Admissions against interest

Admissions against interest about ‘the Holocaust’

Survivors went every which way

Dated:

Reunited after 61 years

  • A match of Holocaust stories helps two sisters separated since 1944 find each other after going through the hardships of war to reach Israel

By Steven Erlanger

New York Times News Service

February 6, 2005

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/

chi-0502060398feb06,1,2052246.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

RISHON LETZION, Israel — Klara Bleier and Hana Katz thought each other dead, swallowed 61 years ago, like the rest of their family, in the maw of Auschwitz.

The sisters were separated in October 1944 in the Budapest ghetto when Katz left one day to find work and food. She never returned.

But both came through the chaos of the Nazi death marches and the refugee camps at the end of World War II; both came to Israel in 1948 and raised families, 45 miles apart; both thought they were sole survivors.

In the years since, Bleier’s son-in-law became obsessed with the missing family history. Katz’s granddaughter did too. Six years apart, they filed survivor testimonies with Yad Vashem, Israel’s center for Holocaust studies and commemoration.

A new computerized archive matched the two testimonies, and on Thursday — a week after heads of state marked the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation — the two women were reunited.

[…]

At last the Soviet army liberated Budapest, she said, “and we all went to wherever we could find a place.”

[…]

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Yet another survivor

Dated:

Who were the Holocaust victims?

Database hopes to document lives of the dead

The lives of thousands of Holocaust victims are coming to light in a new database that allows anyone with an Internet connection to research the fate of family members and friends sent to Nazi death camps.

[…]

One of the early users was Jerry Zeisler, a 50-year-old business consultant from Leesburg, Va., who logged on within hours of the launch Nov. 22 to search for members of his mother’s family. He and his sister, Bonnie Frederics of Tucson, Ariz., worked simultaneously while e-mailing each other.

Among the testimonies they found were those of Zlata Adelson, a great-grandmother of theirs who was born in Butrimantz (Butrimonys), Lithuania, in 1879, and Benzion Adelson, her son born in 1911. Zeisler and Frederics knew that Zlata and Benzion had died in 1941 because they were listed in a postwar account of the Jews of Butrimantz — one of many such books, called yizkor, written by survivors who wanted to chronicle the lives of those who had died.

They also hit upon a surprise: The person who submitted the victims’ names, in 1955, was Reuven Adelson, another son whom surviving family members assumed had died in the Shoah with his mother and brother. […]

[…]

Source:

By Bill Broadway

The Washington Post

January 25, 2005

www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/

chi-0501250009jan25,1,6224750.story?coll=chi-leisuretempo-hed

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Look who’s obsessed with the Holocaust

Dated:

For Israel, the wounds of the Holocaust remain fresh

RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/

archive/2005/01/25/international1429EST0642.DTL

(01-25) 11:29 PST JERUSALEM (AP) — Though it ended six decades ago, the Holocaust remains a fresh trauma here, a tragedy that darkens Israeli society and forms an integral part of the national identity.

The Holocaust is everywhere. It is a tool used by hard-liners and doves to score political points and a reference point for cultural debates. It hovers over the Middle East conflict, where Israel, despite its military superiority, still fears being wiped out.

Thousands of Israeli high school pupils make annual pilgrimages to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps to forge a personal link to the murder of 6 million Jews. Visiting foreign leaders are routinely brought to Israel’s Holocaust memorial to directly confront the dimensions of the nightmare.

Israel maintains an informal ban on the works of Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer. A planned speech by German President Horst Koehler in Israel’s parliament next week sparked threats of a boycott by some legislators, who said it would be too painful to hear German in the Knesset.

[…]

“Auschwitz is a part of our daily life, not our past,” said former Parliament Speaker Shevah Weiss, a Holocaust survivor. “In our society, our souls, our national spirit, everything is connected with the memory of the dark period of Auschwitz.”

[…]

Avner Shalev, the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, said the Holocaust remains a living catastrophe for the entire nation.

“It’s in the air, you can feel it,” he said. “The wound is there still. We are still mourning, we are still processing and trying to cope. The trauma is so deep and so painful, it is still going on.”

Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!

Dated:

Our overuse of the term ‘holocaust’ belittles the true horror of Nazism

Notebook by Mick Hume

January 14, 2005

www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1054-1439509,00.html

[…]

Indeed, the farther into history the Second World War retreats, the more obsessed with Nazis the news seems to become. […]

[…]

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Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.