The memory of the Holocaust will fade if you stay silent

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The Abortionist of AuschwitzJune 26, 2022 | 
by Dr. Yvette Alt
Dr. Gisella Perl was forced to care for tens of thousands of women in the Holocaust.
In May 1944, the Jewish ghetto in the Hungarian town of Sziget was being liquidated with all the surviving Jews being sent to Auschwitz. One of the thousands of terrified Jews forced into an overcrowded cattle car bound for Auschwitz was Dr. Gisella Perl, a distinguished intellectual who’d grown up there. After studying medicine in Germany, Gisella became one of Europe’s early female doctors, specializing in gynecology, delivering babies and offering medical care to women in Sziget and the surrounding areas.

In Auschwitz, all female doctors in the group were ordered to identify themselves. Gisella recognized the Nazi doctor giving the order. She and her husband had once hosted Dr. Victor Kapezius in their home for dinner in 1943, not realizing he was a member of the SS. Kapezius looked at Gisella with a cold smile before telling her, “You are going to be the camp gynecologist. Don’t worry about instruments… you won’t have any.Your medical kit belongs to me now.”

With that, Gisella was separated from her beloved husband Ephraim and entered the rings of Hell.

Hospital in Auschwitz
Along with four other doctors and four nurses, Gisella was charged with creating a hospital in Auschwitz’s Group C, which was designated for female slave laborers.Gisella had only one knife with which to operate; she had to sharpen it on a stone. Their hospital had no medicine and only the occasional paper bandage. The Nazis insist that it be kept meticulously clean. Each day, Gisella and her colleagues would sweep the floor with their hands. Any evidence of dirt or disarray would result in a beating or death.

Though she was trained as a gynecologist, Gisella found herself busy from dawn till night setting the broken bones of prisoners who’d been beaten by guards, operating on deep lacerations made by Nazi whips which had become infected, and treating prisoners who were sick with typhus, pneumonia, and other diseases.

Gisella was assigned to look after a contingent of 32,000 women who were kept alive for slave labor in Auschwitz.

“Those first weeks at Auschwitz were made unbearably miserable by the various skin eruptions caused by the weather, exposure, deficient food, and lack of water for drinking and washing,” Gisella wrote. “The lice plague made these eruptions more serious. We scratched in our sleep even if we were strong enough to refrain from it while awake and the sores became infected until our whole body was covered with deep, crater-like wounds.”

Gisella was assigned to look after a contingent of 32,000 women who were kept alive for slave labor in Auschwitz. Six months later she witnessed the horrific “liquidation” of this group, to make way for a batch of new slave laborers. The months that these women were kept alive were filled with unbearable misery.

Gisella wrote of one Tisha B’Av in Auschwitz, the Jewish day of mourning, when she and the other prisoners were “ordered to sit in the ashes, which, we were repeatedly told, were the last remnants of our parents, husbands, children. They were going to give us a concert.” (Like much else in Auschwitz, this concert was designed to demoralize the prisoners. Mourning on Tisha B’Av includes refraining from listening to live music.)

“From then on until late at night they (the Auschwitz prisoners orchestra) played gaudy songs…while the four crematories turned living flesh into gray ashes. Ten thousand persons were burned in each of the furnaces that day. The unceasingly dancing flames were brighter and hotter than the sun; heavy smoke filled our nostrils, and thick, black soot settled over the motionless multitude while the expressionless faces of the thirty-two thousand defeated women, whose sorrow was far beyond the comfort of tears, registered nothing but blank despair.”

Gisella Perl
Surrounded by death, Gisella frequently saw women and young children being brutally murdered, often thrown alive into the raging crematoria. She was determined to give her fellow prisoners a way to feel human again, even if only for a few moments. She began a ritual that soon spread throughout the barracks of Auschwitz. Each night in the barracks, locked in the pitch dark, she would whisper to the women nearest her, fantasizing about the perfect day. Together they would describe how they “went shopping”, “visited a museum”, or “enjoyed a delicious meal” that day. For a few moments, they remembered what life outside of Auschwitz could be.

Pregnant Women in Auschwitz
As the Jewish communities of Hungary were sent to Auschwitz during the Spring and Summer of 1944, women who were pregnant were ordered to make themselves known to the authorities. They were taken to a different camp where, the Nazis told them, they would receive double bread rations. “Group after group of pregnant women left Camp C,” Gisella wrote. “Even I was naive enough, at that time, to believe the Germans, until one day I happened to have an errand near the crematories and saw with my own eyes what was done to these women… They were beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by the hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German boots. Then, when they had collapsed, they were thrown into the crematory – alive.”

Knowing the brutal fate that awaited pregnant Jews there, she would do all she could to make sure no prisoner was pregnant in Auschwitz.

Gisella could scarcely believe what she’d seen. She ran back to the barracks and urgently told her fellow prisoners the horror she’d witnessed. “Never again was anyone to betray their condition,” she urged them. Gisella made a solemn vow to herself: knowing the brutal fate that awaited pregnant Jews there, she would do all she could to make sure no prisoner was pregnant in Auschwitz.

Abortion in Judaism is mandated when it will save the life of an expectant mother. “It was up to me to save the life of the mothers, if there was no other way, than by destroying the life of their unborn children,” Gisella recalled in her memoir I Was A Doctor in Auschwitz, published in 1948. With no disinfectant or water - and in absolute secret - Gisella performed abortions on pregnant prisoners, allowing them to live for at least a little more.

Risking Her Life to Help Others
Being a doctor allowed Gisella to help prisoners in small ways.When Nazis demanded blood samples from hospital patients to see if they harbored infectious diseases, knowing that patients with typhus and other illnesses would be killed, Gisella and her fellow doctors sent samples of their own blood instead. When the SS came to send the sickest patients to the crematoria, Gisella could sometimes smuggle patients out of the building, sending them back to their barracks.



“Without Dr. Perl’s medical knowledge and willingness to risk her life by helping us, it would be impossible to know what would have happened to me and other female prisoners… She was the doctor of the Jews,” explained one survivor, identified only as “Ms. B”, in testimony at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Many inmates called her “Gisi Doctor,” an endearment that reflected their deep love and admiration.

Gisella was forced to work closely with Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz physician who performed experiments and vivisections on prisoners.

Gisella was forced to work closely with Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz physician who performed experiments and vivisections on prisoners. His demands were capricious. In one particularly cruel ploy, Dr. Mengele told Gisella that from now on, Jewish women were allowed to have children in Auschwitz. “The children, of course, had to be taken to the crematory by me, personally,” Gisella later wrote, “but the women would be allowed to live. I was jubilant. Women, who delivered in our so-called hospital, in its clean floor, with the help of a few primitive instruments that had been given me to, had a better chance to come out of this death camp not only alive but in a condition to have other children – later.”

There were 292 pregnant women in Gisella’s hospital some time later when Dr. Mengele returned, brandishing a whip and a gun. He had all the patients loaded onto a single truck and driven to the crematoria, where they were thrown alive into the flames.

Delivering a Baby in Bergen Belsen
After serving seven months in Auschwitz, Gisella was transferred to a Nazi labor camp near Hamburg to serve in the hospital there. At the beginning of March 1945, she was transferred to Bergen Belsen. “Bergen Belsen can never be described,” she wrote, “because every language lacks the suitable words to depict its horrors… There were no crematories to burn the bodies. They were left where they had died until someone who had enough strength left to move dragged them out and threw them on the dung heap. Everybody had typhus, everybody was covered with lice, eaten alive by rats, and there was no food, no water, no medicine. The narrow streets between the blocks were full of skeleton-like men and women who crept around in the dirt, searching for a drop of water, a bite of food, until, utterly exhausted, they sat down beside one of the mountains of corpses to die… I arrived there on March 7, 1945, and the next day I found the bodies of my brother and my twenty-year old sister-in-law among the dead….”

Gisella in happier times
Gisella was put in charge of the “hospital” in Block III, where she tried to comfort the dying.On April 15, 1945, a new patient was brought to the hospital – a young non-Jewish member of the Polish resistance named Marusa. She was pregnant and in labor. As Gisella sat with her, delivering her baby, she heard commotion outside: British troops were liberating Bergen Belsen. After the birth, Marusa began to hemorrhage dangerously. With no medicine, instruments, or even running water, Gisella ran outside and begged the newly arrived British troops for help. Finally, she asked a tall officer if he spoke French. When he said yes, she took him to the hospital. The officer was Brigadier General Glyn Hughes, the first Allied physician to enter Bergen Belsen. Within half an hour he’d supplied key medical items and Gisella was able to save the young mother’s life.

Testifying to Nazi Atrocities
After the Holocaust,Gisella wandered through Germany on foot for 19 days, looking for her family. She learned that her husband and son had been murdered. Her husband Ephraim had been beaten to death by Nazi guards just days before liberation. The whereabouts of her daughter, Gabriella, remained unknown for years. It seems that Gisella entrusted her daughter to the care of a non-Jewish couple during the war, then lost touch with them. When she wrote her memoirs shortly after liberation, Gisella didn’t even mention her daughter: perhaps it was too painful to wonder what had become of her child or perhaps she felt guilty about not having been able to find her.


After the Holocaust, Gisella was resolute: she had to tell the world what occurred. She wrote a heart-rending plea to the US Department of Justice: “I read in the papers of the capture of Dr. Mengele, chief physician at the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) Death Camp. I want to offer my services as material witness against this most perverse mass murderer of the 20th Century… I was a prisoner in Auschwitz, forced to act as medical doctor under his command. In this capacity, I had every opportunity to observe Dr. Mengele at his most bestial. I can testify from personal observation that he was responsible for all the atrocities and that he invented most of the perverse forms in which they were committed.”

Instead of facing justice, Mengele was helped to escape Germany by the Red Cross. He lived openly in Buenos Aires until his death in 1979 in a swimming pool accident.


Gisella lectured tirelessly about her experiences and penned her memoir. She called herself an “Ambassador of the Six Million.” An encounter with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948 changed the trajectory of Gisella’s life. Mrs. Roosevelt had heard something of Gisella’s story and invited her to lunch. Gisella explained that since she kept kosher she couldn’t possibly go to lunch in a restaurant with the First Lady: Mrs. Roosevelt replied that in that case, she would host a kosher lunch. At the meal, Mrs. Roosevelt urged Gisella to return to her practice of medicine, which she had always loved, and to pursue her career once more.

Each time she attended a delivery, she paused to utter a prayer: “God, you owe me a life, a living baby.”

Gisella took this advice and accepted a job in the labor department of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York where she was the only female physician. Later, she opened her own practice dedicated to helping women overcome infertility. Many of her patients were Holocaust survivors she had known in Europe.“I was the poorest doctor on Park Avenue, but I had the greatest practice: all of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen (survivors) were my patients,” she told the New York Times in 1982.

In 1978, while Gisella was lecturing about her experiences, she encountered someone in the audience who told her that her daughter Gabriella was alive and well and had built a new life for herself in Israel.

Gisella moved to Israel to be with her. She worked as a volunteer in obstetrics clinics run by Jerusalem’s Shaare Tzedek Hospital. Each time she attended a delivery, she paused to utter a prayer: “God, you owe me a life, a living baby.”

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https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/auschwitz-victims-briefcase-linked-with-childs-shoe-inscribed-with-a-note/
Auschwitz connects note found in boy’s shoe with father’s briefcase
Extraordinary discovery by researchers establishes connection between case owned by Ludvik Steinberg and a shoe worn by Amos Steinberg, killed in 1944, containing a hidden message
By JENNI FRAZER 
September 30, 2020, 3:55 pm
Case discovered by the Auschwitz museum, linked to a shoe worn by Amos Steinberg, inscribed with a message from his family
 After some extraordinary detective work by the Auschwitz Museum, a briefcase at the memorial has been linked to a child’s shoe which was identified in July as belonging to a little boy called Amos Steinberg. The briefcase, says the Museum, almost certainly belonged to the boy’s father — and he survived the Holocaust. 

Amos Steinberg was born in Prague on June 26 1938. On August 10 1942, Amos, his father Ludvik (or Ludwig) and his mother Ida were first imprisoned in Theresienstadt, and then deported from Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz.
Documents show that mother and son arrived at the concentration camp on October 4 1944 and were almost certainly murdered in a gas chamber on the same day.

But the family was split up at Theresienstadt and Ludvik was apparently sent to Auschwitz on an earlier transport. “We know”, say the Museum, “that he was transferred from Auschwitz to Dachau on October 10 1944. He was liberated in the Kaufering sub-camp”. So six days after his wife and son had been murdered, Ludvik was still being processed in the Nazi system. 

This summer, members of the Steinberg family, who live in Israel, contacted the Museum, and sent additional biographical information and some family photographs.  

Ludvik Steinberg changed his name to Yehuda Shinan and emigrated to Israel in May 1949. He became a teacher and principal of several schools in Israel. He was highly valued and liked by his pupils and teachers who worked with him. He still loved music and worked as a cantor in several synagogues. He also conducted choirs. He died in 1985. His second wife, Chana, whom he had met before the war in Prague, died in 2014. They had six grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

The link between Amos’s shoe and the battered case was not easy to find. The case was already in the Museum collection and documentation showed that at least two men named Ludwig or Ludvik Steinberg were at Auschwitz.  

But barely seen on the case is the number “541”, almost invisible to the naked eye. After infrared technology showed the number, the researchers understood that this was the number under which Amos was registered on the transport list to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. That clue, together with material in the case itself and the date on which the Steinberg family arrived in Auschwitz, has led the Museum to believe that the case did belong to Amos’s father.
Note found inside Amos’s shoe
Credit: Auschwitz Museum
The director of the Auschwitz Museum, Dr Piotr Cywinski, said: “I am deeply grateful to the Steinberg family for the information they have given us and for supplementing our knowledge. With this gesture, objects inextricably linked to Auschwitz lose the anonymity weighing down on them — sometimes unbearable — and acquire a deeper, individual significance. 

Piotr Cywiński (Source: Wikipedia. Author: Pawel Sawicki)
“As an object of great documentary value, the shoe is proof of the suffering of a particular person, and along with thousands of other objects that we preserve at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, evidence of the genocide that took place here”.

The plan now is to move the case with Ludwig Steinberg’s name on it to the main exhibition — and the guides at Auschwitz will be told about the heartbreaking link between it and a child’s shoe.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/prince-charles-hails-survivors-refugees-as-living-heroes-in-yom-hashoah-clip/
Prince Charles honours survivors as ‘living heroes’ during virtual Yom HaShoah
The heir to the throne was among a host of public figures, faith leaders and politicians to pay their respects in the ceremony lived-streamed on Monday
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By MATHILDE FROT
April 20, 2020, 9:14 pm
Prince Charles delivering a video message as part of the ceremonyPrince Charles delivering a video 
See Page for VIDEO
message as part of the ceremonySadiq Khan delivering a pre-recorded Yom HaShoah video messageSadiq Khan delivering a pre-recorded Yom HaShoah video messageBoard of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl at virtual Yom HaShoah ceremonyBoard of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl at virtual Yom HaShoah ceremonyIsraeli president Reuven RivlinIsraeli president Reuven RivlinCountdown presenter Rachel RileyCountdown presenter Rachel RileyFormer Labour MP Luciana BergerFormer Labour MP Luciana BergerIsraeli Ambassador's pre-recorded video message broadcast during the Yom HaShoahIsraeli Ambassador's pre-recorded video message broadcast during the Yom HaShoahChazzan Jonny Turgel, grandson of survivors and educators Gena Turgel MBE and Sam Gardner, performing El Malei RachamimChazzan Jonny Turgel, grandson of survivors and educators Gena Turgel MBE and Sam Gardner, performing El Malei RachamimCommunal candle lightingCommunal candle lightingCommunities secretary Robert JenrickCommunities secretary Robert Jenrick

Prince Charles hailed Holocaust survivors and refugees as “living heroes”, praising them for the contributions they made to British society since the Holocaust.

The royal, a patron of Holocaust Memorial Day and World Jewish Relief, was among a host of public figures, faith leaders and politicians to pay their respects in video messages broadcast during this year’s ceremony, live-streamed on Monday and of which Jewish News was a media partner.

The Prince of Wales paid tribute to survivors and refugees, who went on to become “the leaders and builders of your community, active citizens and dedicated contributors to wider British society.”

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“They have been and continue to be shining examples to the world of how it is possible to triumph over adversity. Whilst they may consider themselves the lucky ones, when so many did not survive, to us they are simply nothing short of living heroes, who were determined not just to survive but to thrive as they built new lives, new homes and new families here in the United Kingdom,” he said.

Over 60,000 people worldwide tuned in to watch the ceremony on YouTube and Facebook Live, which organisers say is expected to reach 200,000 in the coming days.

The annual day for Holocaust remembrance in the community coincided this year with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen Belsen by the British Army.

The ceremony featured videos of six Holocaust survivors and refugees lighting a yellow candle, each in memory of those who were murdered in the Shoah.

They were Kindertransport refugee Sir Eric Reich, Theresienstadt survivor Joanna Millan, child refugee Isca Wittenberg, Auschwitz and Lieberstadt slave labour camp survivor Mindu Hornick, Auschwitz survivor Sam Laskier and Eva Clarke, who was born in Mauthausen concentration camp.

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said the “world needs to heed the call of our Holocaust survivors to ensure that the Shoah will never in any shape or form happen again.”

Rabbi Mirvis discussed rising antisemitism in the past year but struck a positive note as he told the commemoration that “within the dark clouds of the coronavirus, we can see a silver lining… A sense of unity, unity in our communities, on our streets, in our towns, in our cities, national unity and global unity, as all of humankind faces covid-19 like one person with one heart.”


Among those who spoke at the ceremony, included Prince Charles, Sadiq Khan and Marie van der Zyl; President Reuven Rivlin, Rachel Riley and Luciana Berger, Mark Regev, Jonny Turgel and Robert Jenrick
Shoah educator Henry Grunwald, vice-president of Yom HaShoah UK, said Kaddish after a performance of El Malei Rachamim by Chazan Jonny Turgel, grandson to the late Gena Turgel, who met her husband upon liberation from Bergen-Belsen and became known as the “Bride of Belsen.”

“We don’t normally say Kaddish without a minyan, but the Kaddish which we say on Yom HaShoah is of enormous importance to survivors and to the families of survivors,” Grunwald told the livestream before reciting Kaddish.

Neil Martin, who chairs Yom HaShoah UK and produced the event, said: “Holocaust survivors and refugees are of course right now isolating in their homes for their safety, and may well have believed that this year the community won’t be able to remember on Yom HaShoah, in what might sadly be for so many of them the last of the significant anniversaries. It was vital therefore, that despite the obstacles we faced, and sadly the large number of coronavirus deaths hitting the Jewish community, that we still remembered… but virtually, and we were truly honoured that The Prince of Wales agreed to lead the tributes to the brave and inspiring survivors and refugees of our community. It may sound strange, but I’m proud we were able to use Yom HaShoah to bring some hope and togetherness to our community (and beyond) during this difficult time.”

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick extended his “good wishes to the Jewish community on this solemn occasion” and warned it had “never been more important to fight against the world’s oldest form of hatred.”

Israeli president Reuven Rivlin said that “while the coronavirus may have prevented us from marching from Auschwitz Birkenau, nothing can prevent us from passing on the memory of the Shoah to the next generation”, in an apparent reference to the postponed March of the Living.

He added: “As we fight the spread of the coronavirus, we must never forget the survivors among us. Not only must we make sure that all the needs are met, but we must also continue to listen to their story if not, in person, then through technology, as we are doing just now.”

Labour leader Keir Starmer stressed the importance of remembrance and added: “In the Shoah we see the worst of humanity but we also see the best in the hope and resilience of those that survived and rebuilt their lives, allowing the Jewish culture to make a significant contribution, not just here in Britain and across the world.”

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham recounted a conversation he had with Auschwitz survivor Ike Alterman, who shared his testimony “with more than a sprinkling of dry Mancunian wit”.

Alterman, Burnham said, told of “things that are the most horrific anyone can imagine and also the joy of arriving at Windermere at the end of the war, paradise of Windermere, as he described it, and the kindness of the British people who met him there.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan told of his “great regret that we can’t all come together in person today” but urged viewers watching at home to “remember together the 6 million Jewish men, women and children who were killed in the Holocaust, alongside so many other innocent people.”

Remembrance, he added, “feels more important than ever before as we confront the depressing reality of hatred, antisemitism and nativist populism on the rise, once again around the world.”

Board of Deputies president Marie van der Zyl said: “As we gather, we not only remember the victims of the Shoah, we also pay tribute to the remarkable achievements of the survivors and refugees who fled the Nazis, many of whom will be watching from their homes today. We must unite as never before to ensure that these horrors can never be repeated.”
The commemoration also featured a virtual children’s choir recital, a speech from Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev, and readings by Countdown presenter Rachel Riley, Judge Robert Rinder and Game of Thrones actress Laura Pradelska.

Watch the virtual children’s choir’s performance here:
VIDEO 
https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/prince-charles-hails-survivors-refugees-as-living-heroes-in-yom-hashoah-clip/

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/auschwitz-memorial-blasts-false-criticism-of-poland-after-sadiq-khan-statement/
Auschwitz hits back at ‘false’ criticism of Poland after Sadiq Khan claim
The memorial waded into the row over accusations of revisionism levelled against Poland after the London mayor's intervention this week
By MATHILDE FROT
January 31, 2020, 1:55 pm  4
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Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Officials at Auschwitz Memorial have hit back against “historically false” criticism of Poland after a remark by London mayor Sadiq Khan earlier this week.

The memorial waded into the row over accusations of revisionism levelled against Poland, after Khan suggested City Hall’s £300,000 donation to Auschwitz-Birkenau partly sought to address the “rewriting of history.”


Khan flew to Krakow on Monday to mark 75 years since the liberation of the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He expressed concerns to Jewish News on Monday about the Polish government’s depiction of the country’s role in relation to the Nazi genocide.

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The remark drew praise from Michael Newman, chief executive of the Association of Jewish Refugees. “While it is absolutely appropriate to remember that Polish citizens suffered brutally under Nazi occupation, the Mayor of London is correct to highlight the concerns raised by many of the world’s leading Holocaust scholars that the current government of Poland is attempting to stifle discussion of well-documented collaboration by some Poles,” he said.

READ MORE:

Poland’s Ambassador to the UK – Arkady Rzegocki: Yes some Poles collaborated with the Nazis – but this was atypical 
 London mayor denounces Poland over Holocaust revisionism  
But it also sparked criticism from the Polish ambassador to the UK
Arkady Rzegocki, who thanked Khan for the grant. “It is Poland’s duty to remind the world of the real historical events when they are being challenged. It is not historical revisionism – it is historical acknowledgement,” he wrote.


This week’s Jewish News front page
Echoing the diplomat, the memorial’s official Twitter account wrote: “We thank
@SadiqKhan for London’s support of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. However, speaking about any collaboration of any institution of the Polish state (both Government-in-exile & underground structures in occupied territory) with Nazi Germany is historically false.”

The issue of historical revisionism came into sharp focus this month amid an ongoing diplomatic row between Polish and Russian authorities over responsibility for the outbreak of the Second World War.

Polish President Andrzej Duda pulled out of ceremonies at Israel’s Yad Vashem after being told he would not be allowed to speak, unlike his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Sadiq Khan was reached for comment.


https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yes-some-poles-collaborated-with-the-nazis-but-this-was-atypical/
Yes some Poles collaborated with the Nazis – but this was atypical
JAN 31, 2020, 3:47 PM
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Poland's President Andrzej Duda walks along with survivors through the gates of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland, .(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Poland's President Andrzej Duda walks along with survivors through the gates of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland, .(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
“May all get their due” is an important concept rooted in the teachings of such great philosophers as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. It allows for justice to be done upon all. In the aftermath of the commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps now is a good moment to reflect and ensure that we give due to all those involved in the Holocaust – the victims, the survivors, those who helped Jews, and the perpetrators. This way we present the truth about one of the worst tragedies in human history.

The truth is that on 1 September 1939 the Second World War started when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, with the Soviet Union attacking 16 days later. Poland was the war’s first victim, the first country to experience the armed aggression of the two ruthless totalitarian regimes, and the first country that fought to defend free Europe. Under the German occupation Polish citizens were exposed to every kind of atrocity imaginable. The culmination of the wartime crimes was the genocide of six million Jews by the Nazis.

https://israelunwired.com/if-you-think-holocaust-could-never-happen/
If you think the Holocaust could never happen today, watch this and think again…
holocaust-aushawitz
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is a terrifying organization. What they have said and done will shock you. What happened to "Never Again?"

It seems too ridiculous to be true. But it’s not. It’s horrifying what the Students for Justice in Palestine say and do. It has been just over 70 years since the end of the Holocaust. What happened to “Never Again?”

Warning: Horrifying Holocaust Footage
SHOCKING VIDEO
2.21 Min Video Haulocaust Rememberance Day END THE HATRED
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What is SJP?
SJP stands for Students for Justice in Palestine. They paint themselves as a harmless student organization. All 189 chapters around North America must be banned. Because what they really do is try to boycott Israel and falsely accuse the democratic state. They hate Jews. They hate Israel – all they stand for is hatred. Will anyone stop them? The silence is deafening.

SJP and the Holocaust
And what is SJP’s view on the Holocaust? Well, considering that the founder, Hatem Bazian, is a terrorist and all the members hate Jews, their views should not surprise you. The scary part is the extent to which they profess their beliefs. They deny the Holocaust while praising Hitler.

Here are some of their frightening Holocaust related comments:

Amal Tabel – SJP, U of Houston: “Hitler should have killed the Jews when he had the chance that dog.”

Rawan Qaddoura – SJP, McMaster U: “Every time I read about Hitler, I fall in love all over again.”

Heba Asi – SJP, UT Arlington: “I honestly don’t feel that sympathetic about the Holocaust..#SorryNotSorry”

Halima Eid – SJP, San Diego State U: “We need to put Zionists in concentration camps. Now that would be a life experience for them.”

Those are not things peaceful organizations say. Sadly, these students are allowed on campus. They want another genocide, and that is not something to take lightly.

Where is the outcry? Why does the media ignore this terrifying problem that is ever so present on campuses around North America? It makes you wonder. Who will stand up and cry “Never Again?”

 A STORY TO SHAKE THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD
Short AUSCHWITCH FOOTAGE VIDEO

https://israelunwired.com/aoc-just-degraded-every-holocaust-victim/
AOC just degraded every Holocaust victim
By Leah Rosenberg -  June 20, 2019 5955 024
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, just did one of the most disrespectful things any human could do. And she did it casually in a social media video.
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AOC and Her Absurdity
AOC has made many ridiculous comments and videos. She made a video about cauliflower and racism. She is antisemitic and has made terrible comments about Israel.

But now this. Ocasio-Cortez compared US immigration policy to Nazi concentration camps. 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and millions of others were murdered as well. Men, women, and children. They were starved to death. Tortured to death. Beaten to death. Worked to death. And more. Ocasio-Cortez then tried to defend herself by saying she compared the detention facilities on the border to concentration camps, not to death camps. There are no excuses. She invoked the Holocaust. AOC seriously compared what is happening on the US border to Nazi hell.


Immigration Policy
There has to be some type of process at the border. The US cannot allow illegal immigrants in without any sort of system. Murderers will be let in that way. But despite the fact that they are stopped at the border and not just let in freely, they are not starved to death the way the Jews were in the death camps. They are not beaten and tortured. And they are certainly not murdered.

Either AOC is extremely ignorant or extremely antisemitic OR extremely anti-American. Either way, she has no place representing the American people in Congress.


https://hannity.com/media-room/backlash-builds-aoc-pushed-to-publicly-apologize-for-vicious-concentration-camp-remarks/
BACKLASH BUILDS: AOC Pushed to Publicly Apologize for Vicious ‘Concentration Camp’ Remarks
posted by Hannity Staff - 6.18.19
Embattled Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found herself once-again at the center of national controversy this week; facing growing calls for a public apology after she compared US immigration centers with Nazi concentration camps.
“Has she ever been to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland or Dachau in Germany?” asked Fox News’ Bill Hemmer. “’Never Again’ is the phrase that Jews all over the world use to make sure that the extermination between 1939 and 1945 never happens again, and she’s using concentration camps to describe what’s happening on the southern border.”
“How in the world is that acceptable? Does she not owe every Jew on this planet an apology?” he asked.
“I think it’s disgusting to compare what the men and women do out on the border right now to that, and it is definitely a slap in the face to a lot of these individuals that have family members that actually went through concentration camps,” added a member of the National Border Patrol Council.
Ocasio-Cortez made her vicious accusation during a live stream on Instagram Monday night.
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. That’s exactly what they are. They are concentration camps. If that doesn’t bother you… I like, whatever, I want to talk to the people that are concerned with humanity that ‘Never Again’ means something,” said the left-wing lawmaker.
“The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing,” she added.

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 Ocasio-Cortez falsely claims Trump is operating concentration camps, compares the situation to the Holocaust: “The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are. … ‘Never Again’ means something ... we need to do something about it”
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The self-described Democratic Socialist made national headlines last week when she called for a $4,500 raise for Members of Congress and a “cost-of-living adjustment” for all Americans.
“It may be politically convenient and make you look good in the short term… but we should be fighting for pay increases for every American worker. We should be fighting for $15 an hour minimum wage pegged to inflation,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
“Everybody in the United States, with a salary, with a wage gets a cost of living increase. Members of Congress, retail workers, everybody should get a cost of living increase,” she added.

Did Dutch Jews Go Like Lambs to the Gas Chambers?
By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld June 19, 2019
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/did-dutch-jews-go-like-lambs-to-the-gas-chambers/

Dutch Jews Berta Levi and Mauritz Jacobs on their wedding day, standing near the central synagogue in The Hague, the Netherlands, 1942, image via Yad Vashem

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,204, June 19, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Retired Dutch general Toine Beukering – a candidate for chairman of the Senate – said earlier this month that the Jews were “chased like docile lambs into the gas chambers.” This remark, for which he later apologized, once again raised the issue of the huge historical distortion of the Dutch role during WWII. The Dutch, who collaborated massively with the German occupiers, now exaggerate Dutch wartime resistance and underemphasize the disproportionately large role of Jews in it.

Gen. (ret.) Toine Beukering is a freshman Dutch senator from the Forum for Democracy, a new anti-immigration and Eurosceptic party. Because the Forum for Democracy has become the largest party in the Senate, the Senate chair is expected to be chosen from its ranks. Beukering is its candidate.

On June 8, the largest Dutch daily, De Telegraaf, published an interview with Beukering. During the interview, he explained that one of the reasons he joined the Dutch military was that he had read a shelf full of books on the Shoah as a child.  He said, “I’ve always been intrigued by how it was possible that the Jews – such a courageous, militant nation – were chased like docile lambs into the gas chambers.”

The interviewer asked whether he understood that people would be shocked by this remark. Beukering replied that he had participated in the Dutch kippa-wearing day in solidarity with Jews.

Beukering’s words did indeed cause an outcry, and he apologized for them a few days later.

The former general’s words once again illustrate the myth the Dutch have created about their wartime history after their country was liberated by the Allies from German occupation in May 1945.

In May 1940, a few days after the Germans invaded the Netherlands, the Dutch queen, Wilhelmina of Oranje, fled to London without consulting her ministers. Most ministers followed her. They left no instructions to the remaining functionaries about how to act during the occupation. The Dutch army capitulated within a few days.

The Dutch Supreme Court was among the first to betray the Jews. In 1940, the Germans asked all Dutch officials and teachers to sign a declaration that they were not Jewish. Almost all concerned signed, including the non-Jewish members of the Supreme Court. So did almost all employees of the Ministry of Justice. The Germans used this declaration to exclude Jews from official positions. Lodewijk Visser, the Jewish president of the Supreme Court, was dismissed by the Germans in early 1941.

In 2011, a book was published about the Supreme Court during the German occupation. The authors concluded that this court “lost the halo of the highest maintainers of justice in the Netherlands.” When the book was publicly presented, the then President of the Supreme Court, Geert Corstens, said the signing of the declaration in 1940 “went against everything for which the Supreme Court should have stood.”

Dutch Jews, who were forced to wear yellow stars, were increasingly isolated in a nation where the number of collaborators far exceeded the membership of the prewar Dutch National Socialist party (NSB). Most of the population displayed total indifference toward the Jews and their fate.

Members of the Dutch police knew it was their task to arrest only criminals, yet they greatly assisted the Germans in arresting Jews, including babies and the elderly. Jews were transported by Dutch railways to the Westerbork transit camp, where they were guarded by Dutch military police. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews – over 70% of the prewar Jewish population – were sent to their deaths in the German camps in Poland.

In 2018, an exhibition about the Jews and the Royal House of Oranje took place at the Amsterdam Jewish Museum. There one could listen to an audio recording of the few sentences Queen Wilhelmina allocated to her Jewish citizens on Dutch radio in her multiple speeches during the war. They were spoken in an offhand manner. These few impassive lines were contrasted at the exhibition by the recording of her fiery talk against the mobilization of Dutch men to work in Germany.

A small percentage of the Dutch population – very courageous people – helped Jews. Twenty-four thousand Jews went into hiding.  Of these, 16,000 survived.  Many others were betrayed or caught by Dutch volunteer organizations – a civil and a police one – the members of which were rewarded monetarily for every Jew they captured.

In the Dutch resistance, Jews who numbered less than 1.5% of the population before the war played a disproportionately large role. This has been underpublicized by both media and historians. A monument near the Amsterdam municipality testifies to the Jewish resistance.

A few months after the end of the war, Minister of Transport and Energy Steef van Schaik, of the Catholic KVP party, addressed a large gathering of railway employees at The Hague. He said: “With your trains, the unhappy victims were brought to the concentration camps. In your hearts, there was revolution. Nevertheless, you did it. That is to your honor.  It was the duty the Dutch government asked from you because the railways are one of the pillars that support the economic life of the Dutch people. That should not be put at risk.”

Years later, a journalist wrote in an Amsterdam daily that Van Schaik’s words were “the most horrible text ever spoken by a Dutch minister.”

After the war, the Dutch had a psychological need to soften the impact of their rapid defeat in May 1940 at the hands of the Germans. This led to an exaggeration of heroic acts by the Dutch during the occupation, even to the point of invention. In that scenario, there was, at best, a place for the Jews as second-tier victims. The image was that they had not resisted but instead chosen meekly to be deported.

This profoundly false motif was expressed once again in Beukering’s words.

These feelings also played out in the attitude toward Dutch Jews among ministers of the first postwar government. These ministers displayed a coolness and even a disdain for Jews.

When Jewish representatives met the first postwar PM Willem Schermerhorn, a Laborite, he told them he did not consider it his task to see to it that Jews receive their assets back. These assets had been entirely stolen by the Germans.

Many decades later, the management board of the railways and some local police chiefs apologized for the wartime role of their predecessors in the persecution of Dutch Jews. Yet in 2012, then liberal Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten refused to apologize on behalf of the police at large. This is despite the fact that members of the Dutch police were critical to the process of carrying out the genocide of the Jews.

Postwar Dutch governments have continued to maintain the “docile lambs” distortion. The current liberal PM, Mark Rutte, has set the Netherlands apart as the only Western European country to refuse to admit the huge failures of its wartime governments, let alone apologize for them.

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Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ is a Senior Research Associate at the BESA Center and a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He specializes in Israeli–Western European relations, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism, and is the author of The War of a Million Cuts.

How Germans Remember the Holocaust
By Roie Yellinek June 10, 2019
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/germans-holocaust-memory/

Nuremberg Germany 152 Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, photo by David Holt via Flickr CC

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,196, June 10, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The selective details on display at the Documentation Center of the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, a museum in Nuremberg, give an indication of the ways in which the German people choose to remember the Holocaust and the era of Nazi rule.

The Nazi race laws that led to the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust were enacted in the city of Nuremberg. Nuremberg is a quintessentially German city, and the events that took place there have a particularly great significance in German historical memory.

In Nuremberg, Germany has constructed a museum in the north wing of the unfinished remains of Congress Hall, the grounds of the Nazi party’s enormous rallies. This area was bombed by the Allies at the end of WWII.

The museum’s introductory video makes a great effort to connect the past, the present, and the future. It contrasts what exists today in the area of the museum (green grass, sports complexes, a lake) to what was there in the past (a huge construction project designed to glorify the name of Hitler and his party).

What the video does not do is address the consequences of the decisions that were made in that place. It tries to create a comforting, generic image of yet another historical museum, rather than focus on the location’s unique status as the one-time epicenter of the Nazi party.

The video expresses curiosity and even pride at the tremendous size of the Nazi-era construction project, while conveying no indication of guilt or understanding of its historical meaning. The smoothly edited video is accompanied by pleasant music, and the actors who appear in it are all young and “cool.”

The museum itself displays the historical process that began with the birth of Hitler and ended with the Nuremberg trials, which took place after the war ended. The lack of attention paid to the Holocaust is striking, as is the museum’s approach to presenting the Nuremberg Trials.

The language of the museum is of course German, but headphones are provided for visitors so they can understand the captions. Unfortunately, Hebrew is not one of languages provided. The Museum’s mission appears to be more inwardly focused: to give the German public a more comfortable way of looking at the events that occurred in Nuremberg.

The exhibition starts with the background in which Hitler grew up and from which he developed his murderous ideology. It exhibits his book Mein Kampf as a precious and rare object, though it is forbidden for sale or distribution in many parts of the Western world. The museum discusses the consequences of WWI for the Germans, including damage to the national pride and to the country’s financial situation. It appears to be suggesting that Germans were pushed toward war by the harsh realities they faced after WWI, a message that at least partially absolves them of culpability for their subsequent genocidal history.

The museum devotes a large exhibition space to German internal resistance to the Nazi party, which it portrays as a major movement. This phenomenon was in fact marginal and almost entirely ineffective. The museum’s framing tries to paint the war and the Holocaust as events that were almost imposed on the Germans, not as Nazi initiatives that could not have been implemented without the participation and support of the vast majority of the German population.

That participation is mentioned by the museum, but in a manner that appears nostalgic. Nazi festivals were held once a year in Nuremberg, and the museum points out more than once that Hitler himself arrived at the city’s central train station to welcome those who had come to the festivals.

In the entire museum, the Holocaust is mentioned only three times, with one more indirect mention. This downplaying of the Holocaust illustrates the revisionist narrative the museum is trying to promote.

At its first mention (Exhibit 1605), the Holocaust appears with a very short explanation (relative to the rest of the displays) of the systematic extermination of Jewish and non-Jewish people in the concentration camps – a program that was planned, constructed, and operated by Germans. The caption states that slightly more than half the victims were murdered in concentration camps, the rest dying of disease, malnutrition, and other causes. This too sounds like an attempt to reduce the Nazis’ burden of guilt.

The second mention is two blurry images of piles of bodies. The bodies have no faces or names, and the pictures are from a great distance. This reduces the magnitude of the horror depicted, and mitigates the fact that the deaths shown in the images were the result of the unfolding of the terrible things described in earlier sections of the museum.

The third mention of the Holocaust is near the monument to the six million dead (Exhibit 2002), which was built in cooperation with the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and other organizations. The reference on the monument is to “people,” not “Jews,” though the names appearing on it are Jewish and the number is identified exclusively with the Nazi genocide attempt against the Jewish People.

The museum does not attempt to address that carefully planned genocide attempt. It anonymizes the victims, stripping them of any specific ethnic-religious identification. In doing so, the museum planners, on behalf of the official bodies of the Nuremberg municipality and other German officials, are trying to reshape the history of the Nazi atrocities.

The last section of the museum deals with the Nuremberg Trials. It describes them as an important contribution to the development of modern international law, indicating a not insubstantial degree of local pride. The museum’s creators blur the fact that the judges were Americans and others, while the criminals were Germans or affiliated with them.

The museum, those who planned it, and those who took part in its establishment have tried to bestow on themselves and the German people a history that is easier to stomach than the historical reality. The museum’s narrative states that 1) the Germans were led into a situation that almost forced them to start the war; 2) things took place during the Nazi regime that Germans can be proud of; 3) the Germans were also victims, and some of them opposed the regime; and 4) the Holocaust belongs on the margins of historical memory.

The museum is an effort to ease the collective German memory and absolve the German people of the enormous difficulty of living in the shadow of their past. This message makes it easier to justify German hostility toward Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. When Germans support Iran, which seeks to destroy Israel, it is incumbent on us to remind them of their true history, whether they are willing to hear it or not.

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Roie Yellinek is a doctoral student in the department of Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University, a fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum and the China-Med Project, and a freelance journalist.