Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Memory of the Camps - FRONTLINE PBS documentary

A mass gave.











Hitchcock and the Holocaust: “Memory of the Camps”

 by 
Night Will Fall, a documentary that recently aired on HBO, tells the story behind what has been called “Alfred Hitchcock’s lost Holocaust film” — a 1945 documentary filmed by camera crews who accompanied Allied armies as they entered the Nazi death camps at the end of World War II.
Five of the Hitchcock film’s six reels aired for the first time on FRONTLINE nearly 30 years ago, in Memory of the Camps.
“At the time we found the film in a vault of London’s Imperial War Museum, it was not entirely clear what role Hitchcock played in its development,” says David Fanning, executive producer of FRONTLINE. “Moreover, one reel of the original six, shot by the Russians, was missing. There was a typed script intact  — undated and unsigned  — but it had never been recorded.”
The footage was as horrifying as it gets: Gas chambers. Pits full of the bodies of thousands of systematically starved men, women, and children. Crematoria designed to burn large numbers of corpses. And haunted, emaciated survivors.
Work on the documentary featuring the footage had begun in the summer of 1945, with some of the editing done under the direction of Hitchcock (who, according to the film’s director, Sidney Bernstein, would not take a fee for his work). But as Night Will Fallexplores in detail, the film was ultimately shelved.
In 1985, after finding five of the film’s six reels, FRONTLINE added the script and asked the late British actor Trevor Howard to record it. FRONTLINE’s plan was to present the film unedited, as what the film’s producers had originally intended it to be: an unflinching documentation of the conditions of the death camps.
FRONTLINE broadcast the film for the first time in May of that year, using the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the CampsThe New York Times said, “Memory of the Camps is a filmed monument that does more than tell the story of what it is recalling. It is the story itself,” and the Boston Globe called it “an uninterrupted silent scream that one can’t turn a deaf ear to or look away from.”
Watch Memory of the Camps in full, for free, on FRONTLINE’s website here, and learn more about the film’s remarkable history and backstory here.

In Mapping the Holocaust, a Horrifying Lesson in Nazi “Paths to Persecution”

 by and Ly Chheng
When Allied forces marched into the towns of Bergen and Belsen in the heart of Germany in 1945, there were few obvious signs of the atrocities they’d soon discover. As the forces moved in from the countryside, they passed tidy orchards and well-stocked farms. In a way, it was almost picturesque.
Then came the smell that would lead them to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp of 60,000 prisoners. Inside they found decaying bodies that numbered into the thousands. Men, women and children. For those still alive, there was no functioning water supply. Some had not been fed for days. Others were simply too ill to eat. The soldiers filmed what they witnessed, and in 1985 the grisly footage would form the basis for the documentary, Memory of the Camps, which airs again tonight on FRONTLINE (checklocal listings).
Bergen-Belsen was only the beginning, though. In time, ghettos and camps would be discovered in Nazi-occupied territory throughout much of Europe. In all, at least 6 million people died in Nazi Germany’s system of camps — more than 3 million were Jews.
The map below is just a sliver of the reach of Germany’s network of enslavement under the rule of Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945. Based on the work of historians at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it shows the locations (in grey) of 1,096 out of 1,150 ghettos they’ve identified in Nazi-occupied Eastern-Europe. The locations in black represent 868 of the 1,094 concentration camps they’ve documented. (Locations in yellow were filmed in Memory of the Camps.)
The true figure of sites is well above the number pictured above. When historians at the Holocaust museum began their research, they suspected they’d uncover somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 sites, said Geoffrey Megargee, the project director and general editor. What they soon found is that the actual number is closer to 42,500. But even that, says Megargee, “is a conservative figure.”
The grim census of enslavement, torture and death is part of a multivolume encyclopedia being published by the Holocaust museum. The above figures from the first two volumes have already been released. Six more are planned by 2025.
The early work, Megargee told FRONTLINE, has helped foster a better understanding of what he described as “paths to persecution” during Nazi Germany.
“People tend to think of camps in isolation — concentration camps or ghettos or POW camps or that sort of thing, but there were lots of ways in which prisoners went from one camp to another,” he said.
Equally important, says Megargee, is that given the sheer size of the numbers, it is nearly impossible to believe that ordinary Germans were unaware of Hitler’s system. As he explained:
After the war you had a lot of Germans who tried to say, “Oh we didn’t know anything about these camps,” and they may have been talking about the concentration camps, the extermination camps, that sort of thing but frankly the concentration camps were publicized. The regime wanted people to know about those. It wanted people to know that if they misbehaved, that’s where they were going to go. So these were no secrets, and beyond that, when you have tens of thousands of camps and millions of forced laborers and POWs and concentration camp prisoners everywhere doing every kind of work imaginable, it’s pretty hard to say that you’re not aware of this system.
The slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Sets you Free) at the main entrance of the Sachsenhausen Nazi death camp on the international Holocaust remembrance day in Oranienburg, Germany, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

RELATED


Holocaust Remembrance Day - Joel Rosenberg

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
AuschwitzEscape-adThose who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, said Santayana. Let us never forget.
Yom HaShoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- begins tonight.
Let us take time to remember the six million Jews that were murdered by the Nazis, including 1.5 million children. Let us honor their memories, and pledge ourselves never to forget them. Let us devote ourselves to making sure such evil is never allowed to happen again. This is not just a time for Jews to remember. This is a day for the whole world to remember and commit themselves to standing against evil and against genocide in our time, especially in the face of the Iranian nuclear threat and the murderous rampage upon which ISIS is engaged.
This evening, Lynn and I have been invited to attend the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Yad Vashem, Israel’s renowned Holocaust memorial and research center. I attended last year for the first time, and I am deeply honored to be able to return and bring my wife. I hope to Tweet updates, and post more on this blog so you can track what is happening and consider its significance. We will also attend additional events and ceremonies with Holocaust survivors, Israeli leaders, and various Jewish and Christian leaders. As with last year, I am very much looking forward to this, especially because several of the scholars here were enormously helpful as I was researching The Auschwitz Escape.
My hope and prayer this year is that in addition to remembering those who died in the “Shoah” — the Holocaust — we will also remember the four extraordinary heroes who escaped from Auschwitz 71 years ago this spring to tell the world the truth about what the Nazis were doing, the very men whose remarkable courage and selflessness inspired The Auschwitz Escape. They are:
  • Rudolf Vrba
  • Alfred Wetzler
  • Arnost Rosin
  • Czeslaw Mordowicz
It is the story of these four men that inspired me to write The Auschwitz Escape. Last year, FoxNews.com published a column I wrote sketching out their dramatic saga. I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole column, and then share it with others. Thanks so much. May more such heroes rise up in our generation.
REMEMBERING FOUR HEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST: They pulled off the greatest escape in human history – from a Nazi death camp – to tell the world the truth about Hitler, but no few know their names. [To read the full column, click here.]
----------------------
joelcrosenberg | April 15, 2015 at 6:26 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL:http://wp.me/piWZ7-3hK

Holocaust Remembrance Day: Shouldering an Inheritance of Grief

Holocaust Remembrance Day: Shouldering an Inheritance of Grief

CANDLES
To be the child of Holocaust survivors is to grow up in the company of ghosts. By the time I was born, our large German-Jewish family was reduced to an inverted pyramid. My father didn't remember his grandparents and never knew half of his aunts and uncles, but the lost generations were palpable in their absence. You could smell Grandpa's sorrow in his cigar, taste Grandma's grief in the chicken soup. They missed their parents and grandparents, whose ashes lay in the dust of Buchenwald; their brown-eyed sisters and brothers, finished off by the SS; their many cousins; and all the children and grandchildren they would never have.
At our family's Passover Seders, in addition to the four children scripted to ask symbolic questions, there was always a fifth child at the table, the child who did not survive the Holocaust.
I struggled for decades with what to say to this fifth child, my emotional Siamese twin, a child whose voracious hunger for a life unlived I could never sate. Long ago I realized that I could never laugh loud enough, study hard enough, run fast enough or sing beautifully enough to make up for the joy she will never experience, the lessons she will never learn, the races she will never run and the songs she will never sing.
There were days when this martyred child wouldn't let me have a moment's peace; she was my personal Anne Frank who followed me everywhere. At Wrigley Field, while everyone else was guessing the crowd count, she'd pinch my arm and whisper: "Do you know how many stadiums-full it takes to reach 6 million dead relatives?" When I was stopped at a train crossing, she'd sit in the back, kicking my seat, daring me to imagine a one-way ride in a cattle car. She clung to my legs whenever I heard a German accent.
She brought out the worst and the best I had to give, and she was my constant companion -- until I had a child of my own.
One day, I had a vision of my own daughter intercepting the little girl and taking her by the hand to go outside to play. For the first time, I imagined the sound of the little girl's laughter. And then the burden that had sat on my chest since I have had memory began to melt away.
I began to feel my great-grandmother stand behind me and nod approvingly as I made chicken soup. I sensed my great-grandfather putting his hand on my shoulder when I took a job in the Jewish community. I pictured my brown-eyed grand-aunt smiling as I sang my daughter a Hebrew lullaby.
On the day of my daughter's Bat Mitzvah, the little girl and I watched as a new generation assumed the mantle of our Jewish tradition. Finally, I was able to promise her that Hitler didn't win.
I never saw her again.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I still light a memorial candle for her, and pray that she is at peace.
A version of this post originally appeared on jufnews.org.

Children of the Holocaust: Stars without a Heaven

Children of the Holocaust: 

Stars without a Heaven



JERUSALEM, Israel -- This is Holocaust Remembrance week, 70 years after the Allies opened the Nazi death camps and found the vortex of 6 million Jewish dead.
Today, fewer than 100,000 survivors remain, but Israelis are working hard to keep their memory alive.
It's difficult to grasp the horror and destruction of the Nazi killing machine. One-third of the world's Jews were murdered. The pain and scars endure to the next generation.
David Hershkoviz would hear his mother screaming in her sleep as she relived the agony: a German soldier separated her from her own mother, who died at Auschwitz.
"She didn't speak about the gas chambers because she wasn't there. She didn't speak about the fact that they were burning bodies; she wasn't there. But during the separation she was there, and that separation didn't leave her," he told CBN News, choking back tears.
Hershkoviz's mother died two years ago. But through a "second generation" study course in central Israel, he's keeping her story alive. The Shem Olam Holocaust Institute is educating people like Hershkoviz to tell their stories when the Holocaust survivors are gone.
The Institute's director, Avraham Kreiger, said many children didn't ask tough questions of their parents.
"How did their parents deal with guilt questions during those moments? How did they go through the difficult moments of separation, of leaving, of difficult decisions? They weren't able to ask this and apparently, the parents weren't able to answer," Kreiger told CBN News.
Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial Museum tells more stories in an exhibition called "Children in the Holocaust: Stars without a Heaven," with dolls and sketches.
Holocaust survivor Inna Rennet Rehavi's teddy bear is on display. She carried the bear during a remarkable escape with her mother from the train car leading them to Auschwitz.
"Teddy lasted better than I did, and many others. He is more war wounded than I am since he is missing an ear and an arm; but he was a real hero," Rehavi said.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Anti-Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head in Many Forms

Anti-Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head in Many Forms

The relentless persecution of Jews worldwide is tragic.
The relentless persecution of Jews worldwide is tragic. (Reuters file photo)

Standing With Israel
Exodus 17 tells how Amalekites, descendants of Esau's grandson, attacked the children of Israel in the desert of Sinai during their exodus from Egypt. This unprovoked attack was especially serious and the Israelites battled all day, only achieving victory at nightfall.
In response to this demonstration of cruelty, the Lord told Moses that he would blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Moses later recounted: "The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation" (Exodus 17:16). Amalek's attack on the children of Israel was now a perpetual war between him and the God of Israel.
Amalek was not just a foe, but a genocidal one, so in Jewish tradition the Amalekites came to represent the archetypal enemy of the Jews present in generation after generation. It is interesting to note that some one thousand years later, in the book of Esther, the arch villain Haman was an Amalekite who led the plot to kill the Jews.
The Longest Hatred
This evil pursuit of the Jewish people has continued for millennia, which is why historian Robert Wistrich calls anti-Semitism "the longest hatred." Every time this genocidal hatred seems to be dying out it reinvents itself with a different look and a different name. But the goal is always the same: to rid the world of the Jewish people.
In the ancient world, classical anti-Semitism was a clash between pagan rulers, who demanded obedient homage, and their Jewish subjects, who would only worship and obey the God of Israel. The Jewish people could not bow down to earthly leaders, and were bound by the Sinaitic Law to certain behaviors and observances that set them apart and incurred the wrath of their rulers.
Religious Anti-Semitism
After the rise of Christianity, the problem did not go away. It is a travesty that anti-Semitism was then found in the heart of Christian Europe. Indeed, in the annals of those who persecuted and hated the Jewish people are professing Christians. Space does not permit a full treatment of this sad story, but centuries of state and church-backed denigration, persecution, forced conversions, and expulsions actually paved the way for the Holocaust.
Proof of this is found in the fact that Martin Luther's anti-Semitic writings were published and distributed by the Nazis in order to justify their anti-Jewish laws and eventually their extermination program. Hitler admitted as much when he told two Catholic Bishops who questioned his policy that "he was only putting into effect what Christianity had preached and practiced for 2000 years."
Racial Anti-Semitism
The form of anti-Semitism found in Nazi ideology was not based on religion, however, but on racial theories about the superiority of the Aryan race. Whereas Christianity had sought the conversion of the Jews, and state leaders had sought their expulsion, the Nazis sought the "final solution to the Jewish question," the murder of all Jews and their eradication from the human race.
The good news is that these older forms of anti-Semitism are socially unacceptable in the 21st century. Religious bigotry and racism are frowned upon and are antithetical to the prevailing ideologies of globalism and secularism.
Political Anti-Semitism
The bad news is that Israel, a Jewish nation-state, is also antithetical to both globalism and secularism. Therefore, the modern form of anti-Semitism that has found a stronghold and large-scale acceptance today is political. It is against the Jewish state and is called anti-Zionism.
There is still religious anti-Semitism, but this time it is found throughout the Muslim world and is responsible for the genocidal rhetoric emanating from Iran. Muslim anti-Semitism, however, is tolerated by anti-Zionist Western leaders who blame it on Israeli policies.
Not all criticism of Israel can be considered anti-Semitic. However, criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitic when it delegitimizes the state and questions its right to exist, when it uses anti-Jewish rhetoric and stereotypes or compares Israelis to Nazis, when it judges Israel by a different standard than for any other nation, and when it becomes an excuse to attack local Jewish individuals and institutions.
During the 2014 war in Gaza, a defensive war on Israel's part to prevent further missile launches from Hamas, there were attacks on synagogues and Jewish citizens in France, refrains such as "Jews to the Gas" in Germany, the use of swastikas at anti-Israel demonstrations, and anti-Semitic caricatures in newspapers and social media.
While America is a safe-haven today for Jews fleeing Europe, low levels of anti-Semitism here should not be taken for granted. As American Christians, we should take every opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community, attending their Holocaust remembrance events, and teaching our children to recognize anti-Semitism and take a stand against it.
This generation's battle is not so much with the Amalek of old, and its pagan, Christian or racial anti-Semitism, but with the Amalek of today—the rabid anti-Israel movement that demonizes the Jewish people and nation while excusing Muslim anti-Semitism. This one is on our watch, and it is our responsibility to stand against it.
Susan Michael is the U.S. Director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem www.icejusa.org and creator of IsraelAnswers.com. The ICEJ is bringing Holocaust education to Christians worldwide through its partnership with Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial.       
Did you enjoy this blog? Click here to receive Charisma News by email.

Israel Photo Trivia ✡ "Son of Man, Set Thy Face Toward the Mountains"

Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them.

EZEKIEL (6:2)
 

בֶּן אָדָם שִׂים פָּנֶיךָ אֶל-הָרֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהִנָּבֵא אֲלֵיהֶם

יחזקאל ו:ב

ben a-dam seem pa-ne-kha el ha-ray yis-ra-ayl v'-hi-na-vay a-lay-hem

Today's Israel Inspiration

Ezekiel is described as "son of man" 93 times in his book. This alludes to both his humility and mortality, but also to mankind's role at God's side in improving the world. While his message is specific to Israel, the truths it contained are meant for the betterment of all mankind. "Heart to Heart", Israel's national blood bank, provides life-saving blood for Jews and non Jews throughout Israel in times of emergency.
 

Explore Israel's Beautiful Grottoes

Trivia spoiler alert! On Israel's Mediterranean coast lies a magical site of natural caves and the steepest cable car ride in the world. As the wave rush in and out of the caverns, they create a sound-and-light of water and shadow.

Netanyahu Takes on Obama

In a short video statement directed at President Obama, Netanyahu calls on the international community to open their eyes to Iranian aggression around the world, and presents an alternative nuclear deal.

Word By Word Bible Study Tool

Word by Word teaches the meaning and pronunciation of every Hebrew word in the five books of Moses. It is an essential Bible Study tool, that will help you develop Bible Study skills that will last a lifetime.

Israel Photo Trivia

Can you guess where Rebecca Kowalskytook this beautiful photograph? Send mean email or guess on Facebook

Thank You

Please help us continue to spread the beauty and significance of the Land of Israel!
 

“Deep With Meaning”

It’s great to hear from so many of you - stay in touch and let us know where in the world you are enjoying Israel365!
 
Thank YOU so much for your lovely site! I have loved learning the Hebrew language since last September and even though I am terribly slow due to my age, when the world overwhelms me with too much "stuff," I come back to rely on just your language and learning and reading about it.  It is so wonderful and deep with meaning. Jerry R.
Shalom,
Rabbi Tuly Weisz
RabbiTuly@Israel365.com
Copyright © 2015 Israel365, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up for daily Israel Scenes and Inspiration on our website,www.israel365.com.

Our mailing address is:
Israel365
34 Nahal Ein Gedi Apt #17
Beit Shemesh 9909875
Israel

Israelis Respond to Hillary Clinton's Candidacy

Israelis Respond to Hillary Clinton's Candidacy

Tuesday, April 14, 2015 |  Israel Today Staff
A number of openly pro-Israel Republican candidates have already thrown their hats into the ring of the upcoming US presidential election. But they are largely unknown in the Jewish state. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is well known and widely admired, so her announcement elicited a much stronger Israeli response.
Most reflecting the mainstream media response was Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper, which ran a cover story on Hillary, complete with a two-page photographic look at her life and rise to power. Similarly congratulatory articles appeared on the Walla! news portal, the website of Channel 2 News, and other outlets.
“When Hillary Clinton decided to run [for president], she took yet another step toward” realizing the feminist agenda, gushed Israeli lawmaker Merav Michaeli (Labor) in an op-ed published by the left-leaningHa’aretz.
Michaeli urged readers to hold fast to the “hope that no one will arise to stop Hillary Clinton… [who] is not just any female candidate, but the first woman to bring global attention to the notion that ‘women’s rights are human rights.’”
At the same time, the right-wing nature of the Israeli public was apparent in the comments to many of these articles, with most respondents fearful that Clinton would be even worse for Israel than President Barack Obama.
The ultra-Orthodox news portal Behadrey Haredim noted that Clinton’s campaign management had already leaked that she intends to embrace, rather than distance herself from Obama and his policies. If that extends to Obama’s policies vis-a-vis Israel, Iran and the rest of the Middle East, Clinton might soon earn a new, more negative reputation in this region.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates from ISRAEL TODAY.

WATCH: Jonathan Cahn Shares Starling Prophetic Mystery About the Seventh Cow

WATCH: Jonathan Cahn Shares Starling Prophetic Mystery About the Seventh Cow






New York Times' best-selling author Jonathan Cahn knew the super Shemitah was coming, but even he was startled when the biblical cycle revealed itself on national media. 
 A throwback to Pharaoh's dream in Genesis, on Sept. 25, a cow with the number seven was born and hit the news wires.
Now, Cahn says the mystery deepens. 
Watch the video to see what he says about the cow. 
Did you like this article? You'll enjoy Jonathan Cahn's book, The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America's Future