Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

The 1970s dont seem that long ago -- at least thats how you might feel when you notice that the mosts popular baby girl names from six decades ago are similar to the most popular ones today.

Women of a certain age will have some fun scrolling through the following list, which is the 50 most popular baby girl names of the 70s, composed by Stacker.com.

Is your name in there somewhere? How many people do you know personally have names that are mentioned below?

#50. Catherine

Catherine is a name of Greek origin meaning pure.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,491

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 588 (#98 most common name, -60.6% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #73

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 43,840

#49. Laurie

Laurie is a name of Latin origin meaning sweet bay tree.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,564

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: data not available

National

- Rank: #117

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 26,034

#48. Maria

Maria is a name of Hebrew origin meaning sea of bitterness.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,602

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 571 (#103 most common name, -64.4% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #35

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 76,102

#47. Pamela

Pamela is a name of Greek origin meaning all sweetness.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,619

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 11 (#1280 most common name, -99.3% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #48

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 58,042

#46. Tina

Tina is a name of English origin meaning river.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,629

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 10 (#1334 most common name, -99.4% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #29

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 84,757

#45. Stacey

Stacey is a name of Greek origin meaning resurrection.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,647

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: data not available

National

- Rank: #47

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 59,222

#44. Cheryl

Cheryl is a name of Greek origin meaning cherry fruit.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,658

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: data not available

National

- Rank: #78

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 40,351

#43. Sandra

Sandra is a name of Greek origin meaning defender of man.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,665

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 52 (#760 (tie) most common name, -96.9% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #44

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 64,310

#42. Deborah

Deborah is a name of Hebrew origin meaning bee.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,673

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 105 (#485 (tie) most common name, -93.7% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #61

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 47,839

#41. Wendy

Wendy is a name of English origin meaning friend.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,683

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 21 (#1061 most common name, -98.8% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #36

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 74,188

#40. Kerry

Kerry is a name of Irish origin meaning black-haired.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,690

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: data not available

National

- Rank: #171

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 15,961

#39. Katherine

Katherine is a name of Greek origin meaning pure.

Massachusetts

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 1,808

- Number of babies from 2010 to 2019: 790 (#66 most common name, -56.3% compared to the 70s)

National

- Rank: #55

- Number of babies from 1970 to 1979: 54,068

#38. Tammy

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Popular baby names: The top 50 names for girls born in Massachusetts in the 1970s - masslive.com

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

In classical Western systems of criminal justice and crime control, under what is termed the retributive justice model, property theft is essentially defined as a crime against the state. (The victim and community at large are represented abstractly by the state). The criminal justice system focuses on establishing blame or guilt often through highly adversarial court proceedings described by some as tantamount to a ceremony involving the public social degradation of the criminal offender. Further, the victim is typically incidental to the proceedings.

The offender is usually seen as suffering from personal deficits (and is bad or disturbed) and accountability is defined in terms of the offender receiving punishment commensurate with the seriousness of the offence that has been committed.

Crime is seen as an individual act for which the offender is responsible. Because punishment (including incarceration) is assumed to be a deterrent and to offer some prospect of rehabilitation, it is believed by many to be an effective means of crime control.

This model of criminal justice stands in marked contrast to important elements of the justice system delineated in parashat Mishpatim, at least as far as the response to theft is concerned. And some of the elements of the justice system described in this weeks parashah anticipated by thousands of years something called restorative justice. Restorative justice is a set of principles that are currently driving important changes in criminal justice systems in many countries around the world. Examples of restorative justice approaches include victim-offender reconciliation programs and community accountability/family group conferencing in the juvenile justice system (and in some schools too).

The anticipation of modernity by thousands of years in the criminal justice realm is the central thrust of my comments on parashat Mishpatim. In particular, in this parasha the Torah anticipated the contemporary focus on: (1) the victim in criminal proceedings; (2) the requirement of the restorative justice approach to maintain the dignity (not degrade) the criminal; (3) the notion that crime control lies primarily in the community rather than through incapacitation, deterrence or behavioural change flowing from a period of incarceration.

Parashat Mishpatim spells out laws designed to govern the relationships bein adam lchavero between man and man. The first group of verses (verses 2-11) focus upon the Hebrew servant/slave/bondsman. Thus, the parashah begins with the words If you buy a Hebrew servant [from the court of law]. That is, the very first civil ordinance deals with the laws of servitude. Its focus is on securing the personal rights (release after a maximum of six years of service) of the lowliest on the social scale, the bondservant people who find themselves in circumstances in which their right to personal freedom is denied or limited.

There are two ways in which a Jew can become a bondsman: He can sell himself as a means of escaping from extreme poverty (as discussed in parashat Behar) or he may be a thief who is sold by the court to raise funds to repay his victims. The beginning of our parashah deals only with the latter case.

A male (only) thief who lacks the means to make restitution to the value of the items actually stolen (and not for any additional fine as specified later in the parashah) must be sold by the court in order to indemnify his victim. But this can only be done where the value of the stolen property is equal to or greater than the value of the thiefs working capacity. This is the only circumstance in which the Torah sanctions a loss of freedom.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (who lived in Germany in the 19th century) observed that this loss of freedom should not be construed as a punishment because the sole purpose of the period of servitude is to make restitution to the victim to the value of the theft. This is the means of cancelling the effects of the crime or, in contemporary parlance, of repairing the harm to the victim that was caused by the offender. And victim restitution is an increasingly important aspect of contemporary criminal justice proceedings.

The Torah also underscores the importance of not degrading the criminal of not undermining his self-respect. Indeed, restorative justice processes seek to avoid the degradation of the criminal. They certainly seek to condemn the offenders behaviour, but not the offender himself.

And finally, as Hirsch points out, Jewish law requires that the offender be placed with a family in contrast to the traditional Western practice of socially excluding criminals through incarceration. Thus, here we see another anticipated element of restorative justice, namely, that crime control lies primarily in the community rather than with the criminal justice system.

In sum, then, and as Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ztl noted in The Power of Ideas a book of his BBC Radio Thought For The Day broadcasts published last year restorative justice, although touted as a modern approach to crime and punishment, has very significant premodern roots.

Jerusalem-based Allan Borowski is Emeritus Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, La Trobe University, and adjunct professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ariel University, Israel.

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Criminal justice in Torah and western society - Australian Jewish News

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

A Holocaust survivor mourns during a ceremony at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Owicim, Poland, on January 27, 2020. ( Natalia Fedosenko/TASS/Getty Images)

ByLauren Monsen

Leaders around the globe are working together to counter dangerous messages of Holocaust denial and distortion that have spread in this digital age.

TheInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a body that supports Holocaust education, research and remembrance worldwide, explains the terms: Holocaust denialseeks to erase the history of the Holocaust. In doing so, it seeks to legitimize Nazism and antisemitism.Holocaust distortionacknowledges aspects of the Holocaust as factual. It nevertheless excuses, minimizes or misrepresents the Holocaust in a variety of ways and through various media.

Leaders around the world increasingly are speaking out against these forms of antisemitism.

Distortion is often more subtle and insidious than outright denial. It can be found all across the political spectrum, but sincethe COVID-19 pandemicbegan, extremists have increasingly employed Holocaust distortion in ways that can harm democracy for example, wearing yellow stars (similar to those imposed on Jews by the Nazis) to protest vaccine mandates and paint themselves as victims. Such tactics promote distrust of public health experts, while disrespecting the memory of Holocaust victims.

Some distorters rehabilitate the reputations of those involved in the Holocaust by downplaying their roles as Nazi collaborators, says Ellen Germain, the U.S. Department of States special envoy for Holocaust issues. But whatever form Holocaust distortion takes, she says, it demeans the crime of the Holocaust thesystematic annihilationof an entire people.

Holocaust denial is a threat and must be taken seriously, but in North America and in Europe, its less common these days than Holocaust distortion, according to theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museums Robert Williams, a senior member of the U.S. delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. It can act as a gateway drug to conspiracy theory and more dangerous forms of antisemitism. And its used to recruit, to radicalize and to sow broad cultural and social discord.

During his tenure as Americas top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, himself the stepson of a Holocaust survivor, has shone a light on these problems.

Its no accident that people who seek to create instability and undermine democracy often try to cast doubt on the Holocaust, he says. Thats why its so important that we speak the truth about the past, to protect the facts when others try to distort or trivialize Holocaust crimes.

By U.S. Embassy Tbilisi | 25 January, 2022 | Topics: History, Human Rights, News | Tags: cultural preservation, U.S. history, WWII

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Holocaust denial and distortion must stop - US Embassy in Georgia

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

Each year on January 27 the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet, even as we commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, where nearly 1 million Jews perished, Holocaust denial continues to spread like an epidemic across the internet including on the San Francisco-based Internet Archive. The Archive describes itself as a "digital libraryproviding 'Universal Access to All Knowledge,'"but it also serves as an easy-to-access platform for the content of white supremacists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers. Searching the word "Holocaust"on the Internet Archive, for example, yields results with titles like "What Holocaust 6 million my [expletive]", "A Holocaust Inquiry by Dr David Duke", and "The Jewish Holocaust Is A Jewish HollowHoax" some of these appearing on the very first page of results.

Exactly one year ago, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released a report detailing how the Internet Archive enables neo-Nazis and white supremacists to spread their messages of hate, incitement to violence and Holocaust denial by allowing users to post and then easily share such content. We hoped that exposing this rampant online hate, especially on a day of Holocaust remembrance, would lead to action. But, one year on, absolutely nothing has changed. The Internet Archive remains a powerful vehicle for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories and the outlandish idea that the Holocaust never happened.

It is time to compel the Internet Archive to change. We call on Congress, particularly those Congressional leaders from the Bay Area, to take action to hold the Internet Archive accountable for its role in spreading antisemitic and racist hate, as well as Holocaust denial as Congress has done with other major tech companies. This move would be especially welcome following the adoption of a historic UN resolution condemning Holocaust denial and distortion and calling on countries to take action to combat it.

Despite its lofty sounding mission, the Internet Archive, which receives both private and public funding, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, does not function like an academic database, providing historical context for its content. Rather, it makes freely available everything from Nazi-era propaganda to the manifestos of mass killers who have inspired copycat attacks, text and videos from prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and handbooks for carrying out attacks against Jews and others (see a compilation of examples here). An email address is the only information required to post this content, which can be easily shared and is fodder for recruiting extremists to the cause of white supremacy.

The Internet Archive does have ways to alert its users about debunked content when it wants to it announced in 2020 that it would annotate "false and misleading information"in its "Wayback Machine"and indicate whether an item had passed muster with a fact-checking organization. The findings of MEMRI's 2021 report were shared with the director of the Wayback Machine, Mark Graham, at his request. However, despite receiving clear evidence of the virulent and violent content being posted and shared, Graham responded simply by saying that there were "difficult ethical and other decisions to consider around running an online library". In other words, the Internet Archive would not take any steps on its own initiative to either annotate, flag or remove the flood of hateful content that it currently hosts.

This refusal to proactively address the problem of rampant misinformation and incitement on its platform leaves no choice but for elected officials to involve themselves and as quickly as possible. Graham is correct when he states that these are complicated issues and there are considerations of free speech to balance when discussing online content. But Congress and NGOs have rightly demanded that tech giants like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter implement measures to prevent the spread of hate, misinformation and incitement to violence on their platforms. Certainly, the Internet Archive should not have free rein to spread such content without any context or disclaimer, while other tech companies have been forced to confront these issues and work to address them.

On this day, as the world remembers the tragedy of the Holocaust, members of Congress, and especially those representing the Internet Archive's home base in the Bay Area, must take up the important cause of holding this organization accountable for its content. This would certainly be a cause that would ignite both the fury and passion of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, were he still with us. Many tech companies likely recall the reverberations felt throughout Silicon Valley in 2007 when Congressman Lantos castigated Yahoo executives at a hearing over their role in the jailing of a Chinese journalist; he memorably accused them of being technological and financial giants but severely lacking in moral stature.

We encourage the Bay Area Congressional delegation to follow Congressman Lantos'example and show this kind of moral leadership: Ensure that the Internet Archive no longer escapes the scrutiny and accountability that have been applied to other tech companies. In a world that seems to careen ever closer to the edge of reality, we cannot allow the spread of Holocaust denial and online hate to go unchecked.

* Katrina Lantos Swett is President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice. She is a human rights professor at Tufts University and the former chair of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.

Yigal Carmon is President and Founder of The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

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To Combat Holocaust Denial And Online Hate, Congress Should Set Its Sights On San Francisco-Based Internet Archive - Middle East Media Research...

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

Public officials including Israeli Knesset President Mickey Levy, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a wreath-laying ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on Thursday in Berlin. Sean Gallup/Getty Images hide caption

Public officials including Israeli Knesset President Mickey Levy, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attend a wreath-laying ceremony on International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on Thursday in Berlin.

Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945.

Nearly two decades ago, the United Nations General Assembly designated Jan. 27 an annual day of commemoration for its member states, in honor of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism. (In addition to marking the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau, many countries hold national commemoration ceremonies on other dates connected to the Holocaust).

Remembrance Day also aims to promote Holocaust education, an especially timely mission with antisemitic incidents and Holocaust denialism on the rise in the U.S. and other parts of the world.

Notably, today's event arrives less than two weeks after a gunman held a rabbi and three others hostage for hours at a synagogue in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas.

And it comes as outrage is building over a Tennessee school board's decision to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel "Maus" over concerns about profanity and nude imagery (despite the characters being cartoon mice) earlier this month, at a time when conservatives in many states seek to dictate how schools teach sensitive topics like racism and sexual health. A Texas district made headlines in October after an administrator reportedly instructed teachers to provide students with "opposing" views of the Holocaust.

In the U.S., President Biden is marking the day by inviting Auschwitz survivor Bronia Brandman who lost her parents and four of five siblings and didn't speak of her experience for half a century to share her story at the White House.

Biden said in a statement that the world has an obligation to honor victims, learn from survivors, pay tribute to rescuers and carry on the lessons of the Holocaust, a charge he described as especially urgent since fewer and fewer survivors remain.

"From the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, to a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, we are continually and painfully reminded that hate doesn't go away; it only hides," Biden said. "And it falls to each of us to speak out against the resurgence of antisemitism and ensure that bigotry and hate receive no safe harbor, at home and around the world."

He added that it is imperative to "teach accurately about the Holocaust and push back against attempts to ignore, deny, distort, and revise history," noting that the U.S. co-sponsored a U.N. resolution this month charging the global community with combating Holocaust denial through education.

The U.N. designates each remembrance day with a guiding theme. This year, it's "Memory, Dignity and Justice." The theme aims to encourage action to challenge hatred, strengthen solidarity and champion compassion, as the U.N. explains on its website.

"The writing of history and the act of remembering brings dignity and justice to those whom the perpetrators of the Holocaust intended to obliterate," it says. "Safeguarding the historical record, remembering the victims, challenging the distortion of history often expressed in contemporary antisemitism, are critical aspects of claiming justice after atrocity crimes."

In that spirit, here is the U.N.'s full list of virtual ceremonies, seminars and cultural events running today and well into the month of February. Those include the U.N. Holocaust Memorial Ceremony, which was livestreamed worldwide between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. ET. Additional educational resources and another ceremony livestream are available from the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

And what better way to remember than by hearing the stories of Holocaust survivors themselves? We've collected some of NPR's recent coverage and interviews below.

This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog.

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On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, revisit NPR's stories from survivors - NPR

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

My first recollection of the word Holocaust came from my grandfather. My father would buy second-hand comic books on the Second World War for me and my brothers, and we would admire the fighter pilots and the jets that they flew.

My grandfather was a veteran who had fought in the First and the Second World Wars, and he told me that I should read those comic books with fahamu, which is the Kiswahili word for consciousness.

He said, You know, war is not good. The bombs that were dropped by the fighter pilots killed people, and human beings have this tendency to fight against each other and to resolve issues through violence. You must find a way to ensure that this does not happen.

And when I asked him, what is the worst possible thing that you think happened during the wars, he said that it was definitely the Holocaust.

He talked about Auschwitz, and he talked about the kind of things that happened there. Reading about this with fahamu, I thought about the impact it had.

Later, I was invited to Auschwitz itself for a workshop and, to be in the camp, and to understand what had happened, it made me conscious of what war actually means. Being there made a huge impact on me.

A few years later, I started teaching there, at the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide. The consciousness kept growing in me, and I now find myself in my current role, as the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, advising the United Nations Secretary-General.

You cannot imagine a better position from which to articulate the values of fahamu that I learned from my grandfather, and there is not a single day that I do not walk into this office and think about fahamu in relation to the Holocaust: those who deny genocides like those that happened in Srebrenica, and in Rwanda against the Tutsi, take the template from the deniers of the Holocaust.

If I did not approach the subject of the Holocaust with fahamu, the consciousness that my grandfather taught me, there is a great deal of history that I would never have learned.

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First Person: The Holocaust, genocide, and war - UN News

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

Salomon Abend, second from the left, at Beaune La Rolande. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hide caption

Salomon Abend, second from the left, at Beaune La Rolande.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum has acquired photos of a French internment camp where 18,000 Jews were imprisoned before being sent to Auschwitz. The story of how rare photographs were rediscovered begins three decades ago on the streets of New York's Greenwich Village.

In 1989, Silvia Espinosa-Schrock was an undergraduate art student at Cooper Union when she stopped to browse through knickknacks someone was selling on the street. "I saw that box," she recalls. "Instinctively, I was drawn to it, being kind of a visual artist. And I knew I had to save these pictures because I knew this was precious and I knew this should belong to a family."

Espinosa-Schrock paid $5 for the box. Looking through the collection of some 200 photos, she realized they came from a Jewish family, and included pictures of a concentration camp. She always wanted to find the family they belonged to, but couldn't figure out how, so she put them away.

She moved back home to Miami where she's now an artist and art history teacher. The photos remained in storage at her mother's house for the next 30 years. Espinosa-Schrock forgot about them until last year when she came across them in a burst of pandemic cleaning. "There it was, that old box, old cardboard box full of these incredible photographs," she says. "Immediately that night, I started to Google. I've got to find this family."

A portrait of Joachim with his signature. Joachim "Muni" Getter; his first wife, Chaya Silberman (David Semmel's grandfather's sister); and their daughter, Florine. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hide caption

On one of the photos, she found a name, Joachim Getter. A search for that name took her to a website and a blog run by David Semmel that commemorates the Jewish community in a Polish town, Przemysl (pronounced puh-SHEH-muh-shl.) Many of Semmel's relatives who lived there were killed in the Holocaust.

Espinosa-Schrock contacted Semmel and soon he received scans of photos and other keepsakes that were in the cardboard box.

He says, "The first thing I pull out and look at is a box of matches from my parents' wedding in 1953." There were also pictures of his mother and grandmother.

There were also older pictures, from Przemysl and Paris, where some of his relatives moved before the war. Most surprising were several pictures of his grandfather's sister, his great-aunt Chaya. She was killed in Auschwitz, and until then, Semmel had only ever seen one photo of her, as a teenager.

"Chaya was always this unknown quantity," he says. "She was just a name and a picture of an adolescent girl. It just pained my grandfather to talk about her. Chaya was just the victim we had in the family. And all of a sudden, she's [a] real person."

Most significant historically are three photos taken at a French internment camp south of Paris, Beaune-la-Rolande. The photographs, it turns out, belonged to one of Semmel's distant relatives, Paulette Getter. Her first husband, Salomon Abend, was held at Beaune-la-Rolande, and he had sent her the photos and a hand-drawn card.

Semmel, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., brought up on his laptop a picture of the card, now yellowed, but meticulously drawn. It shows a row of barracks, each numbered and surrounded by a fence.

Drawing of camp de Beaune La Rolande. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hide caption

Drawing of camp de Beaune La Rolande.

Semmel says, "To me, this is the prize. This is the most important thing. It's colored, looks like a colored pencil drawing of the detention camp and he's written 'Pour ma chere Paulette' from Salomon.' "

The three photos show men who were being held at the camp. A few are smiling.

Suzy Snyder, a curator with the U.S. Holocaust Museum, says, "You have to look beyond the photographs. You can see in the background, they're living in a very rough situation."

The photos and hand-drawn card sent or smuggled out of the camp are rare pictures of a place where thousands of Jews were held. Disease was rampant in the internment camps and many died. Snyder says, "It was a way station for what the Nazis would then do, and further deport these Jews on to Auschwitz." More than a million people were killed at Auschwitz, including Salomon Abend.

Abend's wife, Paulette, survived the war. David Semmel plans a visit to archives in France, where he hopes to learn how she was able to avoid her husband's fate. Afterward, she made it to New York, where she remarried and lived until 1989. Weeks after her death, it was her box of photographs that art student Silvia Espinosa-Schrock found.

They're now in the archives of the Holocaust Museum. The museum has more than 100,000 photos and images in its collection, and it is working to gather more, before pictures, documents and other evidence of the Holocaust are lost forever.

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A discovery of Holocaust-era photos helps a Jewish family connect with its past - NPR

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

Good morning. Im Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022. Lets look back at the week in Opinion.

Asking Holocaust survivors what concerns them about this country today should not be seen as an overtly political act. But since almost anything can be fairly construed as political nowadays, I should be more precise: Considering the views of Holocaust survivors should not be seen as an overtly partisan act.

Still, to many who wrote in response to last weeks newsletter summarizing our project featuring essays, videos and family photos from some of our readers who survived the Holocaust, our effort was anti-Republican, left-wing propaganda.

To be clear, most of the feedback I saw was positive. But as journalists tend to do, I fixated on the criticism, especially from those who accused us of exploiting elderly survivors for partisan ends. One of them concluded his email:

It is just as incredible that you pandered to readers by somehow associating conservatism in the United States with the evils of Hitlers Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust. That is so beneath you. Do you have no shame?

Among critical reactions, this was the most common thread: How dare we compare conservatism today to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust?

A couple of points: The comparison is to Germany before the Nazis were elected into power, and were not the ones making it. As I wrote in last weeks newsletter, since the dawn of the Trump presidency and picking up especially after the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot it has been readers expressing alarm, in letters to the editor, that prompted me to ask Holocaust survivors what they think about the comparisons being made between the U.S. political situation today and what happened in Germany before the Holocaust and World War II. Two of the four survivors who responded to the query expressed serious concern about what they saw as similarities; another rejected the comparisons entirely, and the fourth wrote broadly about her worries today, which had little to do with partisan politics.

That leads me to my second point: On the whole, the responses were not exactly convenient for anyone hoping to come away with something fully accommodating their politics or affirming their fears. Marjorie Perloff, the poet and literary critic whose family escaped Austria after the Anschluss in 1938, pointed out numerous differences between the U.S. and pre-Nazi Germany and cited substandard education as a genuine threat to democracy today. Betsy Kaplan, who herself arrived in Los Angeles as a child refugee, wondered if this country today could safely take in all the migrants trying to cross our Southern border.

Does publishing those responses betray some partisan animus?

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Here, I should disclose my thoughts on the subject: I worry tremendously about the health of representative democracy in a country riven by tribalism, where one of the major parties still stands behind a former president who tried to overthrow an election and has created an alternate political universe based on a Big Lie. The willingness of people to ignore moral standards and truth for the benefit of their leader raises bright red flags.

Another common objection to the project: Even if the U.S. is discarding certain democratic norms, any implication that a mass atrocity like the Holocaust looms is totally unhinged. My response: That misses the point, and dangerously so.

This week, especially around International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday, you might have come across the solemn admonishment, Never forget. As Holocaust survivors age the youngest participant in our project, Josie Levy Martin of Santa Barbara, is 83 this need to remember, to listen to survivors who witnessed unspeakable hate and inhumanity, becomes more urgent. In her video, Martin said that during a recent talk she gave at a high school, not a single student could say they knew the name Adolf Hitler. Betsy Kaplan said it was important not only to learn about the Holocaust, but also to discuss it, because if you dont hear about it and you just read about, its almost like a fairy tale.

With Never forget comes its corollary: Never again. And with collective knowledge of the Holocaust fading some scary survey results from 2020 show unequivocally that we are forgetting our ability to fulfill the latter promise weakens. This isnt to say that we, right now, are careening toward another atrocity like the Holocaust; what it does say is that we should be more vigilant about creating the conditions in which we build up tolerance for something that, not long ago, we would have considered unthinkable.

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Why is it political to ask Holocaust survivors about the state of U.S. democracy? - Los Angeles Times

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

The Holocaust was a period in history at the time of World War Two (1939-1945), when millions of Jews and other people were murdered because of who they were.

The killings were organised by Germany's Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler.

For Holocaust Memorial Day, to make sure people don't forget what happened, we listen to the stories of people affected by this terrible event in history.

We asked some grandparents who lived through those times to talk to their grandchildren about their experiences.

Some of these stories contain content which you may find upsetting.

Feo's story

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Feo tells his granddaughter how Kindertransport took him to safety ahead of World War Two (1939-1945).

At the time, Jewish people were being persecuted and killed by the Nazis. .

His mother was supposed to follow him to England, but war broke out so she never made it.

He later learnt that she had died in an concentration camp.

Miriam's story

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Miriam explains to her granddaughter how she became separated from some of her family during the Holocaust.

"We thought we were going to be caught any minute - so we said goodbye to each other. We sat there waiting, waiting, waiting," she recalls.

Miriam went into hiding for a year and a half to avoid being captured by the Nazis.

Ivan's story

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When he was five years old, Ivan was rescued by his aunt who stopped him from being sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.

"My aunt jumped out, picked me up in her arms and ran into the woods. We hid there for a few days. A soldier saw it happening, but he looked the other way," remembers Ivan.

They had to hide in a forest to avoid being caught.

Jan's story

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Jan explains to his granddaughters how he was taken away from his father by the Nazis.

"The soldiers tried to pull me out of my father's arms. He pleaded for them to take him instead of me. They didn't listen - and they took me out of his arms," he explains.

He never saw his father again and he still doesn't know what happened to him.

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The Holocaust: Families affected tell their stories - CBBC Newsround

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Posted By admin on January 30, 2022

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may perpetuate a number of dangerous inaccuracies and fallacies when used in teaching young people about the Holocaust, an academic report has said.

According to research by the Centre for Holocaust Education at University College London, more than a third of teachers in England use the bestselling book and film adaptation in lessons on the Nazi genocide.

A study, to be published shortly, builds on research conducted five years ago among secondary school pupils which found that the story by John Boyne regularly elicited misplaced sympathy for Nazis.

According to the new survey, 35% of teachers used The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in lessons about the Holocaust. However, its use occupies a somewhat contested position as a potential educational resource, the centres report says. Drama and English teachers were more likely to use it than history teachers.

Boynes book is about a friendship between the son of an Auschwitz commandant and a Jewish boy incarcerated in the Nazi concentration camp. Published in 2006, it has sold more than 11m copies worldwide. A film version was made in 2008.

The centres report said: While most young people who took part in the study recognised the narrative as a work of fiction and many were able to identify and critique its most glaring implausibilities and historical inaccuracies, they nonetheless overwhelmingly characterised it as realistic and/or truthful.

It added that many students, after studying the story, reached conclusions that contributed significantly to one of the most powerful and problematic misconceptions of this history, that ordinary Germans held little responsibility and were by and large brainwashed or otherwise entirely ignorant of the unfolding atrocities.

Among comments from teachers gathered during the research were, students come to us and literally think the Holocaust IS The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas; They come with ideas that nobody knew about the Holocaust, that people were completely in the dark about it; and They feel sorry for the German guard.

Stuart Foster, the centres executive director, said he had no criticism of Boyne for his work of fiction, but using the novel in lessons about a historical event could be problematic. In an era of fake news and conspiracy theories, its very worrying that young people harbour myths and misconceptions about the Holocaust.

Boyne, who has previously defended his work from similar criticism, told the Guardian: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is deliberately sub-titled A Fable, a work of fiction with a moral at the centre. From the start, I hoped it would inspire young people to begin their own study of the Holocaust, which in my case began at the age of 15 and continued in the decades that followed.

As a novelist, I believe that fiction can play a valuable role in introducing difficult subjects to young readers, but it is the job of the teacher to impress upon their students that there is legitimate space between imagination and reality. By relating to my central characters, however, by caring about them and wanting no harm to come to them, the young reader can learn empathy and kindness.

While no work of fiction is flawless, I remain extremely proud of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and grateful to the millions of readers who have embraced it over the last 16 years.

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas may fuel dangerous Holocaust fallacies - The Guardian

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