“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” by Gustav Klimt, Public Domain ____________ The Holocaust was one of the worst events in human history, and people keep it in their minds so they should never forget. Never forget the infiltrations of Nazis…
Yom HaShoah with the Holocaust survivors
April marks the seventy year anniversary of the allied liberation of Jews and many other peoples from concentration camps all over Europe. During the Holocaust, German Nazis killed approximately twelve million people, six million of whom were Jews and one…
“Accepted” outsiders: the Jewish people in Germany today
“Germans and Jews never mixed well.” This was spat during one of my ten trips to Germany throughout my lifetime — each of which was accompanied by my family’s mini travel Shabbat set. The quote is a declaration of hatred…
Bearing witness with the last generation
In this day and age, the vast amount of information available at our fingertips leaves no excuse for anyone to be unaware of the Holocaust’s atrocities. There is a myriad of films, books, and museums depicting the horrors that Jews…
Remembering the Unforgettable
An Encounter with the Past: After high school, I spent a year studying at a yeshiva in Israel. During one of the breaks I joined some of my peers on an organized trip to Poland, called Shorashim. Shorashim is the…
Aftermath of “Aftermath”
Accusations of “Jew” and “anti-Polish agitator” have not been so openly splashed across Polish newspapers since the heights of National Socialism and communism.This public outcry has been inspired by Aftermath, a Holocaust-related drama by Władysław Pasikowski, which has been dubbed…
The Jewish Museum in Munich: an attempt to reconcile identities in conflict
Munich. For many Jews, the first name associations may be the 1972 Olympics, or the destruction of the main synagogue during Kristallnacht, or the concentration camp Dachau. However, a city that once was a hotbed for anti-Semitic activity is now…
First Farsi Holocaust text connects Iranians to Jewish history
On October 14, I was privileged to be a student delegate at 30 Years After’s 3rd Biennial Conference. 30 Years After is the civic and political voice of America’s Iranian Jews, the first and only organization of its kind. The…
Inked: a living Holocaust memorial
In Zakhor, the famous commentary on Jewish history and memory, historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi writes, “Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people.” Confluent with that statement is…
Survivors’ Message Immortalized Through Storytelling
Leon Weinstein and his daughter Natalie Gold Lumer in a loving embrace. (photo by Clifford Lester/Jewish Journal)A 101 year-old man died on December 28th, 2011 in his bedroom in the early hours of the morning. His daughter, a phone call…