Holocaust Images

Holocaust Survivor Saved Students Lives

2007-04-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

Professor Liviu Librescu of Virginia Tech, a survivor of the Holocaust as well as an escapee from communist Romania, was killed in the mass-murder of students at the school on Monday. He apparently blockaded the door of the classroom and allowed many students to jump from the windows and save themselves. He paid for this act of herosim with his life.

Ironically, his death came on the Israeli celebration of Holocaust Rememberance Day. He is survived by a son in Tel Aviv.

Link: Holocaust Survivor saved student lives

One Third of Israeli Youth Fear Second Holocaust

2007-04-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

Israel marked the 2007 anniversary of Holocaust Rememberance Day. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke about the neccesity to be ever-vigilant in the face of growing anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Meanwhile, a poll taken on the eve of Holocaust remeberance day suggested that a third of Israeli youth feared a second Holocaust.

Olmert: Not everyone has learned Holocaust lesson

On Sunday evening Israel's leadership gathered at Yad Vashem to mark the commencement of Holocaust Memorial Day.

This year, there is a special emphasis on the few Holocaust survivors still living. Echoing this, is the traditional emphasis of the importance of the Jewish nation to fight against racism, and survive.

Olmert, a keynote speaker at the ceremony, warned of those who "had not yet learned the lesson the Holocaust. Many gather at respectable academic institutions, with hatred of Israel blinding them."

"Most of the world population is aware of the Holocaust and aware of the evil agenda of Holocaust deniers," he said, "they withhold from the Jewish people the right to a sovereign state. They are the first to find an excuse for any atrocity committed against Israeli civilians and the loudest in censuring defensive operations of the State of Israel."

Link: YNET

Getting back to work

2007-03-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

I have not had the time to work on this blog over the past year. I have so many projects going, so many websites and writing projects, it sometimes seems I have no idea how I will ever get everything I want done. I should have much more time, though, in the coming months, to bring this website up to speed, and make some new additions to it. Hopefully, once a major project i am now working on is complete, I will be able to devote more time here.

So be on the lookout, and Never Forget.

Andrew

Never Again

2007-03-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

This is easily the best video I have ever found on You Tube. Although I realise some may not like it, I think that its message is pretty clear, inspiring, and to the point. The music is by a rap group, a genre of music I normally can't stand. However, I can't think of another musical genre that could so succinctly tell so much of the relevant information concerning the Holocaust in the space of a three minute song.

When I realised what they had sampled for the chorus, I was somewhat stunned. The accompanying video is by an Israeli girl.

Link: Never Again

Poland Honors Holocaust Rescuer

2007-03-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

from Yahoo News:

"WARSAW, Poland - A 97-year-old woman credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust was honored by parliament Wednesday at a ceremony during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Link

The Present War in Israel

2006-07-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

anti-Semitic crowd launches virulent anti-Israel protest in Boston.

The current situation in the Middle East has not left me much time or heart to post here recently. Just keeping up with everything that has been written about it is difficult, and I have many other projects that I work on continuously. I do wish to state , however, that I am particularly appalled at the wide-spread fervent anti-Semitism coming from the so-called "progressive" Left. They should keep in mind that Israel, a tiny country surrounded by hostile neighbors, is reacting the only way that it can in the face of a steady onslaught from Hizbollah, and other fanatical Islamic factions. The rhetoric, on the internet alone, has become particularly vile and vicious, and the so-called "anti-war" crowd is, clearly, only opposed to war if it is being waged in defense of a democratic country instead of a theocratic, Islamic dictatorship. This is hypocrisy of the first order.

All decent Americans should feel it is their duty to stand with and for Israel at this critical , crucial time. Remember, my fellow americans: Hezbollah is OUR enemy too, as well as Israel's. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. They are no different than al-Quaida, and to think that Americans in Boston this weekend turned out to protest with signs that read "I support Hezbollah", and "Victory for Hezbollah", is truly shocking and dismaying.

I will be posting new photos of the Holocaust very shortly, as well as penning some short essays on the subject. Until then, keep Israel and her people (and all the innocent people of the war-torn Middle East region) in your prayers.

Sincerely,

Andrew

Students Holocaust History Project Makes International News

2006-05-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

A student project that began by collecting paperclips to memorialize the millions lost during the Nazi genocide against European Jews, has garnered international attention, and inspired a documentary film.

Link

---

Students confront Holocaust

By Erin Elaine Mosely
Montgomery Advertiser

WHITWELL, TENN -- One clip at a time.

That's how students at Whitwell Middle School in Whitwell, Tenn., started collecting paperclips for a project that became an international phenomenon.

Students collected paperclips to represent every Jewish life lost during the Holocaust. The school eventually collected more than 29 million of them. The project evolved into a permanent student-run memorial to Holocaust victims called the Children's Holocaust Memorial.

Filmmakers turned their project into an award-winning documentary.

On Monday, about 80 sixth-graders and adults from Wetumpka Intermediate School traveled to Tennessee to tour the memorial at Whitwell Middle. Students in some sixth-grade classes have been studying the Whitwell student project in their own classrooms.

Journalists Peter Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder Hildebrand secured an authentic German railcar used to transport Jews to Nazi death camps. The car now houses the Holocaust Memorial and 11 million paperclips -- one for every life lost during the Holocaust.

"I think it's really interesting they have some of the (death) camp stuff," said 11-year-old Carter Young.

As the popularity of the Tennessee students' project grew, people began to send personal items in addition to paperclips. Some sent letters, others sent pictures and someone even sent a War World II military medal.

Whitwell teachers Sandra Roberts and David Smith started the project in 1998.

"This project is so powerful," Roberts said. "It has a life of its own. It draws you in every day. Every day I learn something new."

Rebecca Guthrie, 12, took pictures in the railcar as Whitwell eighth-graders Faith Vaughn and Amber Holloway, both 14, gave visitors facts about the memorial and the Holocaust.

"I think it's a great way to remember all the people who died in the Holocaust," Rebecca said. "It was just amazing. It was just a great experience. I think they should do it every year."

The memorial includes the railcar, 18 butterflies for the 18th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, chai -- which means life -- and a monument with two children playing with a butterfly atop a base with a paperclip.

"Sometimes we have survivors come in and they tell us stories of how they escaped the rail car," Faith said. "It's really, really sad. I break down and cry, even though I don't like crying in public."

Tyler Wright, 13, Tevin Hobson, 12, and Mieah Johnson, 12, touched and pored over some of the 11 million paper clips stored in the rail car.

"It was just interesting learning about Jews and Germans," Tyler said. "The train was interesting. It's a real freight car they got from Germany."

Austen Parker, 12, said he was stunned by "the memorial, how many paperclips they got in there and how many people they got in those cattle cars."

Mieah agreed.

"I thought it was neat how many they had in there and how they got a (cattle car) back from Germany and took the time to do that," she said.

Hannah Miller,12, described the memorial as honorable, and Lauren Davis, 11, said Holocaust victims would appreciate something in their honor if they lived to see it.

Aspen Coleman, and Kelsey Blazer, both 12, jotted down their thoughts after looking at pictures of Jewish life during the Holocaust.

Lynn Ritvo, former principal at Wetumpka Intermediate School, organized and planned the trip, and the Jewish Federation donated money toward the trip, said assistant principal Rashawn Causey.

"The major thing is about tolerance and diversity," said Wetumpka Intermediate teacher Jo Ann Wilson. "In Wetumpka, we have the opportunity to see diversity, but maybe not Jewish. They'll look back and go, 'Wow! I realize what they were trying to do.'"

March of the Living

2006-04-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Some 10,000 Jews from all over the world finished making their way from Auschwitz to Birkenau in this year's March of the Living. Ceremonies at Birkenau, led by Nobel laureate Shimon Peres, began at 4 p.m. Israel time (3 p.m. in Poland.)

At the end of the march, participants sang the Hatikva, Israel's national anthem.

Before the march's start, hundreds of youths carrying Israeli flags spent the morning wandering among the wooden barracks and barbed wire of the sprawling Birkenau camp, and visited the museum housed at the smaller Auschwitz camp nearby.

Among those taking part was Diana Katz, a 23-year-old history teacher from Jerusalem, whose grandmother, Lubia Tanenbaum, survived the camp after arriving as a 14-year-old from Hungary.

"I am here with my son to show the evil people in the world that we are here, that we are alive, that we want to live and we want future generations to live," Katz said as she pushed the baby carriage holding her three-month old son, Joseph. "We will not forget, and we have won."

Meanwhile, in Israel, a two-minute siren marked the start of a nationwide day of commemoration for Holocaust victims.

Names were read at Yad Vashem and during the Knesset memorial ceremony "Every Person Has a Name," in the presence of Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other dignitaries.

Holocaust Remembrance Day began Monday evening with a state ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

The hour-long event, which was broadcast live on television and radio, was attended by Olmert, President Moshe Katsav, and dozens of dignitaries and ambassadors from around the world.

The theme of this year's ceremony - coming at a time when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a myth - is "The Human Spirit in the Shadow of Death."

From: Jerusalem Post

"The World Must Not Ignore Calls for the Destruction of the State of Israel"

2006-04-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

The world must not ignore current calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, Israeli President Moshe Katsav said Monday at the opening ceremony for the country's annual memorial day for the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

Without mentioning Iran by name, Katsav said, "I call on the Western world not to stand silently in the face of the nations that are trying to acquire nuclear weapons and preach for the destruction of the state of Israel."

Iran's president has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, and Iran is widely believed to be trying to manufacture atomic bombs.

The ceremony, at the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, included dramatic readings and musical presentations.

In a brief address, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would always carry the memory of the murder of millions of Jews.

Speaking from a podium, an honor guard of Israeli soldiers standing at parade rest next to him, Olmert said, "Israel has the ability to defend itself, but it calls on the civilized world to guard the light and the liberty, to defend the values of justice and the dignity of man."

Though six decades have passed, the Holocaust continues to be a central part of Israel's culture. About 280,000 survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel today, according to researchers.

On Tuesday, air raid sirens will sound midmorning, signaling a two-minute period of silence in memory of the victims, when cars stop on the streets and drivers stand respectfully next to them. At the Israeli parliament and other locations around the country, volunteers will read the names of the victims, a way of dealing with the concept of the overwhelming number of people who were put to death.

Restaurants, movie theaters and other places of entertainment were to be closed throughout the day.

The ceremony Monday evening began with lowering the Israeli flag to half staff in a sign of mourning.

Hundreds of people sat quietly in the outdoor plaza of Yad Vashem on a cool, windy Jerusalem night, groups of soldiers in uniform next to Holocaust survivors and their families, and a few tourists listening to translations of the Hebrew proceedings on earphone receivers.

Six Holocaust survivors briefly told their stories and lit ceremonial torches in memory of the victims.

"In another generation, no survivors will be left as witnesses to the horror of the Holocaust, only the timeless records," Katsav said, appealing for renewed efforts to ensure the memory. "We must see to it that every generation feels that it was rescued from the fires of the Holocaust," he said, paraphrasing a central concept of the just-finished Jewish holiday of Passover, which marks the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Yom Ha Shoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

2006-04-23T00:39:00.000-07:00

The Twenty-fifth of April marks Yom Ha Shoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. I originally started this website out of increasing frustration with individuals that I was encountering online, who repeatedly questioned the historical accuracy of the murder of more than 12 million individuals (six milion Jews, and six million Gypsies, homosexuals, and political dissidents) by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime during the World War 2 Era. My initial thought was that I could simply gather all the most incriminating images together in one place, and offer a link that Holocaust-deniers could then be directed to, as a refutation of their claims.

My thoughts on the use of this website have not changed--nor have my plans. As a writer and teacher, I am continually beseiged by various projects, and though I have not had time recently to work much in the direction I have wanted with this website (I do not consider it, in the typical sense, a "blog"), I am planning on continuing to archive as many images as I can scan from as many sources as I can find; as well as continuing to write articles, from time to time.

Although I find myself at a cultural loss to fully-understand the implications of the Holocaust on the one ethnic group most obviously affected by the horrors perpetrated during those six years of murder, I have found in my study of the subject (no matter how informal) that the horror of the Holocaust, to quote Roberto Bennigni, "...belongs to the world." No living human being can hope to appreciate what it means to be a citizen of this new century without first coming to terms with the darkest chapter of the last, and though many will try to deny this assertion, or lessen the impact or import on this singular act of genocide, it will continue to resonate as one of the most important and universal human events in all of recorded history.

Since there are not words that I can adequately use to convey in furtherance of Yom HaShoah, I believe that to write much more at this time would be straining prudence and tact. Suffice it to say, in light of the decades of murder and the genocides that have been allowed to occur in the wake of this awesome human tragedy, the only sentiments I can muster to truly convey my own position, and the position of what, I believe, every moral, sentient human being walking the face of the earth should be, are: NEVER AGAIN.

"...The wrongs we seek to condemn and punish have been so cultivated, so malignant and so devestating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."--Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal

(Below I have posted the lyrics to Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, or Jerusalem of Gold , with a few photos that, I , personally, had not yet seen. In future, once my ability to scan photos is restored, this blog will be updated more regularly. If you have never heard this song, I think that it must count as one of the most beautiful, and moving pieces of music ever written.)

Verse 1

Avir harim tsalul k'yayin
Vereiyach oranim
Nissah beru'ach ha'arbayim
Im kol pa'amonim.

U'vtardemat ilan va'even
Shvuyah bachalomah
Ha'ir asher badad yoshevet
Uvelibah - chomah. Verse 1

The mountain air is clear as water
The scent of pines around
Is carried on the breeze of twilight,
And tinkling bells resound.

The trees and stones there softly slumber,
A dream enfolds them all.
So solitary lies the city,
And at its heart -- a wall.

The gates of Auschwitz, as photographed in 1981.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Jews captured after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are herded away for deportation.

Verse 2

Chazarnu el borot hamayim
Lashuk velakikar
Shofar koreh behar habayit
ba'ir ha'atikah.

Uvme'arot asher baselah
Alfei shmashot zorchot
Nashuv nered el Yam Hemalach
B'derech Yericho
Verse 2

The wells are filled again with water,
The square with joyous crowd,
On the Temple Mount within the City,
The shofar rings out loud.

Within the caverns in the mountains
A thousand suns will glow,
We'll take the Dead Sea road together,
That runs through Jericho.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Female corpses piled in Block 11; Auschwitz, 1945.

Verse 3

Ach bevo'i hayom lashir lach
Velach likshor k'tarim
Katonti mitse'ir bana'ich
Ume achron ham'shorerim.

Ki shmech tsorev et hasfatayim
Keneshikat saraf
Im eshkachech Yerushalayim
Asher kulah zahav. Verse 3

But as I sing to you, my city,
And you with crowns adorn,
I am the least of all your children,
Of all the poets born.

Sorting the shoes of the victims.

Your name will scorch my lips for ever,
Like a seraph's kiss, I'm told,
If I forget thee, golden city,
Jerusalem of gold.

Chorus:
Yerushalayim shel zahav
Veshel nechoshet veshel or
Halo lechol shirayich Ani kinor.
x2 Chorus:
Oh, Jerusalem of gold,
and of light and of bronze,
I am the lute for all your songs.
x2

Survivors at Mathausen Concentration Camp counting the dead after liberation--1945.

American soldiers force Hitler Youth members to examine death train with corpses.

Examining corpses at Dachau Concentration Camp.

THE IMAGES AND INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS WEBSITE GIVE TESTAMENT TO THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN HATE, AND THE END RESULT OF MORAL INDIFFERENCE. THAT THE ACTIONS AND EVENTS DOCUMENTED IN THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT SIMPLY THE REMINDERS OF THE BARBARIC ACTIONS THAT WERE PERPETRATED BY A MURDEROUS REGIME OF SIX DECADES AGO, BUT HAVE OCCURED AND CONTINUE IN PLACES SUCH AS CAMBODIA, KOSOVO, AND DARFUR, IS A REMINDER THAT WE AS HUMAN BEINGS MUST BE EVER-VIGILANT IN THE FACE OF RACISM AND ETHNIC INTOLERANCE. PERHAPS, ONE DAY, WE WILL BE ABLE TO TRULY SAY, "NEVER AGAIN".

Anne Frank

2006-03-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

Opposite:
Anne Frank, age 13, at the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."--Anne Frank

I have recently seen the film version of Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl starring Ben Kingsley and Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and have found it to be one of the most profoundly moving, and saddening films I have ever seen.
The film, which is in color, begins in a very amiable way, presenting Anne Frank as any other young girl, enjoying life and being young. She is also very talented, and full of a richness of character that is at once endearing and sympathetic.
That this film is well-done goes without saying, but the final forty-five minutes of the movie are so intensely difficult to watch that I would not relish seeing the movie twice.

Otto Frank's office at 263 Prinsengracht, where the Frank family went into hiding in the beggining of July 1942. Of the eightpeople who were in hiding here for two years, only Otto Frank survived after discovery and arrest by the Gestapo.

We are witness to the final disintegration of a broken child, as she is starved, beaten, treated with a coldness and hateful contempt she could scarcely have ever been use to, and dehumanized in a way that is pitiful and shocking in the same measure. One by one, the niceities that were presented in the first part of the film are stripped away until, finally, we are left with a starving, filthy little girl dying of typhus amid the hell-on-earth that had been set up to annihilate a population of humanity that had been deemed "inferior" by the Third Reich of Adolph Hitler; who despite being in the final throes of losing the war, proceeded with a hellish fury in their plan to exterminate the remaining Jews in occupied Europe.
The actress who portrayed Anne Frank, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, was the very picture of the authoress, and her haggard, terminal visage in the last part of the film is nearly reminiscent of Falconetti in Karl Theodor Drayer's silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Anne Frank with her childhood friends, 1937. Anne is second from left.

Although it seems unlikely that any person alive could not be, dimly, aware of the story of Anne Frank, it essentially involves the two-years spent in hiding of the Frank family in occupied Amsterdam, Holland, as well as some of their close associates. The family was kept in an unoccupied building in the back of Mr. Otto Frank's manufacturing business, and Anne chronicled those years in a now-famous diary that was discovered and published after the war.

The Frank family, as well as the Van Pels family, and another man, were betrayed to the Gestapo by an unknown informant, and sent to Thierisenstadt Transit Camp. From their, they are sent by cattle cart to Auschwitz. The girls, Margot and Anne Frank, were later sent to the typhus-infested camp at Bergen-Belsen, where living conditions were deplorable and inhumane. Their final months are recorded in heartbreaking testimony by friends and witnesses that knew them during those final days, and preserved in the book The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by documentary filmaker Willy Linder. Anne Frank died sometime in March of 1945, presumably of starvation and typhus, within a day or so of her sister Margot.

She was just fifteen years old.

Of the original occupants of the attic hiding place, only Otto Frank survived, having lost his entire family to the atrocity of the Nazi program. Miep Gies, a Dutch friend of the family, had carefully preserved Anne's diary, a record of the family's two years in hiding, and Mr. Frank worked to have it published.
To this date,it has been translated into sixty-seven languages, and is the most widely-read nonfiction book of all time, after The Holy Bible. The attic hiding-place, behind Otto Frank's business, has been transformed into the Anne Frank House, and has attracted tourists from around the world.
The most moving scene of this new film of Anne Frank is after the death of her sister, when Anne while holding the body of her beloved sister, seemingly looks to the sky, perhaps looking for a sign of God in the middle of this unrelenting torment. We see the sky move past her face.
The viewer is spared the death of Anne, and the film ends. I was left only with the thought that, after this point in the story, she belonged to history, having impacted it in a way few other young women her age had ever managed to do.
And, also, that no one could hurt her now, anymore...

"...But because we know that Anne did not survive, that this life of enormous potential was snuffed out in the Holocaust, the Diary has a poignancy that is at once unbearable and transfiguring. Through this attractive young woman, the Holocaust is made real: Anne Frank has become for our time the emblem of lost possibility."--From The World Must Know by Michael Berenbaum, Ph.D.

Note: We have had some computer difficulties this evening, and some of the images and material for this particular post are not yet here. We will add this in the immediate future.

Holocaust History Project Arson

2006-03-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

Trial By Fire: Holocaust History Project Won't Be Silenced
Website:Click for link.
In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation.

It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months, the THHP website has been under an unprecedented Distributed Denial of Service attack. This cyber attack began on September 11, 2004, and is being carried out by a specially modified version of the MyDoom computer worm, programmed to target the THHP web server. External link.

Harry Mazal, the Director of THHP said, "We have been able to defend our work against these cyber attackers. They tried, but couldn't shut us down. We have strong indications that this arson is the next step in a series of attacks against our educational and scholarly work. Although the fire caused significant damage to our offices, there is no way we will be silenced. Our web site has not been affected, and our work will continue."

While an arson attack such as this cannot be specifically anticipated, THHP has long ago taken steps to minimize the impact of any attacks, physical or virtual. Several mirror sites ensure that even as serious an attack as occurred Monday morning will be unsuccessful in forcing THHP to go offline.

Background:
THHP is one of the largest repositories of information relating to the Holocaust on the Web. For the last ten years, an international staff of volunteers has worked tirelessly to make information on the Holocaust, and on those who would deny it, easily accessible to students, scholars, and anyone who has an interest in the truth.

Among the material on the site are essays about various events and people, scientific and legal analyses, original Nazi documents, expert witness testimony, transcripts of many of the Nuremberg trials, and the complete texts of two seminal works, Jean-Claude Pressac's "Auschwitz" and Robert Jay Lifton's "The Nazi Doctors." In addition, THHP volunteers personally answer emails from thousands of students each year who are looking for information to further their studies.

The site has registered more than 50 million hits in a year. "Traffic to our site increases every year," said Mr. Mazal, "we intend to keep adding new content to the site. Right now we are preparing the Belsen trial transcripts, and the transcript of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Israel."

Media questions should be addressed to:
Sara Salzman, 303-617-9412, media@holocaust-history.org

William Herskovic Dead

2006-03-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

William Herskovic, who escaped from Auschwitz and helped inspire Belgium's resistance to the Nazis during World War II, has died at the age of 91.

Herskovic died Friday at his Encino home after a lengthy battle with cancer, said his daughter, Patricia Herskovic.

Three months after being sent from Belgium to Auschwitz, Herskovic escaped by cutting through a chain-link fence with two other prisoners using a pair of wire cutters he had hidden. It was the first night of Hanukkah in 1942.

The three hopped a train to Breslau, Germany, but a local rabbi threw them out when they tried to tell him about the horrors at Auschwitz.
For the next three weeks, they trekked across Nazi-occupied Europe by bus and train, financing their journey with proceeds from a 3-carat diamond Herskovic had embedded in the heel of his shoe.

In his prewar home of Antwerp, Belgium, Herskovic delivered one of the earliest firsthand accounts of the atrocities of the Holocaust.

The resistance swiftly mobilized, placing bricks on railroad tracks to stop a train packed with hundreds of Jews bound for the camps. About 250 prisoners escaped.

"His survival saved hundreds," the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said in a tribute.

Before being sent to Auschwitz, Herskovic operated a photography studio in Antwerp. He returned to photography for at least a decade after the war, but no longer wanted to be an artist.

"The things he saw — his artist's soul was pretty tromped on," Patricia Herskovic said.

In Los Angeles, he bought Bel Air Camera in Westwood, which his family still owns.

Herskovic is survived by three daughters, two brothers, four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.--From Yahoo News.

Krystalnacht and Ghetto Images (continued)

2006-03-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

The Number 2 entryway to the Warsaw ghetto, on Leszno Street. The sign in German and Polish reads: "Plague-infected area; only through traffic allowed".

A man collapses in the street from hunger and exhaustion.

A young boy pulls a death cart behind him.

A mass grave in the Warsaw Ghetto.

A woman peddles crisply-starched Star of David armbands. The penalty for wearing one that was dirty or wrinkled was a severe beating; for someone caught without an armband, the penalty was death.

Two men prepare to make the daily rounds of the ghetto, pulling the undertaker's cart behind them. There are no horses allowed in the ghetto.

A woman vendor sells food behind a wire screen. She is thusly protected from starving people who would be tempted to snatch the food from her table.

The ghetto marketplace. Most people sold personal possessions for food.

Krystalnacht and Ghetto Images

2006-03-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

These women stand before the remains of a Jewish store. The windows have been smashed during the Nazi riot which has become known as "Krystalnacht":The Night of Broken Glass.
In 1938, using the pretence of revenge for the assassination of a minor German foreign minister in Paris, Nazi SA Stormtroopers were ecouraged to begin street violence against Jewish shops, synagogues, and institutions. In all, 200 synagogues were burned, homes were destroyed with axes and sledgehammers, people were thrown from windows into the street, kicked to death, beaten with fists and truncheons, stabbed, and shot. Torah scrolls, and Jewish works of history and philosophy were burned. The violence left 100 dead, and it was also at this time that nearly 1 in every ten of the Jews left in the German Reich were rounded up for detention in concentration camps such as Dachau. Krystalnacht occured on the night of November 9th.

Remains of a synagogue destroyed during Nazi Anti-Semitic riots, known as "Krystalnacht".

Despair in the Warsaw Ghetto
The following images were taken by German Werhmact Seargent Heinrich Jost, on an unauthorized visit to the Warsaw Ghetto, a tiny walled-in area which housed an estimated one third of the population of Warsaw (nearly half a million Jews), as well as Jews from other occupied locales. What he encountered there stunned him, making him to remark in later life, "Good God, what sort of a world is this?"
Disease, brought on by crowded and unsanitary living conditions, as well as starvation and the continued threat of violence from the Nazis, claimed nearly 16,000 lives in the summer of 1941 alone.
The following images document Heinrich Jost's tour of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Two children on the street, one dead from starvation.

Child lying dead in the street. Warsaw Ghetto.

A woman dies, begging on the street.

Too weak to walk, a child and it's mother are carried in a"rikshaw" device.

A soup kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto. This woman eats a thin broth made from hay.This meagre meal was offered once a day, and fed an estimated 100,000 people.

Some Quotes

2006-03-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

Nazi Stormtrooper holds automatic weapon on a young Polish child. Amazingly, this boy survived the war and went on to become a successful London businessman.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people's lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.
Aharon Appelfeld

In Italy, the country where fascism was born, we have a particular relation with the Holocaust, but as a turning point in history it belongs to everybody in the world. It is a part of humanity.
Roberto Benigni

No one yet knows what awaits the Jews in the twenty-first century, but we must make every effort to ensure that it is better than what befell them in the twentieth, the century of the Holocaust.
Benjamin Netanyahu

Standing punishment--Dachau concentration camp

The United Nations was founded in the aftermath of World War II, just as the world was beginning to learn the full horrors of history's worst genocide, the Holocaust that consumed 6 million Jews and 3 million others in Europe.
Linda Chavez

Anti-Semitic Nazi Propaganda poster. It reads:"Recognize the true enemy with the yellow star."

The radio even weren't allowed to say there was a Holocaust and people were being killed right, left and center in these terrible camps.
Patrick Macnee

Shot while trying to escape. Dachau.

Out of the ashes of a Holocaust that seared the flesh of the nation and burned out of its midst one in every three, from the trash heap of history, arose the Third Jewish Commonwealth.
Meir Kahane

Arrival at train station of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Those fit enough were seperated for slave labor. Those deemed of no use or value were sent to the gas chambers.

As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust.
Bob Beauprez

This entire family went to the gas chamber.

Auschwitz, 1944. Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load-little children. Babies! . Around us, everyone a weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves .... Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp .... Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent sky.
From Night
By Eli Wiesel

An American soldier surveys a scene of death and horror after the liberation of Dachau concentration camp.

Slave labor--Dachau concentration camp (click to enlarge)

Mass Executions and Human Experimentation Images

2006-03-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

Some examples of mass executions by Nazis
Mass execution of Jewish prisoners by Einsatzgruppen Murder Squad

Mass pile of concentration camp victims

Mass execution of Jewish prisoners by Einsatzgruppen Murder Squad

Mass execution of Jews in Poland by Einsatzgruppen Murder Squad

"The Valley of Dried Bones"

Some examples of human medical experimentation

human medical experimentation victims--Auschwitz

Jewish victim of bizarre medical experiment--Auschwitz

Children subjected to medical experimentation by Nazis

Nazi human medical experiments

Bales of human hair bound for shipment to Germany, taken from victims at Auschwitz concentration camp.

Introduction

2006-03-01T18:51:00.000-08:00

I have decided to use this blog space as a place to post images and information gathered about the Jewish Holocaust. I have become disturbed recently by the sheer audacity of a number of people running around the internet claiming that the attempted extermination of six million Jewish human beings during the World War 2 Era never actually happened. I feel that everyone has a responsibility to protect the memory of those men, women, and children who were brutally murdered by Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime. Although I understand this may seem like an atypical use of a "blog", understand that I am not a professional "web designer", and this seemed like the easiest alternative. I am simply a concerned human being, who wishes to do everything in his limited power to help the fight against evil, and intolerance. This site will be, by no means, a complete historical resource.

Jewish victims at Babi Yar pass corpse in the street.

Note: This page will be a work in progress, so there may not be much here for a few days. Also: some pictures may contain graphic violence. They are placed here in a historical context. It is important that all of our future generations learn about the capacity for man to commit barbaric evil, and why we must do everything in our power to ensure that this same situation will never happen again.

Nazi victims--Buchenwald.

"When I came to power, I did not want the concentration camps to become old age pensioners homes, but instruments of terror." - Adolf Hitler

Nazis burning the bodies of their victims.

An American soldier stands over the graves of murdered children, dug for them by the citizens of the nearby town of Nordhausen.

A Prayer of the Holocaust
Father, Adonai, Creator,
who set the round course of the world,
birth, death and disease-

Father, who caused veins, brains, and bones to grow,
who fashioned us air that we might breathe and sing-

Remember that we are incomplete
and inconsolable, our vision clouded by ashes.

Remember the chimneys, the ingenious habitations of death
where part of Israel's body drifted as smoke through the air.

Remember the mutilated music of their lives.

We lament infields of loneliness
for six million of our number torn away.

Remember them.

Child prisoners at Auschwitz concentration camp

There are some who have no memorial.
They are perished as though they had never been.

Forget them not.

Remember the landscape of screams
engraved at entrance gates to death.

Remember the unborn dreams.

Remember the terror of children, whose tears were burned
Remember the agony of parents, whose blessings were consumed

Remember the prayers of the dying,
the shame and the suffering of the innocent.

Remember. We have not forgotten You
though all this has befallen us.

Remember the God-forsaken millions in a silent world;
their loneliness was matched only by Yours.

Who is like You, 0 Lord, among the silent,
remaining silent through the suffering of His children?

Are You not God, 0 Lord, that we may hope in You?
Renew the light of Your creation, which has been dimmed.

Renew in Your creatures Your image, which has been desecrated

Restore the covenant, which Your people have maintained

Remember the hopes of the slain
by sending redemption to Your shattered world.

Jewish victims of Nazi concentration camp

In spite of everything which strangles hope,
help us to continue the sustaining song of their lives.

We know that a time will come when there will be no strong and no weak, no hunters and no hunted, no oppressors and no oppressed, no slayers and no slain, no masters and no servants, no rich and no poor.

Are our enemies mightier than we?
Torah is stronger than their might,
and our dream is greater than their night.

We know that this world will be saved from evil.

Should this not be true, may we know nothing further,
as nothing will be worth knowing.

For we know how difficult, how dangerous, how piteous it is to be a human being. And we know how grand, how glorious it is to be a human being.

When we recall the pain of our past, we also must recall its splendor, the foundation with which our lives began, and our debt to all those of blessed memory who have come before.

Their lives and their teachings sustain us. As surely as something in all of us died with them, the merit of their lives stands at our side today.

Because of the strength and the beauty and the piety of their lives, because of our hope for the future which they have planted within us we say Yes to creation and we say Yes to our Creator and to His eternity and holiness.

We know that a time will come ...

Adapted from Soma Morgenstern (1890-1976),
Galicia and the United States, The Third Pillar