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.

We Survived the Holocaust: The Bluma and Felix Goldberg Story, Book Review

 

We Survived the Holocaust: The Bluma and Felix Goldberg Story is graphic memoir. Graphic here means cartoonish pictures. Bluma and Felix Goldberg's story is a true story. Things are obviously simplified, since it's short and written for children.

Times have certainly changed. Not long ago the Book Club I'm a member of chose Holocaust Literature as the genre for a meeting. Most members are of my generation, who grew up in the post World War Two 1950s. Besides The Diary of Anna Frank, there wasn't any Holocaust book for even an older child to read. Now libraries and book stores have shelves full of Holocaust Literature of all sorts for all ages, though it's hard to find books suitable for children. 

We Survived the Holocaust is illustrated in black and white which suits to subject matter and is a reminder that the Holocaust was a dark and dangerous time.  Here are a series of pages to give you an idea.

The general message is survival and heroism. Bluma and Felix Goldberg's story is totally amazing, and it's true, which makes it even better. It's almost incomprehensible to imagine ordinary people taking such risks and surviving such dangers. But we all know that somehow some people did survive and establish families and businesses after the war, after the Nazis had been defeated.

We Survived the Holocaust is an excellent tool for teaching children about Nazis and the Holocaust. As wonderful as the Goldbergs' story is, we mustn't forget that the majority of European Jewry was murdered during the Holocaust, whether gassed, gunned down or as the result of malnutrition/starvation or illness. The dead can't speak.

To help the reader, there are a timeline, a glossary, an index and recommended resources. We Survived the Holocaust: The Bluma and Felix Goldberg Story includes a postscript and information about the Goldberg children. I highly recommend it.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Imagine and Wonder; First edition (September 1, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 156 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1637610203
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1637610206
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 - 17 years
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.4 x 9.5 inches

What They Didn't Burn, Mel Laytner's Search for His Father's Holocaust Secrets, Book Review

What They Didn't Burn: Uncovering My Father's Holocaust Secrets by Mel Laytner is an amazing, riveting story. Laytner, an extremely talented writer, reveals a lot as he tracks down his father's secrets. Laytner, the elder of two brothers, discovered that his quiet father was not only a Holocaust survivor, but he had been a canny and successful black market wheeler dealer

I must admit that the author and I first met in the mid-1960s when I joined Betar. We've seen each other very infrequently over the years, but when I heard that he had finally published his father's Holocaust story I wanted to read it. Laytner gave me and my husband a copy.

Among our Betar friends, there are two distinct types, those like me and my husband whose parents were American born and raised, and there were those whose parents were survivors, or had left just in time. We whose parents were American raised can never really imagine what our friends had lived with, which frequently meant that their parents kept many secrets from them. 

Laytner's quest to discover the truth about his father took him many years. By the time he had the time to devote to it, few sources were still alive. He had to travel a lot to talk to people and see old government records in Europe. A few times his brother accompanied him, but mostly he did it alone. Laytner used his journalist skills to interview and research. His success and the subsequent book couldn't have been accomplished by someone without those skills.

Laytner's parents were both Holocaust survivors who worked hard day and night at all sorts of jobs, trying all sorts of businesses, too, when they got to New York. At one point they owned a candy store open seven days a week. That was the same drive that got them through the Holocaust, but during the Holocaust Laytner's father even traded diamonds on the black market, among other things. I'd say that Laytner inherited that drive, since he needed similar smarts to discover his father's true story.

Think of What They Didn't Burn as an exciting treasure hunt, and Mel Laytner takes us along for the ride. I highly recommend the book for readers of all ages.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ SparkPress (September 21, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1684631033
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1684631032

Promoting "Palestine" is Like Holocaust Denial

Remembering the dead.
Flat Lay photo for 52frames

Here in Israel we continue to pay a very heavy price for our existance. Israel, the Ancient Biblical Homeland of the Jews, well documented in archeology and history, is attacked by terrorists, bullets, axes, words and international proclamations.

Is the promotion of a "Palestinian State" an innocent mistake?

No, not at all.

From the beginning, when Hadrian invaded Jewish Judea-Samaria and replaced those names with "Palestine," his aim was to distort history and hide the Jewish National connection to the land.

The name "Palestine" stuck for one big reason; as Tom Lehrer sang "everyone hates the Jews." 

Thousands of years later, when Great Britain was mandated to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish State (see Balfour Declaration) in "Palestine," sic that name was still stuck on the map, even though a country of that name covering that area had never existed. There had always been a Jewish presence in the Holy Land, even after the destruction of the Second Temple and successive invaders ruled from afar. Britain took over from the Turks. The area they held covered both the east and western banks of the Jordan, all the way west until the Mediterranean Sea. According to the Mandate, all was supposed to be a Jewish State. 

Great Britain was enamored with the local nomadic romanticized Arabs and preferred them to the Jews, both the religious ones in the holy cities and the Zionist pioneers working hard to make the Land fruitful.

As part of Britain's attempt to sabotage a Jewish State, it brought in and promoted the Hashemites as rulers over the eastern bank of the Jordan and eventually invented a new country of various tribes where there had never been one. That's called Jordan today.

Despite lackluster international support, at best, the State of Israel thrives. With the Help of Gd we have been victorious in all the wars against us.

On the whole, though, international media and academics refuse to recognize Jewish rights and history to the Land and have been inventing and supporting the lie of Palestine sic.

This actually predates the Holocaust and has continued to this very day. Yes, Tom Lehrer got it right.

 

We're Also Holocaust Survivors...

I had never really considered my family as being connected to the Holocaust, since all of my grandparents made it from Eastern Europe to the USA a couple of decades before World War Two. 

Both of my parents were born in Brooklyn, NY, just like me. I grew up in a neighborhood built after WWII for US military veterans. Our parents spoke native New York English. We didn't hear Yiddish at home. We were American Jews. I first heard about the Holocaust when the Anna Frank Diaries was being publicized, and then there was the Eichmann Trial. None of this was connected to my family.

My father had lots of aunts, uncles and cousins on both sides in New York. My mother had siblings, no aunts, uncles or cousins. When I was older I discovered that my mother's father had been born an orphan in the Ukraine. His father had been murdered in a pogrom, before he was born, and his mother died in childbirth. He was raised by grandparents. My mother didn't know which ones, and as a young man he went to America. My mother's mother left her family in Rogotshav, Belarus for New York, when married to her first husband. They had three daughters, but he died leaving her a poor widow. A few years later, she married my grandfather, who was widowed with two sons. Together they had four more children, including my mother.

My mother was never told much about all the family left in Rogotshav. My grandmother died before my third birthday, just before my brother was born, and I already had two children by the time my mother discovered that she had had an uncle in London. By then he had passed away, but with the help of HIAS my mother and her siblings discovered cousins in London and New Zealand.

Great-Grandfather
Vishnefsky

Great-Grandmother
Vishnefsky

After World War Two, neither my grandmother nor her brother ever discovered or heard from any surviving relatives. So, I guess you can say that my cousins, our children and grandchildren are the only SURVIVORS of the Vishnefsky Family of Rogotshov*. 

It's strange to think that it has taken me so long to realize that even though neither my parents nor grandparents suffered in concentration camps, death marches etc, we are part of the story.

Holocaust Memorial Day, 5772, 2022

*Honestly, I'd love to discover more Vishnefsky relatives.

That's where my Vishnefsky Family had lived

Tom Hogan's "The Devil's Breath," A Real Cliffhanger

I read a lot of detective books, but I must admit that Tom Hogan's "The Devil's Breath" had me stumped. I hadn't a clue as to who the thief/murderer really was until it was revealed in the very last pages. Now if that isn't a recommendation, I don't know what is...

The Devil's Breath can be included in multiple genres, which is another great advantage of purchasing and reading it. As I said, it's a detective book, but it's also a noir thriller, historical fiction, most specifically Holocaust literature. It suits all ages, from teens to adults, including senior citizens like myself.

Someday you may see it as a movie, since The Devil's Breath was a finalist at the Napa Valley Film Festival and semi-finalist at the Austin Film Festival. Hogan did a good job trying to make Auschwitz realistic three generations removed from its horrors.

The mystery involves corruption among the Nazi administrators responsible for collecting gold from the Jewish victims of the gas chambers. Shimon and Perla Divko, an imprisoned Jewish couple, detective and investigator in their former lives, are reunited to discover who's been siphoning off some of the gold. They're given barely a week and no real tools to solve the mystery. Miraculously they succeed. The Devil's Breath's a great read.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tom Hogan (July 30, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 274 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1736943618
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1736943618

Irma's Passport, A Book Review

Catherine Ehrlich wrote an amazingly compelling biography about her grandmother, Irma's Passport: One Woman, Two World Wars, and a Legacy of Courage. 

Irma Ehrlich's story is both profoundly personal and strongly historic. Irma's Passport can be enjoyed both by those who have a good knowledge of the Holocaust and also, those who haven't yet learned all that much about it. Catherine Ehrlich certainly did her grandmother proud in this very informative and moving book. 

Not only did Irma live through two world wars, but she was also twice widowed. Her second husband Jakob Ehrlich, a well-known Zionist activist, was one of the first Jewish victims of the Nazis, and she and her teenage son Paul, Catherine's father, successfully fled. The bureaucracy she faced and had to conquer was a cross between The Twilight Zone and Catch 22.

Paul and Irma made it to England where he was accepted into an elite boarding school, and she quickly became a successful spokesperson in Britain and North America warning about the dangers of Nazi Germany. Just as she was about to accept the position as Chaim Weitzman's secretary they received notice that they could emigrate to the United States. 

Irma accepted Paul's request that they start yet again in a new country. 

Irma's Passport also tells of Irma's earlier life. In many ways she was a feminist, being one of the only females in the university. Her life was full of challenges, which she managed to overcome with intelligence, determination and luck.

I definitely recommend Irma's Passport for all, young and old. Catherine's labor of love, her grandmother's biography is truly inspiring.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ She Writes Press (October 12, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1647423058
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1647423056

"White Privilege" The Big Antisemitic Lie

re: language/word/term

I get terribly offended by the relatively new term "white privilege." Honestly, it's antisemitic. 

That nasty term hides/denies how most Jewish immigrants struggled in their early decades in America.

The vast majority of Jews who moved to the United Stated in the previous two centuries were fleeing poverty. The wealthy didn't come, only the poor. 

The "WASPS" didn't want them and quickly passed a quota law to keep Jews out. FDR wouldn't even fill the quota when those fleeing the Nazis tried to legally enter the United States. And if you check your history, Harry Truman didn't improve things after World War Two. Holocaust survivors had a very difficult time getting visas to live in America.

Sabbat observing Jews were discriminated against and needed new jobs weekly, or made do as independent peddlers. 

It didn't help that the Great Depression was making it hard on many. The last to be hired and first to be fired were Jews. 

Many Jews went to work as young as possible to help their families. Even those who graduated high school as academics ended up working, since they couldn't even afford the "free" universities. 

Those using the term "White Privilege" are inventing a false history, a lie. I find the term very offensive.

Zachor Remember

A TV Show Instrumental in Changing My Life

I decided to blog about this, because

As I began on facebook...

A gazillion years ago, before most of you were born, there was a Jewish tv show on Sunday afternoons, and I'll blog about it and then put the link up here.

...When I was a little girl, in the middle of the previous century, Sundays in the USA were different from the other days of the week. The country was much more Christian. People were expected to be with their families on Sunday. Stores were closed. Only Jewish stores which had been closed on Friday night and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath were allowed to open.

There was a different television schedule. Sundays, on one of the less commercial channels, there was a Jewish television show called The Eternal Light produced in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Sometimes, out of boredom, I watched it. My family was not religious. We were members of a Conservative shul, because its relatively traditional ways of keeping Judaism and the fact that it didn't expect the members to keep kashrut, Shabbat and Jewish Holidays at home made my parents feel welcome. In those days, it was believed by most that Orthodox Judaism was on its way out, and Conservative Judaism was the Jew of the future. JTS was very strong and growing.

The episode on The Eternal Light that was Instrumental in Changing My Life must have been broadcast around the time of the production of the Diary of Anne Frank as a play. The play and the Anne Frank story got a lot of publicity, and I must have heard about it also in whatever Sunday School or Hebrew School I was attending in Oakland Jewish Center, Bayside, NY.

All I remember from the episode is a couple of men talking about what happened to Anne Frank and her family and what it had been like for Jews under the Nazis. There was a man who said very proudly and firmly:

"If I was forbidden to light the Chanukah Menorah, I wouldn't be afraid; I would light one even if it endangered my life."
His friend asked: "Do you light the Chanukah Menorah here in America?"
"No."
"Why don't you light it here, where you are permitted?"

That short dialogue stayed in my mind for years.  It was certainly one of the first little "seeds" planted in my mind about living a more Jewish Life. After we moved from Bayside to Great Neck we joined an Orthodox synagogue simply for financial reasons. The Great Neck Synagogue had an active NCSY chapter which I became a member of. I also went to YU Seminars. By the time I had graduated high school, I was a Torah Observant Jew. Considering that I remember the show all these decades later, it's clear that it was Instrumental in Changing My Life.

GUEST POST: Remember World Trade Center

Remember the World Trade Center

(a guest post by Mr. Cohen)
===================================

You may ask why I have chosen this
day to remember the destruction of the
World Trade Center and 3,000+ innocent lives,
because September 11 was ten days ago.

My answer is that the World Trade Center

was destroyed on the 23^rd day of Elul,
and tomorrow is the 23^rd day of Elul.
===================================

It is not enough to remember the names

of the 3,000 victims who died when the
World Trade Center was destroyed by
Arab-Muslim terrorists on 2001 September 11.

Even more important, we must remember:

the names of the 19 terrorists, and
which religion they believed in [Islam] and,
which religion motivated their violence [Islam] and,
which language they spoke [Arabic],
and where they came from [Egypt and Saudi Arabia].

===================================

Yigal Carmon [President of MEMRI dot org] said:

Two months before 9/11, on Qatar’s state-run

Al-Jazeera TV, [Osama] bin Laden was lionized
in a show dedicated to him. He was called
“the No. 1 Arab and Islamic hero” and
“the conscience of the Arab and Islamic world.”

The program host underlined that as

“the [Muslim] nation thirsts deeply
for someone who will confront America... 
not with words and slogans,”
and said that bin Laden was
“the right man for this important role.”

And indeed he was.

SOURCE:

Americans are good people — just ask the Qatari Emir

by Yigal Carmon, 2019/7/14
www.jns.org/opinion/the-americans-are-good-people-just-ask-the-qatari-emir

===================================

Yigal Carmon [President of MEMRI dot org] said:

“For over two decades, Qatar has been

fostering and advancing nearly every
terrorist organization that has murdered
Americans. It praised Osama bin Laden,
and after him Ayman Al-Zawahiri [leader of
Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden], to the skies.”

SOURCE:

Americans are good people — just ask the Qatari Emir
by Yigal Carmon, 2019/7/14
www.jns.org/opinion/the-americans-are-good-people-just-ask-the-qatari-emir/

===================================

Germany: ISIS bride arrested after photo of
cake celebrating 9/11 found on her lost phone:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/09/germany-isis-bride-arrested-after-photo-cake-celebrating-9-11-found-on-her-lost-phone
===================================

If you really want to know the details about Muslims

around the world committing violence against their

non-Muslim neighbors, then please go to:

www (dot) JihadWatch (dot) org

Articles on Jihad Watch right now include:

[1] Muslim scouted landmark sites in Boston,

NYC, and DC including Fenway Park and
Statue of Liberty for jihad massacres

[2] 61% of “Palestinians” approve mygf

of jihad murder of Israeli teen

[3] UK: Grand Mufti of Bosnia and

Herzegovina gives Qur’an reading
in Westminster Abbey

[4] Women’s March Replaces Anti-Semites

with Another Anti-Semite

[5] That Was Quick: Women’s March Drops

Anti-Semite It Brought in to
Replace Its Other Anti-Semites

[6] Afghanistan: Taliban target election

rally, murder 50 in jihad bombings,
warn people not to vote or face death

[7] “Anti-Muslim” Event at Michigan Church

Cancelled Quite Unnecessarily

[8] Bangladesh: Muslim mob vandalizes Ahmadi

mosque, cops say mob is too large to oppose

[9] Smuggler claims he will get Islamic

State jihadis into Europe for $8,000

[10] Glazov Gang: Revealed –
Obama’s Betrayal of SEAL Team Six

[11] Muslim Mayor of Prospect Park, N.J.,

Enraged at Being Questioned by
Border Agents on Return from Turkey

[12] Why We Are Bogged Down in Afghanistan

[13] Miami: Muslim American Airlines

mechanic who sabotaged plane had ISIS videos,
spoke of wanting to harm non-Muslims

[14] India: Jammu and Kashmir official says

religion terrorists follow is “definitely not Islam”

[15] Germany: ISIS bride arrested after photo

of cake celebrating 9/11 found on her lost phone

===================================

Finally, I suggest that Batya add Jihad Watch

to Shiloh Musing’s list of “Interesting Blogs”.

===================================

****** END OF MESSAGE ******
===================================

ANGRY! Again Israel Gave in To Terror

Deja vu, been there; done that.

Israel Just The Facts

Again, Israel took an easy, though terribly temporary, way out from the barrage of deadly rockets and gave the Gazan Arab terrorists another chance to reload.

A quick google search of

ceasefire reload Gaza

And one for the first links if for:

Published: 11.27.06

There's anger here in Israel. I'm not exaggerating when I write "deja vu."

Close to a thousand rockets were launched at Israel in barely twenty four hours, and that's after over a year of deadly incendiary balloons and kites, which have caused awful damage. If the Gazan Arab terrorists have such an enormous amount of rockets and the capabilities of launching them at Israel, there's no reason why Israel can't bomb them to smithereens.

Who care about what "the world" may say?

Did "the world" protest and condemn the attacks on Israel? No

For those of us who grew up post-Holocaust, this certainly clarifies how Nazi Germany succeeded in murdering six million Jews and a few million others. Nobody aka "the world" actually cares.

Heroism, Gevurah גבורה Yom HaZikaron LiShoah UliGevurah

Holocaust and Heroism Memorial Day

Since last night we've have the television on quite  bit. Some of the stories, first person survivors have been rather amazing. They sound like fiction, but we all know that real life is sometimes more amazing and unreal than fiction. Writers wouldn't dare write things that nobody could believe.

If I'm not mistaken, today used to be called Holocaust Memorial Day, without the Heroism. Also, the standard way Israelis liked to describe the Holocaust was to give the impression that the Jews went passively to slaughter, like sheep. That fit the prevailing labor zionist image of the strong, daring secular Jew versus the weak cowering, religious galut Jew.

As the Holocaust survivors who made aliyah gained their confidence as Israelis, and historians began hearing more of what really happened during the Holocaust, Jews under Nazi persecution began looking stronger and braver. Survivors began demanding a change in the name.

The small number of minimally armed Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fought a longer battle against the Nazis than some European countries.

A surprising number of Jews in the concentration camps defied the Nazis by managing to keep mitzvot, such as praying with Tefillin, conducting Passover seders and more. Each story defies all the previous stereotypes.

In addition, don't forget the bravery, true heroism that it took for the survivors to start their lives all over again, mostly in totally new countries and languages. Many, whose school years were spent hiding or as prisoners, still managed to learn professions, start businesses, etc. Some, whose families had been murdered in the Holocaust, married again and were blessed with more children. These are all examples of Heroism no less impressive than those who fought with the partisans or managed to kill their Nazi captors.

Today, despite the physical infirmities and weaknesses caused by the survivors physical suffering, many are miraculously survived by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, ken yirbu. That's the true revenge over the Nazis.

Holocaust Remembering Day

I usually "ignore" official Holocaust Memorial or "Remembering" events. To be honest, they make me feel rather "left out." Speakers, whether first generation survivors themselves or those my age who are called "second generation"  use too much of the "we" and "our" presuming that we all have the same sort of family history. No, I'm not from one of the Jewish communities from "Arab countries" that hadn't been affected by the the Holocaust. I'm just as Ashkenazic as your typical Holocaust survivor, but all my grandparents had moved to New York in the early twentieth century. Apparently, all of their relatives who had remained in Europe were killed in the Holocaust, but I never heard anything of it while growing up.

Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, NY, was a new neighborhood built for American military veterans after World War Two. All the other parents were raised and mostly born in America, just like mine. We grew up hearing of Anna Frank's Diary and then the legendary capture of  Adolf Eichmann and his trial in real time.

Mayor Moshe Leon and two "survivors"

But last night I found myself at a Holocaust Memorial event, davka, at the home of the Mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon. We heard amazing stories from these two men.

I've always wondered how people could find the strength to go on with living after experiencing the hell and cruelty of the Holocaust. The one on the right didn't want to talk about how he had suffered, only how he started a new life in Israel. The one in the middle had a truly amazing story. Two neighbors helped hide him and seven relatives for four years. First they had been crowded into a specially built "double wall." They couldn't stand, walk or speak during that time. Afterwards they were moved to the basement of a preschool, where they stayed until it was safe to leave. All but one of that group made aliyah, moved to the Land of Israel, which was under British rule at the time. The British tried to keep them out.

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to hear these brave men speak.

I recorded some of the talk, and posted it to youtube. If you understand Hebrew you can listen.

Terror ATTACK, Not "Incident"

I'm a rare breed. I love grammar, and I have a very sensitive ear to the nuances of language. I've written many times about how important it is to word bombing, shellings, rocket attacks, etc in "active" rather than "passive." Also, please don't word things giving the impression that a gun spontaneously aimed itself and shot someone.

Please don't write/say:

"Weapon fired at..."
"Missiles were launched at..."

Calling a terror attack an "incident" also makes me furious. The definition of "incident" is:

1. an individual occurrence or event.
2. a distinct piece of action, or an episode, as in a story or play.
3. something that occurs casually in connection with something else

I also go rather ballistic when I read about people/Jews "who perished" in the Holocaust, as if it was a natural disaster, like an avalanche.

By using "parve" gentle words and inaccurate grammatical forms one is actually distorting the truth.

It is not an "incident, something that occurs casually" when Arab terrorists shoot at innocent Jews standing at a junction.
Photo of the "live" via facebook funeral of prematurely born Amiad Yisrael Ish-Ran.

Accurate reporting and writing is extremely crucial in Israel's war for survival against the cruelest of enemies, Arab terrorists and their supporters. Don't be shy about writing clearly and bluntly.

GUEST POST: Massacre Aftermath

Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre Aftermath
(a guest post by Mr. Cohen)

Even after the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre, Jews are still not granted Victim Status according to the rules of Political Correctness.

I strongly suspect that Jews will NEVER be granted Victim Status according to the rules of Political Correctness, regardless of how much they suffer.

According to the rules of Political Correctness, Black Lives Matter, but Jewish lives do not matter, and I strongly suspect that they never will matter.

Muslims and African Americans have both been granted Victim Status by the Leftist Political Correctness people, even though both of those groups include high percentages of people who hate Jews.

A related problem, which has become so completely normalized that most people do not even consider it to be a problem, is that Muslims and African Americans both get a free pass for their anti-Jewish-hatred, and not just a regular free pass, but an unlimited free pass.  Louis Farrakhan and his Nation Of Islam organization have used that unlimited free pass to constantly propagandize against Jews, which has resulted in many millions of people believing that Jews are [or were] responsible for slavery, which is false.

Since the year 2000, thousands of Jews have fled from Europe, because of rapidly increasing anti-Semitism, including beatings and even killings.  Thousands more Jews are seriously considering fleeing Europe, for the same reasons.  This might not sound like a large number of people, but when you consider how few Jews live in Europe, it is a significant percentage of European Jews.

Even with thousands of Jews fleeing from Europe, because of anti-Jewish violence, the so-called Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) still have not granted Victim Status to Jews.

Even with Europeans Jews under attack from both European right-wing Nationalists and Muslim immigrants, the Social Justice Warriors and Leftists consider Jews to be unworthy of Victim Status.

In the 1990s, a Moroccan Jew told me that fled from France because he could not cope with the anti-Semitism there at that time, which was much-less-severe than the anti-Semitism that exists there now.  That Moroccan Jew was one of the biggest and strongest Jews I ever met, and he was also a Black Belt – yet even he was unable to cope with the anti-Semitism in France in the 1990s, which has become much worse since then.

“An incredible 90 percent of British Jews believe that the Labour Party is ‎anti-Semitic, and 40 percent are considering leaving the United Kingdom ‎because of the spike in anti-Semitism.”

SOURCE: www.jns.org/poll-40-of-british-jews-considering-leaving-uk-%e2%80%8eover-anti-semitism/

 

BOTTOM LINE: Even with 40% of British Jews considering leaving the United Kingdom ‎because of anti-Semitism, Jews still do not receive Victim Status.

In year 2016, the FBI reported that 54% of religion-motivated Hate Crimes were anti-Jewish, even though less than 2% of Americans were Jews,

SOURCE: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/statistics-on-religious-hate-crimes

BOTTOM LINE: Even with Jews being victimized by Hate Crimes far beyond their percentage of the total American population, Jews still do not receive Victim Status.

If the Political Correctness people and Social Justice Warriors really believed in Social Justice, then they would grant Victim Status to Jews, because Jews are the most-persecuted people in World History. To deny that Jews are worthy of Victim Status indicates that the Political Correctness people and SJWs have a problem with Jews.

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If you want the truth about Israel and the Middle East,
then do not waste your time with the FAKE NEWS of
The New York Times and the Israel-bashing mainstream-news-media. 

Instead, visit these web sites:

www.jns.org

 

www.algemeiner.com

 

www.memri.org

 

www.aish.com

 

www.DanielPipes.org

 

www.camera.org

 

www.UKMediaWatch.org

 

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Time Magazine vs Truth:
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/08/time-magazine-vs-truth.html

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Who are the Palestinians?
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/06/who-are-palestinians.html

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How Torah Can Defeat Terrorism:
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2017/08/defeat-terror-with-torah.html

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Did Captain Kirk believe in negotiating with terrorists?
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/08/can-jews-learn-from-captain-kirk.html

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How to Pray for Tzahal-IDF:
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-to-pray-for-tzahal-idf.html
===================================
Rambam Rejected Childless Messiah:
http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2016/08/rambam-rejected-childless-messiah-by-mr.html

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Was Daniel an Orthodox Jew?
https://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2018/03/if-daniel-were-alive-today.html

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Why all good people should STOP BUYING The New York Times:

www.algemeiner.com/2018/09/18/new-york-times-finds-ari-fulds-murder-not-fit-to-print/

 

www.algemeiner.com/2018/10/19/pressure-mounts-on-new-york-times-to-cancel-its-iran-journeys/

 

www.jns.org/opinion/the-new-york-times-loves-jews-who-hate-israel/

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***** END OF MESSAGE *****
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