WW 2 Life Story incl. Auschwitz Experiences of Bill’s Aunt & Her Role in Medical Experimentation
Elsbeth was the youngest of the three daughters of Sophie and Lothar Midas. In 1943, she and her first husband Robert Gerst were captured while in hiding by the Nazis when in Amerongen, Holland. Rumors exist that they worked with the resistance. They were arrested and confined in Scheveningen* , a police prison in Holland. Later, as an Auschwitz prisoner, she was forced to participate in the medical experiments performed in Auschwitz Medical Block 10. For details on medical experiments in this setting, click HERE for quotation from the book, “The Nazi Doctors” by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton.
On August 25, 1943, which was Elsbeth’s 27th birthday, she arrived in Auschwitz, where she was housed in Block 10 with other prisoners who were also experimented on by Mengele. The book, Die Frauen Von Block 10: Medizinische Versuche in Auschwitz (The Women of Block 10: Medical Experiments in Auschwitz) is a study of women victims of Mengele.
After the war, she returned to her family who had immigrated to New York City. She married her second husband, Harry Weilheimer and their life together was blessed with happiness until her passing in 1994.
Elsbeth remains in our minds as a tremendous example of what hope looks like before, during and after personally experiencing and witnessing the Nazis in action.
Click HERE for details on Scheveningen Prison.(also known as Oranjehotel).
Below is a detailed chart showing the extraordinarily difficult journey Elsbeth and her first husband Robert were forced to make:
Elsbeth with her first husband Robert
(Robert and Elsbeth’s engagement announcement, May 17, 1938 in Amsterdam)
(From Robert and Elsbeth’s wedding announcement, June 1, 1938 in Amsterdam)
Uncle Robert Gerst – First husband of Aunt Elsbeth Midas
Born in Nüremberg on November 29, 1910
Died in Auschwitz on October 5, 1943
Captured in Amsterdam, when in hiding with Elsbeth
and transported to Auschwitz. She survived, he did not.
“In July 1943, after the Gersts had spent 3 years living under harsh Nazi occupation, eight Gestapo men stormed their hiding place and Elsbet’s excruciating odyssey began.”
Excerpt from Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper (Cambridge University Press, 2005
Robert Gerst’s name appears in the Dutch “Digital Monument to the Jewish Community.” The Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands is an Internet monument dedicated to preserving the memory of all the men, women and children who were persecuted as Jews during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and did not survive the Shoah. Every person in the Monument has a separate page commemorating his or her life. (To read more about the Digital Monument click HERE.)
![Gerst_Robert[1]a](https://haitiholocaustsurvivors.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/gerst_robert1a.jpg)
To Robert Gerst by Harriet Mohr
No More, No Less
Every Jewish person who struggled
to stay alive during the Holocaust
and those who were free
from boxcars, camps and slave labor
walked in mind with you Robert
as you were dragged to the gallows
in Auschwitz
and executed for being a Jewish person
no more, no less
today we remember you
as one of the innocent 6 million
who made the ultimate sacrifice
for being a Jew
no more, no less
it is immeasurably gratifying
to place this stone in your memory
in Yad Vashem in the Jewish homeland
we feel the circle of your life
is now finally complete
In memory of Bill’s uncle Robert Gerst who was murdered in Auschwitz October 1943, during which time his wife, Bill’s mother’s youngest sister Elsbeth, was also a prisoner but thankfully, she survived.
To see Robert’s page in the Digital Monument click HERE
(For original Digital Monument image click HERE)
To read Harriet’s poem in Robert’s memory click HERE
Below is a newspaper advertisement placed by Bill’s Aunt Hilde searching for her sister and brother-in-law, Elsbeth and Robert Gerst.
Gerst, Elsbeth, maiden name Midas (born in 1916 in Fürth, Bavaria),
and Robert (Bob, born in 1910 in Nürnberg) last address: 4 Watteau Street, Amsterdam, probably deported in July 1942), ad placed by Hilde Dreifuss, maiden name Midas, 619 West 163rd Street, New York 32, N.Y.
Apartment house at Watteaustraat 4 (3 miles from the Anne Frank House) in Amsterdam, Holland where Aunt Elsbeth and Uncle Robert lived. After their capture they were deported to Auschwitz, where they were separated. When the war ended and Elsbeth was liberated from Auschwitz, she found out Robert had been murdered by the Nazis, shortly after entering the camp. When the young married couple were captured Elsbeth was 27 and Robert was 32. To read Elsbeth’s disturbing first hand report on her capture, CLICK HERE to the page in the book, Buried by The Times.
Note, Anne Frank and her family were in hiding from July 1942 until August 1944 when the family was arrested. Elsbeth and Robert were in hiding for three years prior to their arrest in August 1943. Thus, their times in hiding were somewhat similar. Neither ever could have dreamed of being mentioned together on a “BLOG,” such as ours, in the year 2012.
Medical Experiments on Elsbeth at Auschwitz
“Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”
– James Anthony Froude
Dr. Clauberg, a German gynecologist who worked alongside Mengele in Auschwitz, conducted experiments on mass sterilization.
Elsbeth Gerst, Auschwitz Camp number 55992, became one of a group of 700 women Dr. Carl Clauberg conducted experiments on forced sterilization. After injection of a sterilization fluid, she was x-rayed and the tubal occlusion was a success. Later, when married to Harry Weilheimer, all medical efforts to enable her to become pregnant failed. We were not aware of any of these details until correspondence with Holocaust researchers in September 2021.
To learn more about Clauberg and the forced sterilization experiments, click HERE.
To hear a quite disturbing detailed account of the sterilization experiments Elsbeth was forced to endure, click HERE for a Holocaust researcher’s analysis given at the “Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire” conference on October 6. 2021.
What happened to Elsbeth demonstrates the evilness, the enormous cruelty of sterilizing Auschwitz women prisoners. Her pain and suffering went on for many years after the medical experiments and she lived in New York.
After Auschwitz – A New Life
For additional World War II related info click HERE
To access poetry related to World War II by Harriet Mohr click HERE
Harry A family picnic. Elsbeth on far left
. …………………………………….. . .Harry in foreground
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Epilog: “Selective Psychopathy: How Psychologically Normal People Commit Instrumental Planned Violence and Participate in Genocides and Mass Murder” Click HERE for a detailed examination of many of the dark elements in genocides and mass murders that made up the Holocaust. This article is a difficult read but it will give a context for some of what Elsbeth experienced up close every day she was in concentration camps.
To hear Dr. Hans-Joachim Lang’s presentation at the “Medical Review Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire” conference on October 6. 2021, click HERE. It is an incredibly shocking horrific very detailed description of the involuntary experimentation on women in Block 10 in Auschwitz, including Elsbeth, who went through several different experiments. WARNING: It should be listened to with extreme caution.
WW 2 Life Story incl. Auschwitz Murder of Bill’s Uncle & His Memorization in a New National Memorial in Amsterdam (9/2021)
(For a detailed description of Robert’s wife Elsbeth’s capture by the Nazis, confinement as a prisoner in concentration camps and more, click HERE.)
[NOTE: We were pleased to learn Robert Gerst, Elsbeth’s first husband, who died in Auschwitz, is remembered in this new Holocaust memorial. His name appears on one of the bricks on one of the walls shown in the pictures below.]
Studio Libeskind crafts National Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam, designing dramatic geometric shapes that carry the message of remembrance
Daniel Libeskind and Studio Libeskind have just unveiled the National Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam, a powerful design shaped by reflective volumes and dramatic geometries. The piece, commissioned by Dutch Auschwitz Committee (Nederlands Auschwitz Comité), aims to commemorate the Dutch Jews, Sinti and Roma who were murdered during the Holocaust, and the names of more than 102,000 victims are engraved on the brick plinths’ walls.
The project is defined by a labyrinth of passages. This is created by a series of relatively low brick volumes arranged at different angles. They support four mirrored architecture pieces clad in stainless steel sheets, each forming a letter of the Hebrew alphabet and together forming a word that translates as ‘In memory of’. While the word can be only fully read from above, the striking composition creates a powerful dialogue with its surroundings, reflecting buildings, light and passers-by and drawing them into the composition.
The memorial sits in the city’s Weesperstraat, covering a generous 1,700 sq m, and is open to all, featuring landscaping and seating areas designed by Studio Libeskind in cooperation with Rijnboutt (also the local architect of record). The site was carefully selected and sits within the Jewish Cultural Quarter. It is adjacent to the Hermitage Museum, and just a stone’s throw from the Amstel River and its Jewish community and landmarks. The use of brick on the structure reflects the local urban fabric.
‘The Dutch lost the largest percentage of their Jewish population in the Holocaust,’ says Libeskind. ‘The National Holocaust Memorial of Names is the first Holocaust memorial to commemorate the Dutch victims and the first of its kind in Amsterdam. My personal connection as a child of Holocaust survivors has made it increasingly important to be a part of this significant project. I hope it will become a place for contemplation, hope, and an important reminder to fight hate in all its forms for the people of the Netherlands and beyond.’
This important memorial is officially inaugurated on 19 September 2021.
Are U.S. Jews Still More Safe Than the Jews of Europe?
Dear Friends,
We are very pleased to share the excellent article below with you which was written by our Tikkun Olam Award recipient #31.
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Harriet and Bill
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Are U.S. Jews Still More Safe Than the Jews of Europe?
The last two years have seen extreme right-wing views entering the mainstream, including a militant strain of white nationalism. But until the unprecedented Pittsburgh synagogue hate crime, I would have said U.S. Jews lived unthreatened lives relative to Europe. Now, that’s changed.
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Haaretz November 5, 2018
By Alvin Rosenfeld
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A police officer stands guard outside Temple Sinai before Friday evening Shabbat services on November 2, 2018 in Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaAFP
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The murderous attack on Jews at prayer in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, on October 27, put a bloody exclamation point behind an already growing sense of unease in today’s America.
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Over the past two years, the entry into the country’s mainstream of extreme right-wing views, including a militant strain of white nationalism, made clear that the social and political climate was changing, and not for the better.
No one, however, expected a crazed gunman shouting “all Jews must die” to enter a synagogue on a normal Shabbat morning and carry out the worst massacre of Jews in American history. While it is still too soon to assess all of the implications of this horrific event, anti-Semitism is sure to be on Jewish minds and, very likely, on the minds of others, too, as we approach the midterm Congressional elections.
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Until this unprecedented hate crime, most American Jews of this generation, if asked, would say that they typically go about their daily lives without encountering overt antagonism.
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In earlier decades, however, American Jews experienced varying degrees of discrimination and exclusion. A hard-edged anti-Semitism was a prominent part of the public discourse of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and during these years Jews were frequently accused of disloyalty, economic profiteering, and war-mongering.
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Acts of aggression against individual Jews and Jewish institutions have also occurred over the years and continue to this day, with frequent reports of assaults on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and elsewhere.
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The United States has hardly been free of anti-Semitism, yet most American Jews have long felt generally accepted, are fully integrated in virtually all strata of American life, and believe themselves to be secure and at home in the United States.
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Well before the Pittsburgh shootings, though, recent events had begun to rattle these feelings of safety and belonging. Anti-Jewish hostility has been on the upsurge globally since the turn of the millennium, and Jews everywhere have begun to feel more vulnerable.
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The Jewish community and allies come together for a candlelight vigil for victims of the synagogue shooting at the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. White House, D.C. October 27, 2018AFP
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The Anti-Defamation League’s most recent report reveals that 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents took place in the U.S. in 2017 – a 57 percent increase over the previous year’s total. Most involved vandalism and verbal abuse and not physical assaults.
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Compared to the situation in European countries, where physical attacks against Jews, some of them lethal, are far more common, it had long been thought that the situation in America has been relatively safe. Nevertheless, given the uptick in anti-Semitism in both word and deed and the general sense of tension and confrontation in today’s highly polarized American society, there is need for increased protection – a need that is sure to increase dramatically in the aftermath of Pittsburgh.
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In response, a newly extended defense organization, Community Security Services, has already trained some 4,000 Jewish volunteersto protect synagogues and other Jewish institutions in America. That number is now sure to grow.
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Beyond these problems, manifestations of anti-Jewish hostility have become evident in extreme segments of the political right, the political left, and political Islam. The first of these now seems especially threatening.
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The public displays of hard-right, white supremacist, and anti-Semitic fervor that culminated in the infamous rally of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017 came as a shock. Many Americans looked on with a deepening sense of dismay, which was compounded when President Trump remarked that there were “very fine people” on both sides of that violent event.
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File photo: White nationalists march in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, August 12, 2017.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
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One wondered if it was an aberrant, one-off happening or heralded the revival of re-energized passions on the extreme right.
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A second rally held one year after the Charlottesville gathering attracted only a small handful of supporters, though, so it seemed to many that the “alt-right,” a loose collection of diverse, counter-cultural types on the reactionary right, had for now retreated mostly to its previous online existence.
But the Pittsburgh assault signaled that not everyone would be satisfied with a merely virtual anti-Semitic existence somewhere in cyberspace. Robert Bowers, a previously unknown Jew-hating activist, his head full of delusional notions about non-existent Jewish threats, decided it was time to “go in.” He did just that and, guns blazing, took the lives of 11 innocent Jews.
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Ominously, and in another sphere of public life, several extreme figures, including Holocaust deniers and openly declared anti-Semites, are running for local, state, and national office, mostly as Republicans, in several U.S. states.
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The most notorious of these is Arthur Jones, an avowed white supremacist, anti-Semite, and former leader of the American Nazi party, who is on the ticket as the uncontested Republican candidate for a Congressional seat in Illinois’ third district.
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NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt✔@NBCNightlyNews
Holocaust denier running unopposed in Illinois GOP congressional primary.http://nbcnews.to/2nJX3FzHolocaust denier running unopposed in GOP congressional primary
Arthur Jones is running unopposed for the Republican primary for Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District seat.nbcnews.com
Jones is an extreme case but not an isolated one, for several others who share racist and anti-Semitic views are also in contention for political office, and not for the first time. None is expected to win, but the fact that they are in the race at all gives their toxic views far greater visibility than they otherwise would have.
Add to all of the above a widespread sense of disquiet about some of President Trump’s more extreme America First policies, as well as his often incendiary rhetoric, some of it bound to fuel a growing intolerance and even xenophobia among groups within the country, and the situation worsens. Factor in as well America’s pervasive gun culture, and the potential for still more violence becomes obvious.
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In addition, an increasingly hostile scene for Jewish students on some U.S. college campuses, anti-Semitic exhortations issuing from imams in a number of American mosques, Louis Farrakhan’scontinuing preaching against “Satanic Jews,” and the frequent appearance of swastikas and other signs of anti-Jewish hatred make it understandable why many American Jews are feeling concerns they have not previously known.
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Older Americans may recall when rabid anti-Semitic propaganda was widely disseminated in the years of Father Coughlin and the Christian Front, Henry Ford and “The International Jew”, and the swastika epidemic of 1959-60. For most younger Americans, though, today’s toxic rhetoric and the violence that can accompany it are new and alarming.
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Until the murders at the Tree of Life synagogue, it would have been safe to say that compared to the situation of Jews living in European countries, most American Jews live unthreatened lives. The America they have long known as stable and hospitable, however, is in a phase of social, political, and ideological tumult, in which extreme views of many kinds have come prominently to the fore. Anti-Semitism flourishes in such an unsettled climate, as do other kinds of racial, ethnic, and religious hostility.
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Just how this troubled sense of things will accompany voters to the ballot box remains to be seen, but it should not be discounted as a factor in how people of all faiths, or none, and particularly Jews, will vote.
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Alvin H. Rosenfeld is Professor of English and holds the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University, where he is also Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary anti-Semitism at Indiana University. He is the editor of Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives (Indiana University Press, 2013) and Deciphering the New Antisemitism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015)
Trump Needs to Demilitarize His Rhetoric
White nationalists at a march ahead of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11, 2017.STEPHANIE KEITH / REUTERS.
Anti-Semitism reared its ugly head this Sabbath in the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. The 46-year-old Robert D. Bowers walked into Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire on congregants as he yelled out, “All Jews must die!” Bowers is so far to the right and so addled by hatred that he has refused to support President Donald Trump on the grounds that he is “controlled by Jews.”
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Speaking to reporters shortly after the shooting, Trump expressed his condolences and said, “You wouldn’t think this would be possible in this day and age, but we just don’t seem to learn from the past.”
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But the president can’t really be so surprised. He has been warned repeatedly about the dangers of tolerating white nationalism even as he has borrowed language from anti-Semitic propaganda.
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When the president has played in this sandbox for political purposes, he has been playing with fire. Although American Jews has never experienced the same level of virulent, state-sanctioned aggression as European Jews have, anti-Semitism has never been absent in this country. Like their analogues abroad, populist American leaders in the 19th century told their followers that Jewish bankers posed a threat to the security of hardworking Americans. Images of Jews with big noses and crooked faces were commonplace in political cartoons. When more than 1.7 million Eastern European Jews arrived in the country at the turn of the 20th century, they encountered nativist organizations that fought for federal restrictions on immigration.
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In perhaps the most famous American anti-Semitic incident of the last century, a mob in 1915 stormed a Georgia prison to seize the Jewish businessman Leo Frank, who had been falsely accused of murdering a 13-year-old Christian girl. They lynched him.
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The most famous American anti-Semite may have been the automobile giant Henry Ford, who published a newspaper in the 1920s, The Dearborn Independent, that served as an outlet for anti-Semitic propaganda. Ford once wrote that there was a “Jewish plan to control the world, not by territorial acquisition, not by military aggression, not by governmental subjugation, but by control of the machinery of commerce and exchange.” A close second to Ford was the aviator Charles Lindbergh, the spokesman for the America First Committee, which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Another contender was the wildly popular “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin, who railed against “world Jewish domination.”
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Anti-Semitism manifested itself at every level of society and across the country. In the South, the Ku Klux Klan also targeted Jews as it went after African Americans. Jews “procured” young women to “enhance their own monetary interests,” the Klan stated in the 1920s. In Dorchester, Massachusetts, Irish Catholic gangs in the 1940s roved the streets in “Jew Hunts” that culminated in physical assaults. Even as Jews started to break into certain industries, such as entertainment, in the 1930s and ’40s, they confronted tight restrictions that kept them out of law firms, medical professions, universities and colleges, fraternities, hotels, country clubs, and more. One hotel boasted in an advertisement, “No Hebrews or tubercular guests received.” Elite institutions of higher learning such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton imposed strict quotas on how many Jews they would admit. The application for Sarah Lawrence College asked, “Has your daughter been brought up to strict Sunday observance?” Like African Americans, Jews were subject to restrictive real-estate covenants that prevented “Hebrews” from living in particular neighborhoods.
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Conditions improved after World War II. The horror of the Holocaust made overtly anti-Semitic ideas and policies unacceptable in mainstream U.S. society. The number of Americans who heard “criticism or talk against Jews,” according to the historian Leonard Dinnerstein, declined from 64 percent in 1946 to 12 percent in 1959.
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Much of the Jewish community prospered, securing middle-class jobs across a number of industries and settling into the growing suburban communities of postwar America. Jewish synagogues and civic institutions sprouted up in almost every region of the country. Federal and state legislation outlawed residential and employment discrimination. The head of the Anti-Defamation League, Benjamin Epstein, called this era the “golden age” for American Jews. The Jewish community was elated when in 1965 Vatican II adopted a version of the “Nostra Aetate,” which rescinded the charge that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.
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But anti-Semitism did not disappear from American life. Anti-Semitic rhetoric was intertwined with anti-communist rhetoric during the Cold War era. The Democratic Congressman John E. Rankin of Mississippi proclaimed that the issue of the era was “Yiddish Communism versus Christian civilization.” Anti-Semitism and racism also went hand in hand. When Rabbi Abraham Heschel joined Martin Luther King Jr. to march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was dismayed to see banners that read: “Koons, Kikes, and Niggers Go Home!”
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Anti-Semitism has continued to crop up on the right side of the political spectrum. In 1990, the America First pundit and future presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan blamed Operation Desert Storm on “the Israeli defense ministry and its ‘amen corner’ in the United States.” But anti-Semitism has also stained the left. Just recently, the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has been making hateful comments about Jews since the early 1980s, warned supporters of “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit.” On college campuses in particular, criticism of Israel has sometimes veered into anti-Semitism.
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But if anti-Semitism in the U.S. is nothing new, it’s still shocking to hear coded language—whatever the intention—come from the very top. Despite having a daughter, a son-in-law, and grandchildren who are Jewish, Trump has dabbled in anti-Semitic rhetoric. In April 2013, seeking to criticize The Daily Show, he tweeted: “I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz—I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow.” As a candidate in 2016, he retweeted messages from anti-Semitic supporters and refused to clearly distance himself from the former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. He embraced the label of America First, which carries obvious anti-Semitic resonances, and tweeted out a photograph of Hillary Clinton next to a Star of David and in front of piles of money, with text that read: “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”
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Just days after Trump was warned about the anti-Semitic implications of a speech alleging a globalist conspiracy, his campaign ran an ad showing images of three Jews—the billionaire philanthropist George Soros; the then-chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen; and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. In the voice-over, Trump said, “The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interest, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind.” That line about “the levers of power,” whatever his intentions, was darkly reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
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After Trump became president, the situation did not improve. The so-called alt-right, which includes anti-Semitic groups, was pleased to see the head of their preferred platform, Breitbart News, have a seat in the Oval Office through adviser Steve Bannon. In January 2017, the White House’s official message on Holocaust Remembrance Day did not mention Jews or anti-Semitism. The worst moment occurred when Trump refused to come down hard and decisively against the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 chanting, “The Jews will not replace us!”
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In recent weeks, the president has used Soros—increasingly a boogeyman in anti-Semitic conspiracy circles—as a major foil. During Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation hearings, he tweeted out a message claiming that the opposition to his nominee was being “paid for by Soros and others.”
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It’s not just the head of the Republican Party who’s crossing the line. A Republican congressional candidate in Illinois, Arthur Jones, once called the Holocaust an “international extortion racket.” The National Republican Congressional Committee released an ad in Minnesota that depicts Soros as a puppet master, standing over piles of cash, causing social unrest and “owning” Democrat Dan Feehan.
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More generally, Trump and the GOP’s hard-line anti-immigration policies plug into a long history of white nationalism. By fanning the flames of one form of hatred, nativist xenophobia, they unintentionally but no less inevitably fan the flames of anti-Semitism as well.
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In this environment, it’s no surprise that the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents increased by 57 percent in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League. From January to September 2018, 50 anti-Semitic attacks were reported in Pittsburgh, according to the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle. Two new studies, one by the Anti-Defamation League and another by the Columbia University professor Jonathan Albright, found that the number of anti-Semitic posts have increased on Instagram and Twitter. One frequent target has been the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or hias, which has been lobbying for the admission of refugees. Connecting the dots between his pathologies, hours before the shooting, Robert D. Bowers posted online: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
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Some segments of the Jewish community have been silent in the face of these developments, perhaps because they believe that the GOP, and Trump in particular, are strong advocates for Israel and of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
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After the massacre in Pittsburgh, Trump suggested that American synagogues hire armed guards with assault weapons. Rather than militarizing prayer, Trump should demilitarize his rhetoric. His language has been a kind of ammunition.
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JULIAN E. ZELIZER is a historian at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. He is the author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.
JULIAN E. ZELIZER is a historian at Princeton University and a CNN political analyst. He is the author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, and Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974.
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Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/americas-long-history-anti-semitism/574234/
With Shabbat, Pittsburgh begins to heal a week after the Tree of Life massacre
By Moriah Balingit and Kellie Gormly
Washington Post November 3, 2018
PITTSBURGH — They gathered in the shuttered street Friday, just as the sun began dipping toward the horizon. Men and women, in the shadow of the imposing concrete facade of Tree of Life, stood beyond the yellow police tape that still surrounds the building.
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Here, underneath a stoplight and amid the din of traffic, they turned to the east — toward Israel — and began their prayers.
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This group wanted to ensure that these evening prayers, which marked the start of Shabbat, continued at Tree of Life, even if the bloodstained sanctuary remains a crime scene, a place where 11 people seeking the solace of morning services had instead met their deaths.
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“When you went to the funerals, you heard how dedicated they were to Shabbat,” said Sam Weinberg, principal of the Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh. He reached out to his students to gather here for Shabbat prayers, and many of them came, some donning yarmulkes in Steelers black and gold.
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“It would have been a shame not to have them here,” he said.
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Across the city on Friday night, the ritual repeated itself in homes and in synagogues.
It has been a week since a man burst into this synagogue in the heart of the historic Jewish neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, killing some of the most dedicated congregants and shaking the sense of security for Jews worshiping across the country. But even as Tree of Life remained cordoned off, and even as victims remained in the hospital, people lit Shabbat candles, prayed, shared food and attempted to reclaim a sense of peace.
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Myriam Gumerman, 69, right, reads a prayer as she joins with her daughter, Karen Kantz, center, and friend, Machiel Keestra, left, as they celebrate the Shabbat with her at her home on Friday. (Justin Merriman/For The Washington Post)
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About a mile away, at the home of 69-year-old Myriam Gumerman, an eclectic crowd gathered to observe Shabbat. There was her friend Elkhaili Oumallal, a 35-year-old community college student and translator, whom she had befriended as a passenger in his Uber. Oumallal is Muslim and Gumerman is Jewish, but both were raised in Morocco.
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Then there were her neighbors: a Jewish couple from Amsterdam and a Christian couple — Anne Curtis and Tim Clark — who has lived in the neighborhood for more than four decades.
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For Curtis, the dinner was an extension of the Pittsburgh concept of “nebby,” local slang that means “nosy,” but also conveys a sense of concern for neighbors. In the days since the shooting, she has been calling and texting neighbors to ensure they were safe.
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“The core is we take care of each other,” Curtis said.
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To read more and view 76 image photo gallery CLICK HERE
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/at-the-start-of-shabbat-pittsburgh-begins-to-heal/2018/11/02/9e164bd2-df09-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html?utm_term=.95f35a4cf8bc
Email From Polish Ambassador to Switzerland
Dear Friends,
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If you have any information on the issues noted in the email below, we would appreciate receiving your input. In addition, please share his email with individuals and organizations you think may have some relevant knowledge.
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Thank you for your time and consideration,
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Harriet and Bill
From: Kumoch Jakub <Jakub.Kumoch@msz.gov.pl>
To: HaitiHolocaust@aol.com <HaitiHolocaust@aol.com>
Cc: jeffrey cymbler <jkcymbler@gmail.com>; Uszyński Jędrzej <jedrzej.uszynski@msz.gov.pl>; Markus Blechner <polconsul.zurich@gmail.com>
Sent: Mon, Oct 29, 2018 2:44 am
Subject: Forged Haitian passports from Berne, Switzerland
Dear Sir/ Madam,
I’ve recently found your website dedicated to the rescue of Jewish people by the Government of Haiti, which I find very interesting.
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Let me introduce myself. I’m Polish Ambassador to Switzerland and for many months my diplomats and I have been conducting a broad research into the so-called Latin American papers from Berne, Switzerland. The passports of Paraguay, Honduras, Haiti and Peru which indeed helped rescue around 1,5 thousand human lives during the Holocaust, were products of what we called Bernese Grouphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernese_Group , a clandestine network of Jewish organizations and Polish diplomats in Berne. I am sure you will find interesting the document in attachment – it’s the minutes of interrogation of Abraham Silberschein. He explains how he acquired a number of Haitian passports from the honorary consul of Haiti in Switzerland. We have also localized other documents, among others, the response of Haiti to the Polish and American requests to recognize the documents issued to our Jewish citizens.
Let me introduce myself. I’m Polish Ambassador to Switzerland and for many months my diplomats and I have been conducting a broad research into the so-called Latin American papers from Berne, Switzerland. The passports of Paraguay, Honduras, Haiti and Peru which indeed helped rescue around 1,5 thousand human lives during the Holocaust, were products of what we called Bernese Grouphttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernese_Group , a clandestine network of Jewish organizations and Polish diplomats in Berne. I am sure you will find interesting the document in attachment – it’s the minutes of interrogation of Abraham Silberschein. He explains how he acquired a number of Haitian passports from the honorary consul of Haiti in Switzerland. We have also localized other documents, among others, the response of Haiti to the Polish and American requests to recognize the documents issued to our Jewish citizens.
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But first of all we’ve been working on the full list of Survivors. What interests us is Haitian passports forged in Berne in 1943.Unfortunately we know only fifty names of people who were in possession of such passports. In our researches we’ve been co-operating with many Jewish historians and Survivors and we’ve been supported i.a. by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial Museum.
Best regards,
Jakub Kumoch, PhD
Ambassador
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
Phone: +41 31 358 0240, fax: +41 31 358 0216
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NYT: The Nazi Downstairs: A Jewish Woman’s Tale of Hiding in Her Home
A search for a lost masterpiece uncovered a woman’s harrowing account of escaping deportation, and possibly death, while spying on a Nazi at close range.
Elsa Koditschek’s home in Vienna was confiscated by the Nazis in 1940.
She later secretly moved back in. Credit via Sotheby’s
She later secretly moved back in. Credit via Sotheby’s
Elsa Koditschek was living in a prosperous section of Vienna, near the foothills of the Alps, when the Nazis, who had annexed Austria, confiscated her home in 1940. A German officer, a squad leader in the SS, soon moved in.
Mrs. Koditschek, a Jew, was allowed to stay on, in an upstairs apartment, a tenant in her own house for about a year, until a deportation edict arrived ordering her to a bleak, uncertain future in a Polish ghetto. She fled instead, leaving behind her life’s possessions including the only major artwork she had ever purchased, a landscape by Egon Schiele.
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For years, she hid in the homes of non-Jewish friends, according to an account she gave in dozens of letters written during and after the war. But she was ultimately desperate enough to seek refuge in the house the Nazis had seized from her, sneaking back in to live there in secrecy and silence with an upstairs tenant.
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From there, she spied on the SS officer, Herbert Gerbing, watching through a window as he sat in the garden with his family. Probably unbeknown to her, while she hid upstairs, he was helping with the deportation of Jews across Europe.
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“Who would think I would find myself sharing a roof with an SS officer?” she wrote later in a letter to her son, Paul, who had moved to New York years earlier.
Egon Schiele’s “City in Twilight (The Small City II),” painted in 1913, was owned by Mrs. Koditschek. Credit via Sotheby’s
Mrs. Koditschek’s Schiele was ultimately sold during the war, while she struggled to survive, and it has been sold several times since.
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But her letters, handwritten on onionskin and intact after having been carefully packed away in a relative’s basement, helped the Koditschek family and researchers at Sotheby’s piece together the provenance of the painting. So this fall in New York, when it goes up for auction with an estimated value of $12 million to $18 million, Mrs. Koditschek’s heirs will share in the proceeds with its current owners.
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“It’s so unusual to have a victim of Nazi theft or expropriation who writes everything down,” Lucian Simmons, the worldwide head of restitution at Sotheby’s, said. “Usually you’re trying to join the dots, but the dots are far apart.
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“Mentions of the Schiele painting in the letters buttressed the provenance research by Mr. Simmons, who had approached the family in 2014 after independently finding indications that it had lost an important painting during the war. What followed were several years of negotiation with the current owners of the Schiele, Europeans who had bought it in the 1950s, that led to an agreement that will govern the sale next month of the work, “City in Twilight (The Small City II)” painted in 1913.
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“It’s an important painting with a wonderful revolutionary abstract form,” Mr. Simmons said.
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Perhaps more remarkable than the painting is the tale that accompanies it: the account of woman made vagabond by the Nazis who ended up returning to the very house from which she had been evicted, and living out the war there, just feet above one of her persecutors. Mrs. Koditschek survived the war, and related her account in many letters to her son, who died in 1974. But he seldom discussed those experiences in any detail, so relatives have only recently begun to unravel Mrs. Koditschek’s history by sifting through the correspondence. (Sotheby’s provided translations of excerpts from the letters.)
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Their tone deepens as events evolve, according to Sarah Whites-Koditschek, a great-granddaughter, and turns grim in 1941 when the deportation order arrives. At that point, Ms. Whites-Koditschek said, “She’s just writing about whether she can find any way to escape.”
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To read more CLICK HERE
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/arts/the-nazi-downstairs-a-jewish-womans-tale-of-hiding-in-her-home.html
Update on Fascism by Yale Prof. of Philosophy
Dear Friends,
We think you will agree this five minute video op-ed by Yale Professor Jason Stanley is of special interest because of the insights and conclusions.
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CLICK HERE to watch.
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Best,
Harriet and Bill
New York Times Opinion
If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be
When fascism starts to feel normal, we’re all in trouble.
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By Jason Stanley
The author is a professor of philosophy at Yale University.
- Oct. 15, 2018
While calling President Trump a fascist may seem like an exaggeration, it might not be that far from the truth. Should we be worried? Jason Stanley has spent the past decade studying fascism, from Mussolini to Duterte. In this video op-ed, he argues that yes, we should be worried: If Americans are not vigilant, fascism could become a new reality in the United States.
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Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He recently published a book, “How Fascism Works.”
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/fascists-leaders-america-trump.html
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Prince William unveils statue for spy who saved Jews from Holocaust
MI6 agent Frank Foley used his cover job as a passport officer in Berlin to freely issue British visas to German Jews in the 1930s
Britain’s Prince William unveils a statue of Frank Foley, a British spy who helped save
thousands of Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust, September 18, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)
thousands of Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust, September 18, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)
Britain’s Prince William unveiled a statue of Frank Foley, a British spy who helped save thousands of Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
William, whose title is The Duke of Cambridge, revealed the statue last week in Stourbridge, in the West Midlands county of England.
Foley died there in 1958.
Before the unveiling ceremony, Michael Mamelok, one of the survivors who managed to flee Berlin due to the efforts of Foley, a major from the MI6 foreign intelligence agency, told the prince his story as William sat among his family.
To read more and see an excellent 2 minute video focusing on Prince William’s involvement in the event, CLICK HERE
Merkel visits Holocaust memorial and vows to fight anti-Semitism
RTE/ Thursday, 4 Oct 2018 18:42
She said Germany had a responsibility to confront anti-Semitism and never to forget the Holocaust.
The visit comes against a backdrop of resurgent nationalism and far-right violence in Germany which has beenfuelled by anger at Ms Merkel’s decision to welcome more than one million mostly Muslim asylum seekers in 2015.
She also said she agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy, should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but that they differed on how to achieve that objective.
Ms Merkel began a day of meetings between Israeli and German government officials with a visit to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, where she laid a wreath on a stone slab that contains ashes of death camp victims.
“Almost 80 years ago, on the pogrom night of November 9, Jews in Germany faced unimaginable hate and violence. This was followed by unprecedented crimes against civilisation in the form of the Shoah,” speaking German and using the Hebrew word for Holocaust, she said at Yad Vashem.
“Germany has a perpetual responsibility to remember those crimes and to confront anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hate and violence,” she said, after arriving for a 24-hour visit as part of annual government-to-government talks between German and Israeli ministers.
Following discussions in Jerusalem with Mr Netanyahu, Ms Merkel addressed Middle East issues in a joint news conference with the Israeli leader, who praised what he described as her consistent stance against anti-Semitism.
Germany remains party to a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers that Mr Netanyahu opposed and from which US President Donald Trump pulled out in May.
“We are very convinced and strongly share Israel’s position that everything must be done to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Where we are not always united is on the path to this goal,” Ms Merkel said.
At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Mr Netanyahu accused Europe of appeasing Iran and said he would prevent Tehran from entrenching in Syria and arming Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas.
Ms Merkel, at the news conference, described Iran’s military presence in Syria and Lebanon as a threat to neighbouring Israel.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she reaffirmed her support for a two-state solution and concern about Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory where Palestinians seek for a country of their own.
Such activity, she said, “makes the two-state solution difficult to achieve”.
Ms Merkel said that Mr Netanyahu urged Germany to encourage the Palestinians to return to negotiations that collapsed in 2014, adding: “I will do this”.
There were no plans for Ms Merkel to see Palestinian leaders during her brief visit.
Source: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2018/1004/1001007-merkel-israel/
