That was the man who tried to rape her; she was sure of it.
She had seen him before, around the apartment complex where they both lived. But she said her most vivid memory was of William Gregory breaking into her apartment and attacking her.
Author: Webb
Gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen
Sigi Ziering; Tycoon Survived Nazi Camps
- Executive Became a Philanthropy and High-Tech Leader
By: MYRNA OLIVER TIMES STAFF WRITER
Obituaries
Los Angeles Times, Home Edition
Tuesday, November 14, 2000
Metro Section: Metro
Page B-6
SEE CORRECTION APPENDED
It must have been the “training” of the Holocaust, the self-described workaholic speculated to Fortune magazine a couple of years ago. “Unless you work,” he said, “you are destined for the gas chamber.”
And work he did — as a teenager relocated to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, then to Fuhlsbuttel prison near Hamburg, Germany, and on to a Kiel concentration camp. He survived the Nazis but never stopped working until about a year ago, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Sigi Ziering, who turned a chemist’s bright idea into Diagnostic Products Corp., one of Los Angeles’ most successful international high-tech companies, died Sunday. He was 72.
[…]
Toward the end of the war, the Zierings were moved to the Fuhlsbuttel prison. Every week, they watched Nazis load 10 or so Jews into a truck destined for Bergen-Belsen and the gas chambers. “With German precision,” Ziering told Fortune in 1998, “the guards went at their job alphabetically — and never got to Z.”
Later, the Zierings were marched to a Kiel concentration camp, where males were routinely murdered if they failed a physical test — running a mile carrying a heavy piece of wood. Ziering and his brother passed.
[…]
—- START OF CORRECTION —-
For the Record;
Los Angeles Times Saturday, November 18, 2000 Home Edition; Metro; Part B; Page 6; Metro Desk; 1 inches; 22 words;
Type of Material: Correction
Bergen-Belsen — The obituary of Sigi Ziering in Tuesday’s Times incorrectly stated that there were gas chambers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
—- END CORRECTION TEXT —-
First the Holocaust, Now This
The Elderly Jews of South Florida … and 62 Years Ago Tonight
[…]
To many of you, World War II and the Holocaust probably seems like ancient history. The truth is, there are tens of thousands of people who lived through that horror, escaped the ovens, and are now living out their final years in South Florida. None of us can imagine what they went through; first to survive, and then to somehow make it to a country where they believed they would be free and their voice would be heard. These immigrants worked hard to raise families in America, contribute to our society, and make this country a better place for all of us. They took their citizenship duties very seriously, to the point where many of us have probably rolled our eyes a time or two over their extreme patriotism and love of America. Silly old people!
[…]
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
Posted 11.10.00
Slippery Soap
Book revisits horrifying question about the Holocaust
- Atlanta man says Nazis made soap of Jews
No human soap
Book revisits horrifying question about the Holocaust
Continue reading
Manipulating Memory May Provide a Way to Forget Fear
Depending on your favorite poet, memory is sweet (Cowper), pleasing (Pope), green (Shakespeare) or fond (Moore). If you prefer science to poetry, though, memory is, above all else, faulty. Memory’s essential imperfection is no secret. Everybody sometimes suffers from forgetfulness. And psychologists have long known that not only do people forget, they also misremember. Still, scientists are only beginning to learn just how strangely flawed human memory can be. One new study, for example, suggests that the worst thing you can do for a memory is recall it. In other words, practice makes imperfect. If you use a memory, you can lose it.
Continue readingSurvivor
YOU NEVER SEE THE SCARS. But she talks about them once in a while and you see them in your mind’s eye — smooth white burn marks on her flesh, old as the Holocaust.
Continue reading
Prepared to give lessons on Holocaust
Challenger Middle School teacher Bruce Galler of Palmdale once saved two students from expulsion from the Lancaster campus after they scratched swastikas onto test booklets.
Continue readingBrothers reunited after 61 years
By Sima Stein
The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition
JERUSALEM (August 18) — It is not every day that brothers who have been separated for over 60 years are reunited. On Wednesday, Lazar Sheiman, 78, and his brother Leonid, 79, both Holocaust survivors, met at Yad Vashem for the third time since their first reunion with each other last month after 61 years.
“It’s not every day that miracles happen,” said Leonid. “I feel like I’ve found a new brother.”
“We reminisce about stories from home,” he said when asked what brothers who have been separated for 61 years speak about. “There has been nothing hard about this meeting,” he said. “It has all been easy.”
[…]
The brothers last saw one another in their hometown of Tomaszow in 1941, as the German Army advanced on Soviet-occupied Poland. Leonid was drafted into the Red Army, and Lazar was recruited into the youth groups deployed on work details throughout the Soviet Union.
Lazar immigrated to Israel from Poland in 1957, and Leonid in 1995 from Ukraine. For the past five years they were unaware they were living only 80 kms. from each other — Lazar in Herzliya and Leonid in Kiryat Gat.
It was only in response to his daughter’s suggestion that Lazar filled out a form at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names earlier this year that ultimately connected him with his long-lost brother. Each thought he was the sole survivor of a family of two parents, five boys, and one girl.
“I was sure there was no one,” Lazar said.
The brothers communicate in Russian, since Leonid does not yet speak Hebrew. Though neither plans to move closer to the other, both intend to meet and speak often, “to make up for lost time.”
Rabbi’s Inflammatory Holocaust Remarks Spark Controversy in Jerusalem
By Jack Katzenell
Associated Press
Sunday, August 6, 2000
Controversy raged in Israel on Sunday after a rabbi who heads the biggest ultra-Orthodox political party said the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust died because they were reincarnations of sinners.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, leader of the Shas party, also declared that Prime Minister Ehud Barak has “no sense” because he is trying to make peace with the Palestinians, who are “snakes.”
Yosef was speaking in his weekly Saturday night sermon broadcast over the party’s radio stations and is even beamed overseas by satellite.
He called the Nazis “evil” and the victims “poor people,” but he said the six million “were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things which should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.”
Barak told the cabinet Sunday the statement is unworthy of a rabbi of Yosef’s status. “His words could harm the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and could hurt the feelings of their families and the feelings of the entire nation,” the prime minister said.
Legislator Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, who heads the secularist Shinui party, said Rabbi Yosef is “an old fool” who has done a service to those who are trying to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler’s reputation.
“In the world it will be said that a distinguished rabbi in Israel is in effect confirming what Hitler said, that the Jews are sinners,” said Lapid, who is himself a Holocaust survivor.
The two main radio stations were inundated with phone calls and messages, most of them criticizing Yosef’s statement. Yehoshua Mashav, a listener, told Israel radio that in plain language Yosef was saying Hitler was innocent and that “he was simply the messenger of God sent to give the Jewish people their just desserts.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international center for Holocaust remembrance, said the rabbi absolved the perpetrators of the Holocaust of their responsibility. “If those Jews deserved to die for past sins, why blame those who carried out the death sentence?” said Ephraim Zuroff, director of the group’s Jerusalem office.
Israel’s Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who is also a Holocaust survivor, said Judaism has a concept of reincarnation and of the righteous dying to atone for sin in a previous life, but he told Israel radio that did not account for the Holocaust.
“I have no explanation for the Holocaust,” said Lau, who was a child at the time and lost most of his family in the death camps. He appealed to Israelis to “stop probing into it (the Holocaust) in such a blatant, painful, hurtful manner.”
Shas chairman Eli Ishai said criticism of Yosef is unjustified. “Rabbi Ovadia weeps for every Jew who is killed … but nobody, not even a saint, has not sinned. Everyone dies in a state of sin. Nobody can be perfect all his life.”
Yosef, who ordered Shas to quit Barak’s coalition as the prime minister was leaving for the Camp David summit, described the Arabs as “snakes” interested mainly in murdering Jews. He said Barak, who is trying to achieve a permanent peace with the Palestinians, has “no sense.”
“What kind of peace is this?” Yosef said. “Will you put them beside us? You are bringing snakes beside us. … Will we make peace with a snake?”
Col. Jebril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service in the West Bank, said Yosef’s statement about Arabs was racist. A religious leader should be trying to promote tolerance among Jews, Muslims and Christians, Rajoub told Israel radio.