History has a way of showing us how deeply flawed we can be. It also shows us that true evil does exist. It's important that remember those who suffered, their pain, their loss, their lives, remember them, and work to overcome the hate and intolerance they faced. I did not lose family to the concentration camps, but to the air raids over England. Three-year-old Alfred "Alfie" Barrett, always asked his grandfather for a puff on his pipe, not that he got one, he did get his very own little wooden pipe, which now sits in my mother's cabinet. His mother Aunty Beatrice, sister to my great-grandmother, was only 30 when the bomb fell, killing her and little Alfie.
In just 4 years 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. The United Nations declared January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2005, stating in their declaration:
"Reaffirming that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one-third of the Jewish people along with countless members of other minorities will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism, and prejudice,
1. Resolves that the United Nations will designate 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust;
2. Urges Member States to develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help prevent future acts of genocide, and in this context commends the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research;
3. Rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or part;
4. Commends those States which have actively engaged in preserving those sites that served as Nazi death camps, concentration camps, forced labor camps, and prisons during the Holocaust;
5. Condemns without reserve all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment, or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur;
6. Requests the Secretary-General to establish a program of outreach on the subject of the “Holocaust and the United Nations” as well as measures to mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help prevent future acts of genocide, to report to the General Assembly on the establishment of this program within six months from the date of the adoption of the present resolution and to report thereafter on the implementation of the programme at its sixty-third session" -https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/pdf-drupal/en/remembrance/un-declaration.pdf
"A story of courage in the face of evil. The tense drama of Suzanne Spaak risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz. This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust. Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris, in the late 1930s, her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne, and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups "kidnapped" hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations"-- Provided by publisher
"Esther Safran Foer grew up in a family where history was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust was always felt but never discussed. So when Esther's mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation--that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust--Esther resolves to find the truth. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds not only reshapes her identity but gives her the long-denied opportunity to mourn the all-but-forgotten dead"-- Provided by publisher.
"Helen Fremont's bestselling memoir, After Long Silence, published in 1991 and still very much in print, vividly recounts her discovery in adulthood that her parents were not Catholics, as she thought (having herself has been raised in that faith), but Jewish Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In her frank, moving, and often surprisingly funny new memoir, Fremont delves even deeper into the family dynamic that produced such a startling devotion to secret-keeping. She begins her story with the discovery that she has been disinherited in her mother's will, her existence as a member of the family erased, and she writes with unflinching candor about growing up in a household whose members were devoted to hiding the truth. The younger and infinitely more pliant of two sisters, she was affected from early childhood by her family's obsessive focus on the unsteady mental health of her older sister, Lara, and by their alternating bouts of pushing away and demanding loyalty from her, all in service to supporting deep-seated family myths"-- Provided by publisher.
"Dita Kraus grew up in Prague in an intellectual, middle-class Jewish family. She went to school, played with her friends, and never thought of herself as being different--until the advent of the Holocaust. Torn from her home, Dita was sent to Auschwitz with her family. From her time in the children's block of Auschwitz to her liberation from the camps and on into her adulthood, Dita's powerful memoir sheds light on an incredible life--one that is delayed no longer."-- Publisher marketing.
In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was seized by the Nazis. Along with his teenage son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany. There began an unimaginable ordeal that saw the pair beaten, starved, and forced to build the very concentration camp they were held in. When Gustav was set to be transferred to Auschwitz--a certain death sentence--Fritz refused to leave his side. Throughout the horrors they witnessed and the suffering they endured, there was one constant that kept them alive: the love between father and son.
An award-winning, internationally bestselling Holocaust memoir in the tradition of Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz
In the spring of 1944, gendarmes forcibly removed Tibor "Max" Eisen and his family from their home brought them to a brickyard, and eventually loaded them onto crowded cattle cars bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau. At fifteen years of age, Eisen survived the selection process and was inducted into the camp as a slave laborer. More than seventy years after the Nazi camps were liberated by the Allies, By Chance Alone details Eisen's story of survival: the backbreaking slave labor in Auschwitz I, the infamous death march in January 1945, the painful aftermath of liberation, and Eisen's journey of physical and psychological healing. Ultimately, the book offers a message of hope as the author finds his way to a new life.
In 1921, Françoise Frenkel--a Jewish woman from Poland--fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities, and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come to the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise's dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.
"Those Who Forget, published to international awards and acclaim, is journalist Géraldine Schwarz's riveting account of her German and French grandparents' lives during World War II, an in-depth history of Europe's post-war reckoning with fascism, and an urgent appeal to remember as a defense against today's rise of far-right nationalism"-- Provided by publisher.
"[Elie Wiesel] taught at Boston University for nearly four decades, and with this book, Ariel Burger--devoted protégé, apprentice, and friend--takes us into the sacred space of Wiesel's classroom. There, Wiesel challenged his students to explore moral complexity and to resist the dangerous lure of absolutes. In bringing together never-before-recounted moments between Wiesel and his students, Witness serves as a moral education in and of itself--a primer on educating against indifference, on the urgency of memory and individual responsibility, and on the role of literature, music, and art in making the world a more compassionate place."--Dust jacket flap.
"The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland under Nazi occupation who finds refuge in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually, they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut-Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light"-- Provided by publisher.
Other Links:
"The I Remember Wall is a unique and meaningful opportunity for the public to participate in an online commemorative activity to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. By joining our I remember Wall, your name will be randomly linked to the name of a Holocaust victim from Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names and will appear together on the I remember Wall." -https://www.itraveljerusalem.com/evt/join-the-iremember-wall-yad-vashem/
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