The Auschwitz Album shows photos of the Jews who were gassed by the Nazis

You can see the Auschwitz Album photos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOIHRQlQqwU

You can see a video of the liberators saving the Jews below:

“evil stands at the door and knocks”

The words in the title of my blog post today are the last words in this news article: http://chimes.biola.edu/story/2018/apr/25/holocaust-fades-americas-memory/

The article includes a photo of the Arbeit macht Frei gate — this is my photo of that gate

It is hard to get a photo of the gate into  the Auschwitz camp because when the gate opens, there is an endless march of tourists through the gate. I took the photo above just before the gate opened, but note that there are tourists who have entered before the gate officially opened. After I took the photo above, I also entered the camp before it was officially open. I wanted to take a few photos before thousands of people entered.

The following quote is from the news article:

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Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp

Auschwitz was a network of concentration camps built and operated by Nazi Germany. However, Auschwitz-Birkenau, in particular, went on to become an extermination camp and a major site of the Nazis’ final solution to the Jewish question. Between early 1942 and late 1944, an estimated 1.3 million Jews were sent by transport trains and entered the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Written over the gate were the words “Arbeit macht frei,” or “work sets you free.” But those who entered would not be working long—1.1 million would leave through the chimney tops, gassed with hydrogen cyanide.

To put these numbers into perspective, Biola’s total Fall 2017 student enrollment was 6,172 students. Auschwitz-Birkenau gassed men, women and children at the rate of the entire Biola student population every four days for two years. Or, considering Anaheim, Calif.’s population of 336,265, it would be equivalent to erasing the population of Anaheim every eight months for two years.

When we reflect on the Holocaust, it is not enough to reflect on it as an episode in the remote past in remote lands. The Holocaust tore the heart of Western Civilization: it inspired a generation of soldiers to “pursue the ranks of the guilty to the uttermost ends of the earth,” and it eviscerated a Jewish generation. The Holocaust reminds us that no matter how far we have progressed or how much we have been blessed, evil stands at the door and knocks.

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20,000 New York City area Holocaust survivors living in poverty

The following quote is from this news article: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/05/09/holocaust-survivors-in-poverty/

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Holocaust survivor Vera Liapina joined several other survivors in front of City Hall on Wednesday afternoon to show support for the Elie Wiesel Holocaust Survivors Initiative. [On the show, Elie Wiesel’s name is pronounced “Elly Vee-ZELL”]

“When we first started this initiative we pushed for $1.5 million. Within months, we were able to secure that funding,” City Councilman Rafael Espinal said.

Espinal said the money is to make sure holocaust survivors can happily and healthily live out their golden years in New York City.

“The needs are enormous,” said Eric Goldstein of the UJA Federation. “The monies we’ve raised so far and that they are allocating are simply not enough to address the need.”

At the City Hall event, the people there were imploring the City Council to earmark $4 million in the budget for 2019. It would mean more funding for organizations like Self Help.

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This is what happens when you don’t get a book deal. No one gets to hear your sad story of how you survived the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to kill you, feeding you potatoes, not realizing that potatoes are good for your health.

When I was a child, my family was very poor, but we had a large garden, which had a very large section where we grew potatoes. That is how I survived.

Maybe I should write a book about eating potatoes to survive. Oh, wait a minute! I am not Jewish. No one cares about my sad story.

Jews in hiding were killed by the Poles during the Holocaust

You can read this news article, about the Poles killing Jews who were in hiding, at https://forward.com/fast-forward/400897/poles-helped-nazis-kill-most-of-the-jews-in-hiding-during-holocaust/

Begin quote from news article:

(JTA) — According to new research done in Poland, two thirds of the local Jews who hid there from the Nazis did not survive the war, mostly because of the actions of their non-Jewish neighbors.

The figure comes from a two-volume work of 1,600 pages that historians from the Warsaw-based Center for Research on Holocaust of Jews have compiled over the past five years in nine out of Poland’s 13 regions, the Tok FM radio station reported Sunday.

Arriving amid a polarizing debate in Poland over a law that limits rhetoric on Polish complicity in the Holocaust, the study suggests Poles are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths by Jews in the Holocaust — a figure that is significantly higher than previous estimates.

The findings of the research, which were published earlier this year in a Polish-language book titled “The Fate of the Jews in Selected Regions of Occupied Poland,” pertain to the fate of more than a million Jews who went underground to avoid being killed in Operation Reinhard — Nazi Germany’s campaign of annihilation of 3.3 million Jews in occupied Poland.

The issue of Polish complicity in the Holocaust is highly controversial in Poland, where the Nazis killed three million non-Jews in addition to about four million Jews.

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The poor Jews!  They just couldn’t catch a break.

Why can’t old ladies deny the Holocaust if they want to?

The following quote is from this news article: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/08/nazi-grandma-ursula-haverbeck-who-denies-holocaust-taken-jail/589613002/

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Serial Holocaust denier

During her trial, [Ursula] Haverbeck spoke of an “Auschwitz lie,” claiming it was not an extermination camp, but merely a labor camp. [I believe that Ursula is correct.]

She and her late husband Werner Georg Haverbeck, who was an active member of the Nazi party, founded a right-wing education center called Collegium Humanum. The center was banned in 2008.

Haverbeck also wrote for the right-wing magazine Stimme des Reiches (Voice of the Empire). She used the magazine to express her views that the Holocaust never took place. [I believe that she is correct.]

Under German law, denying the Holocaust constitutes incitement to hatred and can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.

This article was originally published on DW.com. Its content is created separately from USA TODAY.

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I believe that having an opinion does not make one a criminal.

Jews were allowed to write a letter to their loved ones minutes before they were gassed

My photo of the gas chamber at Auschwitz

German people have manners and they are famous for being very considerate. I know this because I lived in Germany for 22 months while my husband was in the American Army. I was amazed that the Germans were such nice people, after everything that I had heard about the Germans gassing the Jews. Could it be that the Germans were gassing the lice in the clothing worn by the Jews?

A recent news article  confirms that the Jews were gassed: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/04/30/auschwitz-letter-thought-to-be-only-one-its-kind.html

The following quote is from the news article:

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That Vilma Grunwald’s letter even exists is extraordinary.

She penned it in the minutes before she was gassed at Auschwitz, addressed it to her husband, and handed it to a Nazi guard who  did the improbable — he delivered it to the man, who was also imprisoned at the camp.

The Washington Post reports she accompanied her eldest child, a 16-year-old named John, who limped, to the gas chambers. The Indianapolis Star has the story of the July 11, 1944, letter, which has for the last four years resided at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“I’m always reluctant to say it’s the only such document ever created,” says the museum’s chief acquisitions curator, “but to the best of our knowledge” it is the only surviving letter written at the concentration camp prior to a gassing.

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I have seen a real gas chamber in Jefferson City, Missouri. A real gas chamber looks nothing like the alleged gas chamber in the photo that I took. How come nobody ever tells you that?

 

Woman writes letter to her husband minutes before she is gassed….

I had the opportunity to live in Germany for 20 months when my husband was in the American army back in the 1950ies, so I can tell you that German men are extremely nice and polite. At least, they were back then. When the Holocaust was going on, the German men were known to be very nice to the prisoners. This is confirmed by a news article which you can read in full at http://kdvr.com/2018/05/02/auschwitz-letter-thought-to-be-only-one-of-its-kind/

The following quote is from the news article:

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Grunwald’s son, Misa (who now goes by Frank and lives northeast of Indianapolis) learned of the letter as an 11-year-old in 1946 but did not read it until after his father’s 1967 death.

Frank tells the Star that what he found most moving was the 11-sentence letter’s tone: free of anger or resentment, and focused only on him and his father.

It reads in part: “The famous trucks are already here and we are waiting for it to begin. … You—my only and dearest one, do not blame yourself for what happened, it was our destiny. We did what we could. … Take care of the little golden boy and don’t spoil him too much with your love. Both of you—stay healthy, my dear ones. I will be thinking of you and Misa. Have a fabulous life, we must board the trucks.” (This man buried a letter at Auschwitz; now we know what it says.)

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40% of Americans don’t know what Auschwitz is

Here is a quote from this recent news article: http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2018/04/more_than_40_of_americans_dont.html

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For seven decades, “never forget” has been a rallying cry of the Holocaust remembrance movement.

But a survey released Thursday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, found that many adults lack basic knowledge of what happened — and this lack of knowledge is more pronounced among millennials, whom the survey defined as people ages 18-34.

Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around 6 million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. Only 39 percent of Americans know that Hitler was democratically elected.

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Readers can start learning about Auschwitz by going to this page on my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz02.html

Then continue your Auschwitz education by reading this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz12A.html

Then read this page: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz08.htm

Photographs were forbidden when I visited Auschwitz, but I risked my life to take photos. I pretended that I could not understand the signs. I was not arrested and some of the tourists applauded when I took photos, risking a jail sentence. When confronted, I always pretended that I was confused and didn’t know what I was doing.

 

Should Holocaust stories be required in public schools?

To read the answer to the question asked in the title of my blog post, go to this news article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/schindlers-list-reunion-behind-scenes-stories-mel-gibson-trauma-holocaust-should-be-taught-school-tr-1106706

The following quote gives the answer to the question in the title:

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In response to a question about a recent survey that found a lack of knowledge about the Holocaust among millennials, Spielberg said, “It’s not a pre-requisite to graduate high school, as it should be. It should be part of the social science, social studies curriculum in every public high school in this country.”

He clarified that he wasn’t saying his movie should be taught in schools necessarily, but said, “these stories that Holocaust survivors have the courage to tell” should be on the curriculum.

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I don’t agree that this subject should be taught in public schools in America. There is no place for religion in public schools. It is O.K. to teach the Holocaust in a Jewish school, but not in a public school. How would the Jews like it if Holocaust denial were taught in a public school?

When the Holocaust is taught anywhere, both sides of the story should be taught, not just the Jewish version of the story, or the Nazi version of the story.  Let the children decide which side they want to believe.

I know what you are going to say: “How can little children decide anything?” Little children should be taught to think for themselves, and not to take the side of anyone in a debate.

 

the Holocaust continues to fade from public consciousness

My blog post today is a comment on a news article which you can read in full at

What Will The Holocaust Museum Look Like Without Survivors?

Begin quote from news article:

Despite the Holocaust museum’s many successes, the Holocaust continues to fade from public consciousness. A recent survey found that 66 percent of millennials do not know that Auschwitz was a concentration camp. Eighty percent of Americans have not visited a museum about the Holocaust.

So, Bloomfield said, “keeping the lessons of the Holocaust relevant, and reaching a global audience, are two of our biggest challenges going forward.” The museum plans to expand its collections, translate its website into more languages (it’s currently available in 16), launch new programs to study modern-day genocides, and present special exhibitions in more countries around the world.

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A good place to start learning about the Holocaust would be my website. Start by reading this page of my website: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/Birkenau01.html

My early morning photo of the entrance into the main Auschwitz camp before the tourists started arriving. I had to sneak into the camp before the gates were open to get the photo above in 1998.

The gate into the Auschwitz=Birkenau camp

The following quote is also from the news article:

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Despite the [Holocaust] museum’s many successes, the Holocaust continues to fade from public consciousness. A recent survey found that 66 percent of millennials do not know that Auschwitz was a concentration camp. Eighty percent of Americans have not visited a museum about the Holocaust.

So, Bloomfield said, “keeping the lessons of the Holocaust relevant, and reaching a global audience, are two of our biggest challenges going forward.” The museum plans to expand its collections, translate its website into more languages (it’s currently available in 16), launch new programs to study modern-day genocides, and present special exhibitions in more countries around the world.

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