Showing posts with label death camp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death camp. Show all posts

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog: Never Again, Never Forget: On Holocaust Remembrance Day, here are four true heroes to remember.

auschwitz-joelontracks


New post on Joel C. Rosenberg's Blog

Never Again, Never Forget: On Holocaust Remembrance Day, here are four true heroes to remember. Who will be the heroes of our time, standing against evil & genocide?

by joelcrosenberg
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. -- Santayana
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Here in Israel, the sirens will sound at precisely 10am. Every car, truck, bus and taxi cab will pull to a stop. Every worker will lay down his tools. Every classroom will fall silent. Every Jewish Israeli, regardless of what he or she is doing, will stand at attention, listen to the wail of the sirens, and remember those who were ruthless sent to the gas chamber, simply because they were Jews.
How will you remember the Holocaust today? How will you teach your children about the most horrific attempt to exterminate a single people group in the history of mankind?
I encourage you to make time today to remember the six million Jews -- including 1.5 million children -- were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Read the stories below. Share them on social media. Visit a Holocaust Museum. Watch Schindler's List or one of the other great films about what happened. Read Elie Wiesel's Night. Better yet, find a survivor -- or the son or daughter of a survivor -- and ask them to share their story with you and your family.
Let us honor their memories, and pledge ourselves never to forget them. In so doing, let us pledge to never allow such evil to happen again.
This is not just a time for Jews to remember, or the world to remember the Jews. This is a day for all of mankind to take a decisive stand against evil and against genocide in our time. This is especially critical in the face of the continuing Iranian nuclear threat and the apocalyptic regime in Tehran's repeated vows to annihilate the U.S. and the State of Israel. It is also critical in the light of the genocidal rampage against Muslims, Christians and Yazidis that the apocalyptic leaders of the Islamic State are engaged.
My hope and prayer this year is that in addition to remembering those who died in the “Shoah” (the Holocaust), we will also remember those who lived -- especially four extraordinary heroes who actually escaped from Auschwitz in the spring of 1944 not only to save their own lives but to tell the world the truth about what the Nazis were doing.
I first learned about these men and their extraordinary courage and selflessness upon visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland in 2011. Their stories intrigued me. Indeed, they inspired me to write the novel, The Auschwitz Escape.
Their names are:
  • Rudolf Vrba
  • Alfred Wetzler
  • Arnost Rosin
  • Czeslaw Mordowicz
In 2014, I wrote a column specifically sketching out their dramatic saga, based on the research I did for the book, including meeting with some of the world's leading Holocaust scholars at Yad Vashem here in Israel. I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole column, and then share it with others.
They are worth remembering. They are worth emulating. Indeed, as darkness falls once again in the epicenter and around the world, may their tribe increase.
————————–
——————-
joelcrosenberg | May 5, 2016 at 5:51 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/piWZ7-4C2

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

“The Auschwitz Escape” - New Book by Joel Rosenberg

“The Auschwitz Escape” releases nationwide today. Reflections on how I discovered the true stories that inspired the novel.

by joelcrosenberg
AuschwitzEscape-ad
In November of 2011, I decided to go to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. I’d never been there before. I didn’t really even want to go. But I knew I had to. So I invited several friends -- a pastor from the U.S. and his wife, and a pastor from Germany and his wife. Unfortunately, my wife, Lynn, wasn’t able to join me. But the trip had a profound effect on me.
It was a surreal and sobering experience to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It’s hard to describe the emotions of standing in an actual gas chamber where people were murdered, seeing the ovens where bodies were burned, walking through the cell blocks, seeing the guard towers and barbed wire and train tracks. It was haunting to realize that more than one million people were systematically murdered there, and most of them were Jews.
While I was there, I purchased a book that explained that there had been many escape attempts from Auschwitz, but only a handful of successful escapes. I was stunned. We had hired a special guide to take us through the camp. He was a really bright, educated man. He had been an excellent guide, and we had learned so much. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about escapes. I had never heard about any escapes. But this book gave a brief description of several of them.
Intrigued, as soon as I got home, I started tracking down any resource I could about these men who had risked everything to get out. How had they succeeded? What was their plan? Who helped them? What did they do when they got out? Did they tell anyone in the Jewish community, or among the Allies, what they had seen, what the Nazis were doing at Auschwitz? The more I learned, the more intrigued I became. It turned out there were several non-fiction books written by several of the men who escaped, and several about them. There were even several novels on the subject. But they were old. Some were out of print. If they once had been discussed – I’m sure they were – but they seemed long forgotten.
As I continued to do my research, I realized that April 7th, 2014 would be the 70thanniversary of the greatest escape in human history – the day Rudolf Vrba and Fred Wetzler escaped from the worst of the Nazi death camps. That’s when I began thinking about writing a novel inspired by these true stories that might draw attention back to the greatest escape in human history by men determined to tell the world the truth about what Adolf Hitler was really doing to the Jews. If I could finish it and release it by the spring of 2014, I thought I might be able help people remember these incredible stories of courage and heroism and faith.
Without question, The Auschwitz Escape was by far the most emotionally exhausting book I’ve ever written. By that I mean I had to immerse myself in the history of the Holocaust – books, documentary films, web sites, museums, research centers, conversations with survivors, conversations with experts, and so forth. And the history is more horrific that you can possibly imagine. Even when you think you understand what happened back then, you uncover more darkness, more evil. My wife and kids could see the effect it was having on me. I could see it, as well.
I knew the story needed hope. Yes, the fact that men escape from this unimaginably cruel extermination camp provides hope. They live. They survive. They tell others. Absolutely. But it wasn’t enough. For me, as an evangelical Christian with Jewish roots on my father’s side, I wanted to find out if any Christians did the right thing to help the Jews. Intellectually, I knew the answer was yes, there were Christians who had done the right thing. But I also knew that far too many people who said they loved Jesus refused to obey Him, refused to love their neighbors during the darkest period in the history of the Jewish people. Some were too scared. Some lost their faith. Some never had any faith at all, they were just giving lip service to the Gospel. It breaks my heart, but tragically it is true. Far too many so-called “Christians” failed the Jewish people when they needed us most.
That’s when I stumbled upon the story of Le Chambon and the pastors of this little Protestant village in France who risked their lives to save thousands of Jews fleeing from Hitler and the Nazis. The more I read, the more I knew this was the story of hope I needed to weave into the novel. And I think it’s the combination of the two stories – the story of a German Jewish teenage boy whose family is nearly wiped out and is sent to Auschwitz, and that a young Frenchman who is a husband and a father and an assistant pastor in Le Chambon, both fictional, but both inspired by true stories – it’s the fusion, the combination of these two story lines, that makes The Auschwitz Escape storyline work for me.
Soon, I got fascinated in who these young men were, how they get sent to Auschwitz, how they met, how different they are, and how they get involved in these escapes. This is what gave me hope, even excitement, if I can use that term, to write every day – trying to understand them and going on this hero’s journey with them both not entirely knowing how the story would wind up when I began.
In addition to going to Auschwitz, and reading everything I could get my hands on, I also traveled to Israel and visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum and research center. They were very gracious and allowed me to come twice, meet with several of their scholars, ask them many questions, tour their facilities, and try to make sure my work of historical fiction was as accurate as I could possibly make it. Several of the scholars actually knew some of the men who had escaped, had interviewed them, had long discussions with them, and their insights were so helpful.
They also took me down into their vaults and showed me copies of “The Auschwitz Protocol,” the document that was compiled by eyewitness accounts from Rudolf Vrba, Alfred (Fred) Wetzler, Arnost Rosin, and Czeslaw Mordowicz, the four Jewish heroes who risked their lives to tell the world the truth about what the Nazis were really up to. Too few people know these four men’s names, but I hope that will change. The Yad Vashem scholars helped me better understand who they were, and what they wrote, and I hope you take time to understand them, too. It was absolutely fascinating, and I’m deeply grateful for their help.
The novel releases nationwide today. I look forward to your comments -- which you can post on our "Epicenter Team" page on Facebook -- and your questions!
————————
joelcrosenberg | March 18, 2014 at 10:54 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-2UH

Friday, August 23, 2013

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor.

Rachel Boskey
Aug. 23, 2013
Shabbat Shalom dear Facebook friends!

I want to introduce you a dear couple whom Avner Boskey and I have come to love in the last years -- Natan Friedman and his wife Shoshana. Natan and Shoshana live in our town. 

Natan is an artist. He is a Holocaust survivor who escaped death by assuming the identity of a Polish child and living in a monastery. After World War Two, Natan sailed with thousands of others, mostly young people, on the famous “Exodus” ship and he stood on Israel’s shores briefly in August 1947. But all of the Jewish people on the “Exodus” were refused entry to their homeland and were sent back to Europe.

 Natan finally arrived in Israel on May 15, 1948. In Israel, Natan became an accomplished scientist. His wife Shoshana was a schoolteacher with a master’s degree in English literature. They have two children and seven grandchildren. 

Natan has created many amazing works of art over the years, both paintings and sculptures. Some of them reflect the traumas and horrors he experienced as a Jewish child in Poland and many others reflect his life of many years in Israel. Next week Natan and his art will be featured on an Israeli TV program. 

Today I was privileged to photograph some of Natan’s works which will be shown on the TV program. To know Natan and Shoshana is to love them! — with Avner Boskey and ‎נתן פרידמן‎. (16 photos)

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Passover items used in WWII found at death camp

Passover items used in WWII found at death camp
By JNS.ORG, Jerusalem Post
03/16/2013

Worn out Haggadah belonging to Jewish prisoners was discovered at Chelmno concentration camp in Poland.

An old Haggadah preserved by Bar Ilan University.
An old Haggadah preserved by Bar Ilan University. Photo: Courtesy
 
The Israel-based Shem Olam Holocaust and Faith Institute on Thursday showcased items that may have been used for Passover rituals at the Chelmno death camp in western Poland. The items were discovered during excavations of the site in pits containing prisoners’ belongings.

One item is a worn out and partially torn Haggadah that was burned by the Nazis. Several portions dealing with the search for chametz (leavened bread) and other sentences managed to survive.
Shem Olam was founded in 1996 by Avraham Krieger. It is located in Kfar Haroeh, just north of Netanya. One of the institute’s projects deals with how Jews coped with the day-to-day struggles during the Holocaust.

“The Nazis told Jews who had been deported to Chelmno that they were being relocated to a village faraway in the east; they told them each person could bring only lightweight items with a combined weight of 3 to 4 kilograms (7 to 9 pounds),” Krieger said.

“Because of the limited number of items they were allowed to carry, the Jews brought their most important items, but many brought with them things that belonged to their spiritual life and identity… The mere fact that they added these things shows that they were loyal to their faith, to the holiday and to tradition; they demonstrated that they did not let the Germans break their spirit,” he said.

According to Krieger, “Most of the death camps had no such items left behind, but since Chelmno was the first death camp on Polish soil, the Nazis had yet to have at their disposal a sophisticated apparatus and consequently, some of the property was buried, and survived.”


http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Passover-items-used-during-WWII-found-at-death-camp
 

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Auschwitz Records 1.43 Million Visitors in 2012

Auschwitz Records 1.43 Million Visitors in 2012

The Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp memorial and museum registered 1.43 million visitors in 2012, a record number in its 65-year history.
 
By Rachel Hirshfeld
First Publish: 1/8/2013, Israel National News

Jewish delegation at Auschwitz
Jewish delegation at Auschwitz
Israel news photo: Flash 90
 
The Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp memorial and museum in southern Poland registered 1.43 million visitors in 2012, a record number in its 65-year history, officials said Friday.


For several years now, the grounds of the former Nazi death camp have registered record numbers of visitors. In 2011, there were 1.4 million visitors from across the world, triple the number of a decade before.


In a statement announcing the new figure, director Piotr Cywinski said that in the last decade Auschwitz has become a "fundamental memorial" for all of Europe.


“It reflects the actual meaning of the history of the Shoah and the drama of concentration camps in the history of contemporary Europe and understanding its appearance today,” he said. “The growing educational dimension of this place indirectly shows us also the challenges that our societies face today."


Poland had the most visitors with 446,000, followed by Great Britain (149,000 visitors), the United States (97,000), Italy (84,000), Germany (74,000), Israel (68,000), and other countries.


While the record numbers of tourists visiting the site is essential for Holocaust education, it is straining the site's barracks and other structures, most of which were built of wood and never intended to last long.

Efforts are currently under way to preserve the site and maintain it in as close a state as possible to when it was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945.


The Nazis murdered at least 1.1 million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau (some claim the figure is much higher), most of whom were Jews, but the victims also included Polish political prisoners, Romani (gypsies), homosexuals and others.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163990