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

Only in Israel, Terror Victims, Cared for by All

Decades ago, when a horrendous fatal car accident halved a local family, the injured survivors were cared for in the same hospital room, where they sat shiva together. Many times since, I've seen pictures of hospitalized family members, of both sexes and various ages, in the same hospital room. It's a very humane and comforting policy, which doesn't exist in other countries.

The young couple, Shira and Amichai Ish-Ran, who as a result of an Arab terror attack outside of Ofra, not only were injured, but as a result of Shira's injury, their baby didn't survive. They are now together in Shaare Tzedek Hospital in the same room. Obviously, after such physical, medical and emotional trauma, they have a lot to deal with. Separation would have only made it worse.

According to Jewish Law, there's no mourning, shiva-all the usual restrictions, after the death of a tiny baby under a month old, so friends came to sing to them.



Do you see this in other countries? Only in Israel.

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.

"No Holocaust Story" is a Story

I grew up without knowing anything about the Holocaust or the term "survivors." This was the 1950s in New York. From the time I was a few months old my parents and I lived in a brand new garden apartment development/community for veterans, Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, NY. Our parents were all pretty much the same, Jewish (well over 90%), white born/raised in a poorer neighborhood of New York and determined to give their children a better childhood than they had.

Our parents had survived the Great Depression with difficulty, and if our fathers had suffered fighting in World War Two, most of us never knew about it. Children of the 1950s were protected from awful realities. Disney reigned, and we were supposed to "live happily ever after."

Most of our mothers considered that their job; they were home raising us. Our parents were 100% American and didn't have foreign accents. Only our elderly grandparents had accents. They had come from somewhere in Europe to America, the Land of Opportunity. I didn't know more than that.

It seemed in my childhood perspective that we were all the same. The only real difference was that my father had aunts, uncles and cousins, while my mother had none. Only much later on, when I was already a grandmother did I fully discover that not only had most of his parents' siblings made it to New York, but so did his grandparents.

I only became aware that there had been Nazis, a Holocaust etc from the news, television and maybe a bit from Oakland Jewish Center Hebrew School. I was in Elementary School when The Diary of Anna Frank came out and Adolf Eichmann was captured and tried.

I never felt connected to any of the Holocaust stories or history. It happened to others, not my family, just like the Spanish Inquisition.  It took many decades for me to realize that my lack of a personal family story is the Holocaust story personified.

My mother's parents had to have come from families before they got on those boats to New York. They certainly didn't sprout from laboratories. Over the years when I had tried to discuss this with my mother, it became very clear that she, too, was in the dark about her parents' histories. Being the eighth out of nine of a very poor his, hers and theirs family, she was raised more by her elder siblings than her elderly and tired parents who were busy trying to scratch out a minimal survival in Brooklyn.

To personalize Holocaust Memorial Day, I'll just write a bit about what I know of my grandmother's family.  I have only the vaguest memories of my maternal grandmother, Ida Vishnefsky Finkelstein Shankman. She died just before my third birthday. Until my mother was close to fifty and already had two grandchildren, she thought that her mother was the only one of the family that escaped Europe. Only by chance did one of her elder half-sisters mention that they had an uncle and cousins in London, but the one sister who knew more and had corresponded when young, had already passed away.

My two older "half aunts" then brainstormed trying to remember what they could of their mother's history and information about the uncle who went to live in London. They put together what they could remember and sent it to HIAS. A cousin read it and via HIAS contacted them.

We are descended from the Vishnefsky's of Rogotshov, Belarus. Apparently the family was relatively successful. They were musical and someone was a barber/doctor. I don't know their first names. One son moved to London, Harry who changed his name to Marks and worked as a carpenter.

My grandmother, Ida (Chaya Raisia) married a Finkelstein and had a daughter while still in Europe. Her husband went to New York, and she followed a bit later, first visiting her brother in London. When they reunited in New York, she had two more daughters before her husband took sick and died. A poor widow with three young children she married my grandfather Abraham Shankman a widower with two sons. Together they had four more children, including my mother. None of my grandmother's relatives ever made it to America as far as her children knew. They must have been killed in the Holocaust or by Stalin just after the war. So, I too have a Holocaust story.

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.

"Living Beyond Terrorism," A Book Review

When I heard about the book "Living Beyond Terrorism" by  Zieva Konvisser, Publisher: Gefen Publishing House, I just knew I had to review it. Of course I had to, because I'm a surivor of an Arab terror attack. I was even lightly wounded.

The people and families written about in this book makes everything I experienced "small potatoes." 

Living Beyond Terrorism was davka hard for me to get into. I began reading it weeks and weeks ago. And then more than half way through there were sections I just couldn't put down.

It's basically a compilation of reports with updates about the Arab terror victims, many who make a point of calling themselves "survivors" and the family members of people killed/murdered in Arab terror attacks. A few of the subjects are Arabs, themselves. No politics is brought up. It's a book about the people.  But there is one very glaring fact, at least to me. It seems like the majority of the terror attacks take place in what we could euphemistically call "Israel proper" or inside the "green line." The fatal attacks took place in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other places.

Living Beyond Terrorism is not a book about the dangers of living in Judea and Samaria. If I were to sum it up, I'd make that point. Arab terrorists target Israelis all over the country, because their aim is to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with a terror state. That is not Konvisser's message; it's mine.

I found it interesting that some of the people, although claiming that they are functioning fine refused to allow Konvisser to use their names. For others that wasn't a problem.

For many people the injuries have caused long-term and permanent medical problems. And others still suffer emotional pain and post trauma syndrome, which is the profession of Konvisser. The book is the compilation of interviews and evaluations done over a period of years with terror attack survivors, victims and the bereaved. It's not a book everyone can get through. It wasn't cohesively edited.

This is a book for people brave and curious enough to try to understand and feel how others feel who have been attacked, injured and violated. It may also be good for those who are trying to recover from terror and need to know that their feelings are normal.

Right now Israel is suffering through a war for its survival, and unfortunately the tools to help the traumatized, the injured, the survivors and the bereaved are desperately needed.

Format: Paperback
ISBN 10: 9652296430
ISBN 13: 9789652296436
Catalog Number: 9789652296436
Number of Pages: 356
Year Published: 2014

Bibi's Actions Contradict His Excellent Words

Bibi at Bloggers Convention

For years I've said that the best speech/lecture/statement about Jewish History and Jewish connection to the Land of Israel was by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu a number of years ago at the first (of only two) International Jewish Bloggers Convention.  I've also said many times that the Likud is a more Right wing and pro-Jewish Rights in the Land of Israel party when it's in the opposition.  Push a man like Bibi to the wall, and he'll come out with brilliant statements, but make him Prime Minister and you get a younger Shimon Peres.

The media (at least my email inbox) is now full of links to Netanyahu's latest quip at the Knesset.  Hat tip: Israel Hayom and Algemeiner.

As described in Algemeiner:

...Arab Israeli MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) declared that Israeli Jews are an “enemy of peace.”
Zahalka made the comments during a debate on a referendum bill aimed to ensure Israelis will have a right to vote on any final status agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Zahalka said that the bill was irrelevant because it referred to “occupied territory, and as such, what applies is international law; the referendum should apply to the nations of the world.”
The comment was jeered at by MKs in the Knesset, to which Zahalka responded: “You’re an enemy of peace. We were here before you, and we’ll be here after you.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present at the debate, but had not planned to speak, shot back, “The first part is wrong – and the second part will not happen.”

Israel Hayom's version:

Arab MK rejects Jews' claim on the land in late-night Knesset debate: "We were here before you; we will be here after you" • This prompts the prime minister to deliver a rebuttal: "The first part is not true and the second will never take place."

But the sad, ironic truth is that Netanyahu's policies, especially the referendum bill and participation in the Obama pushed "peace" sic talks just add a strong dose of truth to  Zahalka's statement.

There's a long list of extinct groups and peoples who/that were once enemies of the Jewish People.  Only we have survived all of these millennia, centuries and decades.  Less than a hundred years ago it looked like the Nazis would destroy the Jewish People.  Hitler began with Germany and caused the death of six million Jews before being defeated by the Allied Forces.

Netanyahu's "two state policy" support is strengthening our recent Arab aka Palestinian sic enemies and delaying their destruction.  Left to their own devices, our modern enemies would have been destroyed, history, before the twenty-first century.  Their defeat, our miraculous victories in 1967 and 1973 should have done the trick, but instead of our behaving at victors, we looked to our enemies for "peace."

We actually had peace in June, 1967, once the Arab enemies, the Syrians, Jordanians and Egyptians surrendered.  Unfortunately the Israeli Government of the time didn't recognize it.  The same mistake happened after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  We have been suffering war, terrorism and all sorts of attacks because we, the State of Israel and Jewish People all over have been following the laws of man instead of the Laws of G-d.

In the long run, who knows when... Maybe in another few centuries G-d will give us another chance if we goof up this one.  Eventually we will outlive, out-survive our present enemies, but Israeli policies, yes those of Binyamin Netanyahu, are strengthening our enemies who have sworn to destroy us, G-d forbid.

Why Listen To All These Foreigners?

I'm sick and tired of hearing foreign politicians giving us orders about how we should allow what they euphemistically call the "two state solution."

Even if you trusted Obama's judgement, this should make you think:

Monologue Aired Tuesday night on “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” on CBS:
"President Obama may choose a Supreme Court nominee by the end of the week. That’s fast. Nothing against the President, but doesn’t it worry you that it took him 10 times longer to decide on a dog?"

Great point!

You know perfectly well that the world considers us aggressors when we defend ourselves. United Nations Rebukes Israel for Gaza Attacks. So why should we listen to them?

Now, do you really believe that the Arab terrorists in Gaza actually aimed at an "empty field?" Of course, they didn't! Their aim/intention is to murder and destroy us. Get real. Be pragmatic. Just because, G-d protects us an awful lot of the time, it doesn't mean that we're not in serious danger.

The good new is that contrary to American demands, there's lots of building going on here in Shiloh, as you can see from the pictures.

The lesson we must learn from the Holocaust is that nobody cares about Jewish survival but us! And even the Jewish Establishment gets confused at times, because it tries too hard to please the goyim, the other nations.

So I don't care at all what they say and what they threaten to do. Just like G-d changes the aim/target of the Arab terror missiles, so they land in empty fields, if we do what we must do, G-d will see that we're successful and survive. And all those other nations, like the ones who are mentioned in our very long history, will disappear.