Holocaust, "HaShoah" Thoughts after a Visit to Yad Veshem

I wasn't raised with any awareness of the Holocaust, the Nazi murder of six million 6,000,000 Jews during World War Two. It's not that they were hiding any past, not at all. My parents were born in the USA, born in Brooklyn, New York, the same place I was born. Their parents all immigrated to the United States early in the 20th century. After the war, no surviving relatives joined them in New York. From what we can surmise, close to eighty 80 years later, none of the family which had stayed in Europe survived the war. 

Until very recently I felt rather shut out of Holocaust memorials. You had to be a survivor, pre-death camps escapee or descended from them to have a story. Since those who had actually experienced the Holocaust are quickly reaching the end of their lives and their children are grandparents and great-grandparents, their stories of survival and revenge over the Nazis have become legendary and inspiration for the growing genre of Holocaust literature. 

Ever since I first began learning about the Holocaust, as a child when The Diary of Anna Frank became popular and a short time later when Adolf Eichmann was captured then tried in Israel, the Holocaust seemed no more connected to me than Judah Maccabee of the Chanukah story. 

My parents did have relatives who had been living in Europe, mostly Belarus, which was then part of the Soviet Union. After World War Two, nothing was heard from them; they weren't found. In recent years, when I tried to join the Holocaust talk, I was told that my family story didn't count. I'm not in the club, since none of my relatives survived.

Last week I met a visiting cousin and his wife in Yad Vashem. Yad Veshem isn't my favorite place. That's because during my last visit, quite a while ago, I found myself very upset by their use of words about which I blogged Words, They Were All People and Praying to a Non-god. Please read them and tell me what you think in the comments, thanks.

We were taken around by one of their guides and given a very good history lesson. We passed a map of Belarus, and I managed to find Rogachev the city where both of my grandmothers had lived before moving to the United States. 

My paternal grandmother, Anna Brynien, was the second of six daughters. The four eldest and their parents immigrated to New York early in the 20th century, but my grandmother's two youngest sisters had been enthusiastic communists so they stayed in the Soviet Union. My maternal grandmother, Ida Vishnefsky, was from a large, relatively wealthy family. Her father was what was known as a barber-doctor. Everyone stayed in Belarus except my grandmother and one brother, who had immigrated to London. My grandmother followed her first husband to New York with their eldest daughter after visiting her brother in London. When the war ended, no survivors from my grandmothers' families were found.

My maternal great-grandfather
Vishnefsky

my maternal great-grandmother
Vishnefsky

One of the exhibits we toured was the Hall of Names dedicated to the dead.  I'm not sure that any of my missing family members are included in the names, but our guide told us that there are still boxes waiting for more names. 

Doesn't that make me and my cousins and children and grandchildren part of the Holocaust story?

The greatest tragedy of the Holocaust is that so many Jews may have no descendants; they didn't survive. That's what happened to my parents' aunts, uncles and cousins. The survivors in my family left Europe before the Nazis were a power. That's how my family survived. 

Hitler's plan was to kill all Jews, not just European ones. He had envisioned conquering the world; thank Gd he failed. 

The Jewish People have survived and thrived. Despite the murder of Six Million Jews by Hitler, the State of Israel was established with the Help of Gd just a very few short years after the Nazi defeat. 

The Jewish People survived and that makes ALL JEWS SURVIVORS!

Thank Gd, because Gd is our secret weapon.

Execute Arab Terrorists and Facilitators, Like We did Eichmann

Deja vu

• I've written this before.

Deja vu

• We've buried too many good, even extraordinary people who were murdered by Arab terrorists.

Deja vu

• We're angry.

Deja vu

• The world blames us.

Deja vu

• People make excuses for Arab terrorism.

Deja vu

• Arab terrorists are released from jail to attack us again.

Deja vu

• Our politicians promise that this is the last time.

Deja vu

• Our hospitals and doctors treat terrorists and their victims with the same care.

Gd willing the Jewish Year 5779 will be the year when we will execute all the terrorists and those who facilitate their actions.

How could Adolf Eichmann have been executed, while the modern Eichmanns are not only allowed to live, but they are treated as respected leaders, even allowed to serve in the Knesset, study in our universities, healed in our hospitals?

My Family's Lack of Holocaust Story is the Biggest Story

For most of my life, ever since I first heard of the Holocaust in Hebrew School and on television, when the The Diary of Anne Frank came out my reaction has been.

It's not my family's story. My parents were born in America, and my grandparents all immigrated to there in the early twentieth century, decades before the Nazis.

And yes, I've written it here too on my blogs.

The late 1950's and early 1960's were when the general public learned about the Holocaust, because besides the Anne Frank story, which was packaged perfectly, the very young State of Israel managed to capture Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann and bring him to public trial.

Even though all of my grandparents were from European locations, Rogotshov, Nasielsk and Kiev, that had seen its Jewish population decimated by the Nazis I had never ever heard a single story that connected my family to that major and unprecedented tragedy. In addition, I grew up in Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, NY, which was housing for American war veterans, and none of the parents although over 90% Jewish, had European accents or were Holocaust survivors. In the local Conservative synagogue, Oakland Jewish Center, where I went to Hebrew School, I don't remember anyone coming in giving a first-person story of the Holocaust or saying that their family had escaped or experienced it.

Actually, the easy fact that my mother had neither cousins nor aunts and uncles in America wasn't attributed to the Holocaust until the poem Babi Yar was published and publicized in America. That's when my mother said that her mother's family was probably among the Jews massacred in Babi Yar.

The Vishnefskys of Rogotshov, parents of my mother's mother. And above that is a small photo of my mother's family, Passover, most probably 1948 or 1949.

This morning when I was trying to decide what to write, I first rejected Holocaust Memorial Day, because I don't have a "story." My father's father's family all left Nesielsk, Poland over a decade before it was conquered by the Nazis, so they were safely in New York long before the Nazis came to power. And we have heard nothing about what actually happened to my paternal grandmother's two sisters who remained in the USSR, except that they were loyal communists.

The truth is that we don't know if there are any heroic stories from my family, because nobody survived to tell us. And just now I've realized that I do have a story. My story is that my family members who stayed in Europe were all swallowed up in the black hole of the Nazi Holocaust not even leaving enough clues to discover a story. We can't even add their names.

Let Arab Terrorists Commit Suicide!

Especially considering that there's an international trend supporting people's rights to commit suicide, I don't see any moral reason that the State of Israel should forcefully provide medical care to convicted Arab terrorists who want to die.

Israeli doctors say Palestinian hunger striker's life still in dangerDoctors at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon said on Sunday that they are working to save the life of Muhammad Allan, the Islamic Jihad operative who has declared a hunger strike that is now in its third month.
Allan, in the 63rd day of a hunger strike in protest of his being held in administrative detention without trial, lost consciousness on Friday morning and has been in danger of dying ever since. (Jerusalem Post)

Palestinian protesters hold a placard depicting hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner Mohammed Allan, during a demonstration calling for his release following Friday prayers in Jerusalem's Old City August 14, 2015.

REUTERS/AMMAR AWAD

In all honesty, I'm a firm believer in the death penalty for any Arab terrorist who attempts murdering Jews, even if he/she's unsuccessful at it. We certainly should not give him/her a second/third/fourth whatever chance to kill.

According to Israeli Law, Nazis can be executed, and the only one to have actually been sentenced to death was Adolf Eichmann. I don't see any real difference between the Nazi ideology and that of the Arab terrorists. And Eichmann, if I'm not mistaken was not an actual killer.

Otto Adolf Eichmann (pronounced [ˈɔto ˈaːdɔlf ˈaɪ̯çman]; 19 March 1906 – 1 June 1962) was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. Eichmann was charged by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. (Wikipedia)

The significance of that is to give judicial weight to the arrest, imprisonment and execution of the higher echelons of Hamas and Fatah who encourage, support and reward Arab terrorism.

Yes, that may even include Obama's good buddy Mahmoud Abbas.

It's time for Israel to stop trying to please the world and do what is really right. None of the placating of Arab terrorists and their supporters have raised our international support, because the world doesn't really care about right and wrong, nor Israeli security or survival.

We can't rely on anyone other than ourselves and Gd Almighty.

Not "PC," Let The Convicted Terrorists Kill Themselves

Politicly Correct I am not for sure. So, you shouldn't be surprised that I am against force-feeding the convicted Arab terrorists who hunger-strike. Honestly, I believe that they should be executed, just like Israel executed Adolf Eichmann in 1962.

Honestly, I don't see any difference at all between the Nazis and the Arab terrorists. Their aim is the same, the destruction of the Jewish People. I consider it a tragic and dangerous mistake that Israel treats Arab terrorists as ordinary criminals and not like those bent on genocide against us.

It's ironic that a doctors human rights group agrees with me about the convicted Arab terrorists but for different reasons.

Doctors associations object because it places responsibility on physicians to carry out invasive treatment of prisoners in spite of their preference and right to autonomy. (Jerusalem Post)

I don't think that those terrorists really want to die. They just want publicity. Call their bluff and let's see how many really kill themselves.

Israel: Islamic jihadist murders at least four Jews in Jerusalem
www.jihadwatch.org

Comfy Pension for Arab Terrorists

According to the latest Palestinian Media Watch bulletin, convicted Arab terrorists released from Israeli jails will receive a "Dignified Life Grant" aka a nice comfortable pension.

PMW has documented that the PA pays salaries to terrorists in prison.

Reporting on Israel's release of 26 prisoners in August as part of a goodwill gesture towards the PA, the official PA daily reported that these prisoners, who "received a hero's welcome... by senior [Palestinian] Authority officials and by their relatives" would receive grants:

"Money is not an immediate concern because the [Palestinian] Authority will pay at least 4,000 shekels a month to prisoners released after serving a long prison term, and considers them to be returning soldiers."

That's a lot of money by Arab standards. Among the interesting conversations I've had with Arabs at work in Yafiz, Sha'ar Binyamin, was the one with an Arab English teacher. The young woman commended me on my  "excellent accent" in English.  I had to admit that I came by it easily, having been born and raised in New York.  She told me that she is an English teacher and really enjoyed the opportunity to use English with someone who speaks as well as I do.  I confided that I'm actually a high school English Teacher.

"You could get a great job in Jenin or even Nablus" she said with excitement.  You could make a lot of money, four thousand shekels."

When I worked as an English Teacher, I could make lots more than that, but I didn't tell her. By Israeli standards, salary norms, ns4,000 is minimum wage or less.  So if that's what a top English Teacher is paid, then the PA considers terrorism to be an academic profession.

I just want to end this with my position about justice and what sentences these Arab terrorists should really be given.  All who killed or attempted to kill Jews should be executed.  The death sentence is the only suitable  way to punish Arab terrorists.  The precedent here is Israel is the execution of Eichmann.  I don't see any real difference between Arab terrorists and Nazis.

A Mockery of Justice, Releasing Arab Terrorist Murderers and Those Who Attempted Murder

I'm a firm believer in capital punishment, the death penalty.  Unfortunately Israel has only practiced it once when it executed Eichmann.  According to Israeli law, the death penalty is only to be used against Nazis, and the law has never been amended to include Arab terrorists who are even more dangerous.

The media, both international and Israeli, keep referring to the convicted Arab terrorists being released to encourage sic the terrorist representatives to talk to us as just innocuous, benign-sounding "prisoners."  They could be white-collar clerks caught pilfering staples or shoplifters who took too much bubblegum for all the media tells us.

I'm not in favor of comparing this illogical, dangerous act, the release of terrorist murderers with Jonathan Pollard or Jews jailed in Israel.  That's why I haven't joined any of the campaigns to free Pollard from American jail or Jewish Israelis jailed for various security breaches.  None of them are terrorists so they shouldn't be considered in parallel/similar status.

The State of Israel is making a terribly dangerous mistake in releasing the convicted Arab terrorists.  That's what they are "convicted Arab terrorists."  Keep repeating that over and over.  There's a big difference between a "prisoner" and a "convicted Arab terrorist."  One is a "prisoner" before being tried and convicted.  Quite often people are imprisoned by mistake.  These terrorists were captured, tried and convicted.  Most if not all should have had been immediately executed after conviction.

Releasing convicted Arab terrorists, no matter what Israel would get "in return" is dangerous and demonstrates that the State of Israel does not value its citizens, security, justice or sovereignty.

Photo Credit: Flash90

Two convoys left the Ayalon prison on Tuesday night at around 9 pm, carry 26 terrorists who were released as the first part of an Israeli gesture to the Palestinian Authority.
One convoy, carrying 15 terrorists traveled to the Erez junction, near Gaza, where those terrorists were released. The second convoy, carrying 11 terrorists, went to Ofer prison, and then on to the Beitunia checkpoint. The conveys reached their destinations after midnight.
Palestinian Authority Arabs have gathered to greet the terrorists upon their arrival. Over 1000 Arabs have gathered at the Muqata in Ramallah to greet the freed terrorists, and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas will be leading a welcoming ceremony.

The implied and easy to predict dangers make me wonder about the patriotism and morals of all of the politicians and government officials involved.  They are the same people who try to marginalize what they refer to as "the settlers," aka people like myself.  In the years leading up to the Nazi invasion of Europe and the Holocaust, people like Ze'ev Jabotinsky repeatedly warned European Jewry to leave and move to Israel.  Not only was he ignored and mocked in Europe, but the dominant Labor Zionists did their best to attack and marginalize him and his Revisionist followers.  In the end it was Jabotinsky whose analyses of the situation that was correct.

We're still fighting the same war, just a different battle.  G-d willing we will soon be victorious.