy or game more suitable for his age at that time, and in fact the book still sits amongst his books today, 30 years later.

She was admiring and appreciative of everything we did and served, but went to great lengths to make me treat her normally. When we were on our own she was with me in the kitchen and waved away plates and napkins when we had coffee and cake standing up by the breakfast bar.

She was very attentive to our young children and asked many questions about my family and my husband’s. My father had died not long before and she expressed her sorrow that he wasn’t there to know about how much we were doing for our community.

But to me the highlight of their visit came after they had left.  During Motzei Shabat my mother called me in great excitement.

“You’ll never guess who just called me. Lady Jakobovits. She told me what a wonderful Shabbat she had spent with you and how I must have such naches from you, my son-in-law and the grandchildren . Wasn’t that wonderful of her.”

I could hardly believe it. Lady Jakobovits had taken the trouble, as soon as she had arrived home, to find out my mother’s telephone number and call her straight away to give her pleasure .

That was Lady Jakobovits; thoughtful, considerate, friendly and warm, always looking for ways to make you feel good and to bring joy to people’s lives . She was a true Lady and a tremendous Eishet Chayil.

May her memory be for a blessing.

A HOLOCAUST STORY – The Hidden Synagogue of Theresienstadt

Many stories about the Holocaust are still coming to light and one I heard today, from Mrs Helen Gross, one of the participants in the story, was too amazing for me not to repeat. Only in recent years have most of the facts of the story become known – although there are inevitably still unanswered questions, which may remain forever unanswered.

Helen Gross’ uncle, Asher Berlinger, an extremely  religious man was also a talented artist, craftsman and musician. He was a Chazan in Schweinfurt, Germany, before the Holocaust.

After Kristallnacht Asher and his wife , fearing for their children’s lives,  sent their two daughters on the kinder transport to England . He and his wife were deported to Theresienstadt Ghetto in 1942. Asher continued to teach Torah whilst in the ghetto and he wrote a series of ‘luchot’, calendars, to make sure that everyone knew when the Chagim( Jewish festivals) were, when Shabbat started each week, the week’s parsha and the dates and times of Rosh Chodesh.

Eventually he and his wife suffered the same fate as 88,000 of their brethren and  were transported to Auschwitz and murdered.     Several of his luchot were discovered and donated to Yad Vashem . On the back of some was a self-portrait that he had drawn, showing him davening in a shul (synagogue) which was assumed to be his old shul from before the war.

After the war, the homes in Theresienstadt were returned to their former Czech owners. A Catholic undertaker went back to his home with his family and  many years later in 1997, whilst starting renovations in the kitchen he began to break down a wall . He suddenly realized that what he was revealing was a highly decorated area behind the wall. Being religious he also recognized the Hebrew writing. His priest advised him to leave the room alone to avoid the curse of the Jewish people.

He kept the discovery a secret from the authorities. Occasionally he showed to room to Jewish visitors who came to see the site of the ghetto.

The two Berlinger daughters, meanwhile, grew up as orphans and married, one in England and one in America. A few years ago, Senta, who lived in England, passed away and her sister Rosie came from the USA to bury her sister and sit shiva for her in her house. One of the visitors to the shiva brought with her photos from her recent visit to the Holocaust sites of Europe and Rosie politely glanced at them ……… and there amongst them were photos of the hidden shul in Theresienstadt , which Rosie immediately recognized as the background to her father’s self-portrait on his ‘luchot”.

Straight after the shiva she flew to Europe to see for herself and knew that she was standing in a shul that her father had designed and decorated. But how could she prove it. The portrait at Yad Vashem connected him to the shul but not necessarily as its designer.

But Asher Berlinger wrote in a unique form of calligraphy which he taught to his brother-in-law  who in turn taught it to his daughter, Helen Gross. She was able to reproduce the entire alphabet in the style the pesukim in the shul are written..

Asher Berlinger’s handiwork and undying faith, as portrayed in the beauty of the shul and the pesukim he chose, were officially acknowledged by the authorities and in 2006 the family were invited to a rededication of the shul in the presence of top officials and dignitaries from the Czech Republic, the USA, and Israel.

As Helen Gross explained when telling the story, it is still not known who used this shul and when, as so far no survivors have been found who actually knew of its existence , but who knows….

With so much ‘hashgacha pratis’ Divine providence, involved in the discovery of the shul and its origins, it’s not too much to expect  that someone  be found ,  who actually used the shul, as  place of payer and comfort,  during those terrible years.

INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

 

January 27^th is the date introduced by the United Nations in 2005 for commemorating the  Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis. This day was picked as it is the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, one of the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps.

Nissan 27th  (April -May)  is the date  set  by the Israeli government for  Yom Hashoah veHaGvurah – Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day -  the time of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Tevet 10th  (January)  the Fast commemorating the siege of Jerusalem, is  the day declared by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel as a Memorial Day for victims of the Holocaust and the yahrzeit for those whose real date of death is unknown. It was considered  that a Fast is an appropriate day for commemorating  such a tragedy in our history and nowadays  we don’t have the right to institute new memorials into our calendar.

Are there too many memorial days for the Holocaust?                Should there be one day for everyone?

I don’t think so .

In the UK,an attempt to cancel the commemoration started  soon after the first  International Holocaust Remembrance Day  ( and ironically as a result of the London terrorist bombings by Moslems.) It was argued that commemorating the slaughter of millions of Jews might be offensive to the Moslems.  So far Britain has remained steadfast in keeping International Holocaust and Remembrance Day and in continuing Holocaust  education in British Schools.  

  But how long will it take  until they or  other European  countries bow to Moslem pressure and relegate the Holocaust to just another historical event – if they believe it happened at all.

As long as the date is still recognized, at least some official  commemorations are taking place amongst the non-Jewish population, despite all the  growing Holocaust denial and continuous Israel bashing.

What is important is that the Holocaust should be remembered for what it really was, the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jewish men, women and children in an organized attempt to completely wipe out the Jews of Europe and wherever else the Nazi boot could trample.

What is important is that It should be discussed, written about , memorialized, taught  and studied all over the world, amongst  Jews and non-Jews – no matter what  date they choose.