Author: Webb

‘We are not looking for historical accuracy’

Dated: 

Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 11:55:00 CDT
Reply-To: H-Net History of the Holocaust List [[email protected]]
Sender: H-Net History of the Holocaust List [[email protected]]
From: "Mott, Jim" [[email protected]]
Subject: Re: Holocaust Survivor Story

From: Amcha [[email protected]]

Dear Friends,

The posting about the Holocaust survivor story posed some interesting questions, and at the risk of incitement of the many historians who participate in this list, let me offer you our outlook on survivor testimonies. To us at AMCHA who help survivors record their stories–before,during, and after the Holocaust either in writing, video or audio, as they prefer, we are not looking for historical accuracy. We are interested in helping the survivor relate what he/she remembers. It is possible that there are some minor or major inaccuracies, exaggerations, or distortions. Whereas we do not analyze the testimonies, we feel that the important elements relate to what the survivor wants to convey through his story.

The student described may have read something as described, true or fictional, or may have imagined it,or actually interviewed a survivor who conveyed pieces of the (embellished) story. The question I would ask is what is the student, and perhaps the survivor trying to communicate. All the best for 5756,

John Lemberger,
Executive Director, AMCHA
National Israeli Center for Psyhcosocial Support of Survivors of the Holocaust
and the Second Generation

Source: H-Holocaust H-Net Discussion List
www.h-net.org/~holoweb/logs/Oct95.html

Human thumb light switches

Dated:

50 Years Later, a Visit With Buchenwald’s Ghosts

By STEPHEN KINZER

New York Times. New York, N.Y.

Apr 10, 1995. pg. A3, 1 pgs

WEIMAR, Germany, April 9 — With a solemn and highly emotional gathering at the site of the former Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany today began a month of ceremonies to remember the victims of the Nazi horror.

[…]

She [Ilse Koch] was a very beautiful woman with long red hair, but any prisoner who was caught looking at her could be shot,” recalled Kurt Glass, a former inmate who worked as a gardener at the Koch family villa. “She got the idea she would like lamp shades made of human skin, and one day on the Appelplatz we were all ordered to strip to the waist. The ones who had interesting tatoos were brought to her, and she picked out the ones she liked. Those people were killed and their skin was made into lampshades for her. She also used mummified human thumbs as light switches in her house.”

Holocaust Museum Head Resigns

Dated:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The newly selected director of the United States Holocaust Museum, under fire for questionable academic conduct, has resigned just two weeks before he was to take office.

Steven R. Katz sent a letter of resignation to the museum Friday, saying the “frivolous and non-meritorious allegations which have been asserted would unduly distract” from the work of the museum.

After carrying out an investigation, the museum’s board said a week ago that it would stand by Katz, who was scheduled to succeed founding director Jeshajahu Weinberg on March 16.

In accepting Katz’ letter of resignation, museum chairman Miles Lerman said he was saddened and continues to hold Katz’ “integrity, intellectual vision and scholarship on the Holocaust in the highest regard.”

Museum spokeswoman Mary Morrison said Katz was at his home in Binghamton, N.Y., and not reachable for comment on his decision.

Katz became a tenured Cornell professor in 1984.In March 1991, the Ivy League school barred him from future study leaves because he taught at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 while on a half-year’s study leave.

“While we can study on sabbatical leave, we can’t teach on study leave, but I did not know that,” Katz said in recent telephone interview.”It was completely out of ignorance.”

In resumes and university documents dating back to 1983, Katz also described a Holocaust book he was working on as “being prepared for publication.”

But the project swelled into a multivolume work, and the first volume was not published until last year. In 1991 Katz had his salary frozen for three years for claiming his Holocaust book was near publication when it wasn’t.

Katz called his missteps technical violations, but Cornell officially censured him, finding him guilty on both counts of “academic misconduct.”

“I made two unintentional and regrettable errors,” Katz said.

In his letter of resignation Katz said he appreciated the museum’s support but “I have concluded that our mutual interests will best be served by my returning to academic life.”

Copied from the PRODIGY(R) service 03/04/95 09:42

Israel has a shortage of enemies

Dated:

Jewish Agency Gets New Leader

JERUSALEM (AP) — Taking over as Jewish Agency chairman, Israeli lawmaker Avraham Burg vowed to strengthen ties between Israel and world Jewry by turning the organization into a “parliament of the Jewish people.”

[…]

Burg expressed concern about growing assimilation in overseas Jewish communities and maintaining support for Israel once peace is reached with the Arabs.

“Can we, and how do we, survive without an external enemy? That’s the question of our times,” he said.

Anti-Semitism is good

Dated:

“I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the Jews — reminds us who we are.”

Source:

Jay Lefkowitz

Quoted in “Counterculture,” by James Atlas

New York Times

New York, NY: February 12, 1995. pg. SM32, 8 pgs.

www.nytimes.com/

6 million did not die in the gas chambers

Dated:

[…]

Historian Raul Hilberg acknowledges that there were reports about Nazi atrocities that later proved to be false. For example, the Nazis did not make human soap, nor did they kill victims by electrocution or diesel exhaust. “All of these rumors were circulating in 1942, and we have to separate rumors that were not the truth from the truth,” says Hilberg.

Continue reading →

6 million did not die in the gas chambers

Dated:

BY STEWART AIN
Inside, 12-31-1994

Philip Bialowitz still remembers the ear-piercing shrieks. "I could hear the screams of those in the gas chamber," says Bialowitz, his voice rising as he remembers the horror of it all. "It was like thunder."

Bialowitz, 66, of Little Neck, N.Y., is one of 11 living survivors of the Sobibor extermination camp. At 15, he and a group of other teenagers were ordered by their Nazi captors to cut the hair of Jewish women moments before they entered the gas chamber — a chamber supposedly containing showers.

[…]

But Philip Bialowitz can never forget that "bodies were taken out and burned in stacks. Hundreds of them were burned like steaks." Historians estimate that 250,000 Jews were murdered in the 18 months Sobibor operated.

[…]

"There is more recorded documentation of genocide during the Holocaust than at any other time in the history of mankind," says the ADL’s Jeffrey Ross. Historians point out that not one of the Nazis tried for war crimes ever denied the existence of gas chambers or the plan to exterminate the Jews.

[…]

Stewart Ain is a staff writer for the Jewish Week.

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