Happy News to Share!

 

Hello to my loyal readers (all nine of you!). I was just accepted into the Byrdcliffe Writer’s Residency summer program to work exclusively on my book, Googling the Holocaust. I applied to the program several months ago and just found out today. You better believe I’m excited. Ecstatic. Yippee!!!

Thanks for your continuous support by reading my posts, commenting when something resonates (or riles), and basically for believing in me. I hope you’ll continue to stick with me as the story continues to unfold.

 

Holocaust Interpretations by Catholic Schoolgirls

Lost Childhood – Photo: Rachel Kornelly

I came upon this student Holocaust exhibition in a rather somber fashion, after reading an obituary for Kathy Carlisle, the high school teacher who had assigned it. The project, The Holocaust: Illuminated Memory, showcases the collective work of photography students at St. Francis High School, Spring Semester 2012. In Ms. Carlisle’s own words,

“This conceptual photography assignment required students to utilize historical research about the Holocaust to create symbolic photographic imagery.  An exploration of artists employing symbolism, metaphor, and allegory in historical and contemporary art established the foundation of the project. Students began their work by expanding their knowledge of the Holocaust from 1933 to 1945 through personal and collaborative research and class assignments.

The students’ creative challenges began as they refined their research to focus on a single personal narrative from a survivor or someone who had perished in the Holocaust. They were asked to personally assess and symbolize the essence of that single person’s story through photographic imagery. Students were limited to a palette of sepia or black and white photography, using only tonal value to describe the depth and breadth of their concept. The final step of the project required students to write an artist’s statement about their work, elucidating their creative process and its connection to their research.”

What I like about this assignment is that it required the students to get in real close and seek out one person or one moment and create art around that. To see the trees instead of the forest. St. Francis is an all-girls Catholic school, so I’m assuming none of the young women have a personal connection to the Holocaust, although it’s quite possible I am mistaken. Some of the students were able to go beyond the cliché, not an easy task in our over-saturated Holocaust memorializing world. I did not write that last sentence as a criticism of the vast amount of Holocaust art and literature that exists, only that it’s quite a feat to capture something that goes beyond “Never Forget.”

Some of the students’ work worth mentioning include:

Trapped in the Snow – Photo: Hibba Munir

Trapped in the Snow - by Hibba Munir
I linked my images to the personal history of Hanna Mueller. Hannah Mueller was reading about the harrowing treatment of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition and she told her grandmother, “We’re fortunate that we live in the 20th century in Czechoslovakia and such a thing can’t happen to us.” It was only six years later on March 15, 1939, when the Germans occupied Prague. On a cold and snowy day, when Mueller was only a mile from her home, the Germans entered the city on tanks and trucks, with their guns pointed toward the rooftops. The picture I chose symbolizes how calm the cold and snowy day seemed, until the Germans entered the city. In my second image, the fence symbolizes how the Jews were trapped and how they were just waiting to reach the other side, which contained trees, a symbol of freedom. Mueller’s story really moved me because it made me think of how innocent the Jews were, and how bad luck just came upon when they least expected it. I learned how much suffering the Jews went through both emotionally and physically. I learned how unjust the Germans actions were. By reading Mueller’s story and other stories, I was able to grasp a better perspective of what occurred at the concentration camps.

The Valued Potato – Photo: Nhi Le

The Valued Potato – by Nhi Le

In this image, I wanted to emphasize the importance of a potato to a person living during the Holocaust. I was surprised that someone compared a potato to a diamond. I didn’t think anyone would compare a small worthless potato to a valuable diamond. When I read about this, I thought of how much I eat every day and how I have taken so much for granted. In the photograph, I compared a bowl of food that I eat everyday to one potato that can last a person a whole day or even a week.

 

The Wall in the Way – Photo: Maxi Wilson

The Wall in the Way – by Maxi Wilson

I chose to portray the life of David Rubinowicz. He loved nature and enjoyed looking out a window that faced a road and a large field. He said that he remembered when his favorite field was blocked by marching soldiers. I was inspired to portray having things that you loved forcefully taken away. I learned that the Holocaust involved a lot of sneaking, hiding, and running away than I had originally thought. I know that many families were separated during the Holocaust, but I feel like losing something inanimate, like a field, is just as heartbreaking. If you lose the joyful things in life, along with the love from your family, what do you really have? I felt that having a gate in front of the field would portray the dividing aspect of the Holocaust. In other words, it shows that victims of the Holocaust were unable to have what they desired.

 

“Legitimate Rape” Theory Has Roots in Nazi Germany

Why am I not surprised? (And, really, how much uglier could Todd Akin‘s story get?)

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Akin’s source about the rarity of pregnancy resulting in rape is from a 1972 study by Dr. Fred Mecklenburg, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School at the time. The Post-Dispatch writes:

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis ‘by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate.’”

I’m shocked to silence. Luckily, this commenter, who goes by the name of DriveBy, isn’t:

It would appear that the links between the Republican brain and the Nazi brain are even deeper than the obvious.”

Introducing the Neo-Nazi Flash Mob

 

What’s scarier than an angry flash mob? An angry flash mob of Neo-Nazis carrying torches.

As shown in the CNN video above, hundreds of Neo-Nazis wearing black robes and white masks take to the streets at night spreading their hateful rhetoric. They organize themselves entirely online and via text message, which reminds me of that famed New Yorker cartoon where one dog says to another, “Online, no one knows you’re a dog,” but in this case it’s with a perverse twist: “Online, no one knows you’re a Neo-Nazi.” Actually, they do. Because the Internet provides false anonymity, they feel emboldened to spew their hatred as a group. And offline, of course, they feel the need to disguise themselves. (Honestly, to me, they come across as scarier versions of the Phantom of the Opera.)

“It is a frightening scene that resembles the Nazi torch marches of the 1930s,” reports CNN’s International correspondent Isha Sesay. German officials say this group, which goes by the self-appointed moniker, The Immortals, is a serious and growing concern.

Professor Hajo Funke of the Free University of Berlin, who appears on the CNN clip above, The Immortals have already attacked people and institutions and are a group “not without violence.”

And of course, they are using modern technology to its full advantage by recording video of their marches and then uploading them to YouTube. Before they do that, though, they head to the editing room and manipulate their footage to full effect and add haunting music to the audio track.

I don’t want to link to it (I watched 10 seconds of it and almost vomited on my keyboard) but if you want to find it, type “The Immortals. Bautzen, Germany, May 2011″ into YouTube’s search bar. Forewarned though, you’ll want to have a barf bag at the ready.

French Olympian Swimmer: “I Am Nothing Without Them”

French swimmer Fabian Gilot celebrates his team’s gold medal.

Cri de joie! J’aime Fabien! C’est tres cool! (Pardon my rusty high-school French, s’il vous plaît)

Earlier this week the French won the gold in this year’s 4×100 meter Freestyle Relay. Magnifique!

When Fabien Gilot, one of the team members, cheered his heart out from the pool, the crowds saw an interesting tattoo. Well, actually, they would see it soon after when photographs were posted.

The tattoo, which is written in Hebrew, אני .כלום בלעדיהם, translates to, “I am nothing without them.”

Per Tablet, Gilot, who is not Jewish, got the tattoo in honor of his grandmother’s late husband, Max Goldschmidt, who although not his grandfather, “occupied that very particularly influential role for Gilot.”

Goldschmidt grew up in Berlin and survived internment at Auschwitz before moving to France. Gilot’s father, Michel Gilot, says Goldschmidt was an inspirational figure to his son and was witness to his many athletic triumphs. Sadly, he died earlier this year and didn’t see Gilot win the gold.

Gilot senior told Ynetnews, “Max was a Jew who survived the Holocaust and Auschwitz. He was born in Berlin and moved to France after the war, in Fabien’s eyes he was a hero. He admired him and was very attached to him.”

The tattoo was not news in the French media. Gilot has others, specifically Olympic rings and three stars, one for each of his brothers.

I love this story. Wonder if there’s a French word for verklempt?

A Non-Apology Apology

The Nuremberg Trials

Puhleeze.

Doctors in Germany are sorry. So very, very sorry. Except their apology (if you can call it that) is six decades too late.

According to an MSNBC editorial by Art Caplan, PhD, “The German Medical Association has issued a remarkably blunt and straightforward apology, more than six decades after the end of World War II, for the role it played during the Holocaust in the mass murder, sterilization and barbaric medical experiments done on Jews and many other groups.”

“The declaration says that contrary to popular belief doctors were not forced by political authorities to kill and experiment on prisoners but rather engaged in the Holocaust as leaders and enthusiastic Nazi supporters,” writes Caplan, adding that this statement was “unanimously adopted by the delegates of the Physician’s Congress.”

Pardon my acronym but WTF? And seriously, did it take them 60+ years to craft that statement?

And now I have a cyber-commenter-crush on someone named Eric C who responded to the news with this:

I feel no satisfaction from this apology of the German Physicians Congress. An apology issued for acts committed by others is just so much moral preening. This apology is akin to the congressional apologies for slavery and abuse of native Americans issued in 2009. They are jejune blatherings, a corruption of language. It would have been better for these German doctors to simply condemn their predecessors, rather than to strut through this mummery of apologizing for them.”

Amen Eric C., you took the words I didn’t have right out of my mouth. Thanks for so eloquently stating exactly how I feel.

Holocaust Humor, Sardonically Yours

Stumbled upon this comic strip called Edge City, “a groundbreaking comic strip that follows a hip Jewish-American family.” It just ended a three-week stint of a Holocaust-themed storyline. Not an easy thing to do, for sure, and as can be expected, some worked better than others. I’ve selected four to share. If you’re interested in the story behind the story, check out this Q&A with the cartoonist, Terry LaBan.

Yom Hashoah, From Far Away…

My husband, Thomas Dov Berger, was born in Israel and lived there until he was nine years old. I spoke with him earlier today (he’s away on a business trip) and asked him to put down his thoughts about Yom Hashoah. It’s a much different memorial in Israel than it is here in the States. Here, let him tell you…

Israeli traffic stops for 2 minutes for Yom Hashoah

At 10am today, did you hear sirens?

At 10am did cars stop on the freeways? Did trains stop in their tracks? Did planes stop on taxiways?

At 10am, did everyone stop what they were doing, stand at attention, and for two minutes, while the sirens wailed, remember the six million dead?

Imagine, if you can, growing up in a country, as I did, where you set aside a day to remember your ancestors who were murdered in a systematic and industrial manner. There are no barbeques on this day, there are no white sales on this day. This is a day for reflection and quiet. This day forces you to come to terms with everything about your beliefs and your heritage and that you, as a people, were almost wiped completely from the face of the earth.

This day, Yom HaShoah, marks the beginning of a week of remembrance that culminates with Yom Hazikaron, Israeli memorial day, our day for remembering our war dead, and ends with Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day.

Yom HaShoah is the day to remember the grandfather I never knew, my mom’s father, the father she never knew [killed by Nazis a couple months before she was born in a concentration camp]. I also remember the countless relatives whose names I will never know, who are simply gone, without a trace, without a marker.

Most of all, however, this day reminds me that I should never forget, and I should never forgive. And I hold that feeling to this day, in this country, where I am sitting in my hotel room, 2500 miles away from my family, preparing for my work day, where as I proceed through my business meetings and presentations to clients, everyone around me will have no idea what this day means to me. I hold it inside. I keep it to myself. And I remember: לא נשכח ולא נסלח

Tom

Would You Buy Shampoo From Hitler?

This 13-second commercial for a Turkish shampoo brand shows black and white footage of Hitler giving  an impassioned speech with words dubbed over that translate to something like, “If you don’t wear a woman’s dress, don’t use women’s shampoo. Now there’s a 100% men’s shampoo, Biomen. If you’re a man, you use Biomen.”

Hitler as the ultimate macho icon? I don’t think so.

I appreciated New York Magazine’s riff:

The ad is probably the work of a bonehead in Turkey who wanted to test whether all publicity is good publicity. That, or the company is angling for the niche market of young men who heed hygiene instructions from maniacs who led mass genocides.”

Alternate headline for this post: I’m Gonna Wash That Herr Right Outta My Hair

Jewish Geography, the Concentration Camp Version

Jewish Geography (there's an App for that)

A few days ago I saw my neighbor and friend across the street talking to an older woman I didn’t recognize. She motioned for me to come over, which I did.

Turns out the older woman’s mother was a Holocaust survivor. My neighbor was excited to introduce us because of the book I’m writing about my mother-in-law who, as some readers of this blog know, was born in a concentration camp.

This older woman, whose name I never got, asked me which camp my mother-in-law was born in.

“Freiberg,” I said.

Her face clearly registered disappointment.

“Well, she was born in Freiberg but liberated in Mauthausen,” I countered.

“Oh, I thought it was Auschwitz,” she said with obvious discern. “That’s where my mother was. Most people didn’t survive Auschwitz, but my mother did.”

I sensed pride in her voice.

For some odd reason I wanted to impress her so I told her that my mother-in-law was sort of in Auschwitz because she was a two-month old fetus in her mother’s belly at the time. Surely that would give her pause, yes?

Nope. She shook her head. My straw-grasping failed to impress.

Then it hit me. I was playing Jewish Geography, but the concentration camp version. This was sick. Twisted. What was I doing?

Luckily the conversation ended almost as quickly as it began because the older woman’s car was parked in front of a fire hydrant; she had to skedaddle before the parking police swooped in.

Now that I’m out there (meaning here, on this blog) and working hard to get this book written and out to the public (meaning in book stores and libraries), is this Concentration Camp version of Jewish Geography going to be a regular occurrence? It’s not that I don’t want to connect with other people — I do! — but not in a hierarchical competitive way. It felt so awkward and I was rather uncomfortable. This incident reminds me of my post about survivors trying to one-up each other in their suffering.

What do you think?