by David Irving, a British historian, will be in prison for the next three years after claiming for decades the Holocaust did not happen. The Austrian sentencing judge called Irving a “falsifier of history” who had academically challenged the Holocaust research of other scholars. One researcher, Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, fought back against Irving and won but she feels Irving’s imprisonment will only make him a Free Speech martyr.
When the Western mindset of freedom and Free Speech meets anti-Muslim cartoonists and Holocaust deniers like Irving, there is a strange and dangerous conflation of the radical worst of us becoming memes for a movement. The best evidence for fighting the David Irvings and others who press lies over ugly truths is in the specificity of the body and the revelation of embedded truth that erupts to the surface when crushed into the flesh. When I was a teenager, I worked at a television station as an on-camera movie reviewer.
There was a man who worked in the film department named Eli. Eli was the only person who could take a piece of ruined raw film, fix it, and have it on the air for the evening news in five minutes. Eli was old school. He could fix anything mechanical. The new videotape revolution happening around him held no interest. He was pure celluloid and chemicals and darkrooms. Eli was a “Jew in Nebraska” and that was extremely rare in the 1980’s. He moved to Nebraska after World War II after surviving Auschwitz and surviving Auschwitz was even rarer than a Jew in Nebraska.
The proof of Eli’s survival was tattooed on his left forearm in a series of jagged and blurry numbers. When a Jew was taken into a Concentration Camp, the Nazis would tattoo Jewish forearms with numbers in order to track them much in the same way ranchers brand their cattle to prove provenance and dominion over the beast. The bright white of Eli’s forearm surrounding the blue tattoos made the numbers leap from him like ephemeral ghosts of the past dancing along the bulging purple veins in his arm. The veins and numbers trafficked horrors from a childhood spent hiding in the ditches of Germany. Eli always wore short-sleeved shirts. It didn’t matter if the temperature was 30 below zero, Eli was in short sleeves.
Eli always wanted those numbers to dance in front of the eyes of anyone who dared to look at those marks of a promise of death. There was a rumor in the newsroom that if you asked Eli about his tattoos he would never shut up about the Holocaust. Eli wasn’t Eli: Eli, the rumor claimed, was an icon for remembrance. Eli was resented for it at work. Some in the newsroom called Eli — always behind his back and forever whispered in the hushed tones of evil finding voice — the “Jew Bastard” and the “Crybaby” and the “Jew Nazi” and, most insulting of all, simply “Jew” where “Jew” was pronounced with three syllables instead of one. Eli and I were always friendly with each other.
We’d wave whenever we met eyes in the hallway. One day I went to talk to Eli about a problem I was having with a wind-up Bolex movie camera and he took me outside to show me in brighter light how to get the winding mechanism to work better. In the cold, brilliant, harsh, light of a thawing Nebraska Springtime, I was finally able to see an up-close view of Eli’s blue tattoos. The numbers were barely legible as numbers. They looked more like ancient icons and they moved as the muscles in Eli’s forearm moved.
Eli’s tattoos were the color of a bruise that would never heal. I curried up some gumption and asked Eli about his tattoos. He looked his arm and then at me and then his face slowly held a childlike hurt as if I had kicked him in the teeth with a steel-toed jackboot. He summoned up a pain-stained voice and whispered, “Never speak,” in a heavy German accent.
His eyes were overwhelming with tears and I felt terrible. I had gone beyond the obvious to ask about the specific when only the general mattered. I didn’t know what to say as Eli pierced the second knuckle of each index finger into the corner of each eye to stanch the tears. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“They all gone,” he choked. “Only me.”
Eli wiped his knuckles on his shirt, crisply nodded, turned his back and walked back into the newsroom. Eli and I never spoke again. I couldn’t face his eyes and he never looked up from his work desk when I passed by in the hallway. The numbers on his forearm haunted me ever since. I grew to realize all the murmuring behind Eli’s back was a way of minimizing his suffering and the mocking of his religion and his horror were inspired by the same vicious intent of the Nazis who punctured a tattoo needle into Eli’s forearm.
Hatred wears insidious and common masks — some of them obvious and brown-shirted, some of them quieter and dressed in white shoes and polyester ties. When I hear stories from people like David Irving who claim the Holocaust was not real or that the Holocaust was a hoax or that the Holocaust is only propaganda from the Jewish cabal seeking world sympathy, I am taken back to that bright day in Nebraska where the brutality of history and the current bruising truth were revealed and relived and reviled in real time right before my eyes.
Eli may not have been able to discuss his tattoos but by always exposing his forearm to the world, he testified to the Nazi truth embedded in his arm: From ugly numbers tumble beautiful lives that must never be denied.
I remember hearing the words “Never Forget” when I was growing up in Northern New Jersey. Our next door neighbors on the military base where my dad was stationed were Jewish and had lived in Germany for a while as many military family had during the 1980s.
My brother and I spent many hours hanging out with the kids next door, so my brother and I became a little familiar with the Jewish faith, something that was foreign to us having grown up as protestants. When my Dad got out of the military and we moved to a nearby township, we met even more friends — many were Jewish.
While it wasn’t always brought up, there was always an effort to make sure that people never forgot about the Holocaust.
Moving to South Central Indiana when I was in high school put me back into a homogenious world where Jewish people were fairly rare.
However, I do remember gathering in my high school library to hear a Holocaust survivor speak. While the content of the speech has faded from my memory, I remember seeing the blue tattoo forced upon the survivor’s arm by the Nazis. It made an impression on my mind.
Later on, after graduation from high school and before I started college, I spent a summer living with a family in Holland. During WWII family members had fought against the Germans and the family made a point of telling me about the horrors committed by the Germans. It reinforced the lessons I had learned early on in life.
WWII seems so far away. Many of the veterans have died. We’ve been through several armed conflicts since then.
We must never forget since there are people who wish to rewrite history to cover over the fact that the Holocaust happened.
We must never forget because there is a deep evil that resides in mankind. The genocides that occurred in Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia show us that humans are capable of great inhumanity.
We can’t assume it won’t happen again. Even Americans aren’t safe from whatever flaw in humanity causes widespread violence against people who are seen as not being members of the human family.
We must never forget, lest history repeat itself.
Thank you for your beautiful message, Chris. I agree must all agree to always remember but, like you, I know there will one day come a day when there are no Holocaust survivors are alive and the horror of the experience fades into paper and digitized images. People are hard to ignore. History was made to be repeated.
There have been some discussions about “carrying on” the Nazi tattooing where the sons and daughters of the tattooed survivors get the same tattoo to keep the memory alive because asking about a tattoo can be a great teaching method.
As I understand it, traditional Jewish law forbids the willing tattooing of the skin – probably a main reason why the Nazis forced the number tattoos on the Jews — and so there is concern in some Jewish homes that when the survivor dies, so too, do the numbers and the living horrors they represent.
Is it appropriate for non-Jews to take up the tattoo effort?
Should we pick from a list of Holocaust tattoos and have them embedded in our skin as a sign of remembrance and unity of never allowing it to happen again?
Or is that grandstanding and disingenuous and a feeble attempt to tether to a history and a horror that does not belong to us?
I’ve never heard of the call to pass along the memories via tattoos.
I’ll have to think about whether that would be effective or not. My fear would be that it could become “trendy” and the impact would be limited if people with no connection to survivors decided to get the identification tattoos. The message could be diluted in much the same way that that messages contained in the various colored plastic bands are today. When everyone has a band, they begin to blend into the scenery and lose their effectiveness.
We need to make sure that our history classes teach about WWII and the Holocaust, as well as subsequent genocides. Too often, it seems that history is a “dusty” subject that never gets beyond the basic facts surrounding the founding of our country.
We need to make the horrors of the Holocaust real for the generations growing up today.
There are efforts to keep the memories alive.
There is a monastary in my county that has a statute of Saint Maximillian Kolbe who died in a Nazi death camp after trading his life so another could live. It’s a powerful historical lesson which teaches a powerful lesson.
From Roadside America’s webite:
“Small shrines and prayer spots populate the grounds. There’s a memorial to the Polish Underground; a shrine (surrounded by barbed wire) to skinny Maximilian Kolbe, the martyr priest of Auschwitz.”
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/INMUNshrine.html
From Catholic Pages is an account of St. Kolbe’s heroic sacrificial act in a Nazi death camp:
“The heroism of Fr Kolbe went echoing through Auschwiz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. Mr Jozef Stemler, former director of an important cultural institute in Poland, comments: ‘In those conditions … in the midst of a brutalization of thought and feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Fr Maximilian. The atmosphere grew lighter, as this thunderbolt provoked its profound and salutary shock.’ Jerzy Bielecki declared that Fr Kolbe’s death was ‘a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength. …It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.'”
http://www.catholic-pages.com/saints/st_maximilian.asp
We need more reminders for people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s who might never have met anyone who served in WWII or survived the Holocaust.
We need to make sure that the message is taught in our schools, churches and homes so that we never forget.
I’ve never heard of the call to pass along the memories via tattoos.
I’ll have to think about whether that would be effective or not. My fear would be that it could become “trendy” and the impact would be limited if people with no connection to survivors decided to get the identification tattoos. The message could be diluted in much the same way that that messages contained in the various colored plastic bands are today. When everyone has a band, they begin to blend into the scenery and lose their effectiveness.
We need to make sure that our history classes teach about WWII and the Holocaust, as well as subsequent genocides. Too often, it seems that history is a “dusty” subject that never gets beyond the basic facts surrounding the founding of our country.
We need to make the horrors of the Holocaust real for the generations growing up today.
There are efforts to keep the memories alive.
There is a monastary in my county that has a statute of Saint Maximillian Kolbe who died in a Nazi death camp after trading his life so another could live. It’s a powerful historical lesson which teaches a powerful lesson.
From Roadside America’s webite:
“Small shrines and prayer spots populate the grounds. There’s a memorial to the Polish Underground; a shrine (surrounded by barbed wire) to skinny Maximilian Kolbe, the martyr priest of Auschwitz.”
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/INMUNshrine.html
From Catholic Pages is an account of St. Kolbe’s heroic sacrificial act in a Nazi death camp:
“The heroism of Fr Kolbe went echoing through Auschwiz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. Mr Jozef Stemler, former director of an important cultural institute in Poland, comments: ‘In those conditions … in the midst of a brutalization of thought and feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Fr Maximilian. The atmosphere grew lighter, as this thunderbolt provoked its profound and salutary shock.’ Jerzy Bielecki declared that Fr Kolbe’s death was ‘a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength. …It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.'”
http://www.catholic-pages.com/saints/st_maximilian.asp
We need more reminders for people who were born in the 1980s and 1990s who might never have met anyone who served in WWII or survived the Holocaust.
We need to make sure that the message is taught in our schools, churches and homes so that we never forget.
Chris —
You’re probably right that “Holocaust Tattoos” might become trendy and lose their meaning on non-survivor skins.
Thanks for the pointer to Fr Kolbe! I had no idea of his sacrifice and that is an important memory for me to remember now as well.
I agree we need to teach the dirty side of history instead of glossing over the victories and the medals — but that can be a hard task for the young who are attuned to entertainment and to vehicles of escapism against the drudgery and reality of their everyday lives.
Chris —
You’re probably right that “Holocaust Tattoos” might become trendy and lose their meaning on non-survivor skins.
Thanks for the pointer to Fr Kolbe! I had no idea of his sacrifice and that is an important memory for me to remember now as well.
I agree we need to teach the dirty side of history instead of glossing over the victories and the medals — but that can be a hard task for the young who are attuned to entertainment and to vehicles of escapism against the drudgery and reality of their everyday lives.
I guess I’m still naive when I think that people could be so cruel to someone who has lived through such a horrific ordeal.
I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a girl and feeling terrified for her through her simple yet terror-filled entries. I have never had anything but the utmost reverence and respect for someone who has survived that type of ordeal, and even if Eli did talk about the Holocaust all the time – as your coworkers so wrongly implied – he had a right to! He had a right to broadcast the whole damn story on a bilboard.
Those five words though – “They all gone. Only me.” are louder than a megaphone and grab more attention than a bilboard the size of a football field.
And it makes me so angry to read about his quiet suffering and the cowardly a-holes who insulted him behind his back. To put it simply, some people are just IDIOTS! 👿
I guess I’m still naive when I think that people could be so cruel to someone who has lived through such a horrific ordeal.
I remember reading The Diary of Anne Frank when I was a girl and feeling terrified for her through her simple yet terror-filled entries. I have never had anything but the utmost reverence and respect for someone who has survived that type of ordeal, and even if Eli did talk about the Holocaust all the time – as your coworkers so wrongly implied – he had a right to! He had a right to broadcast the whole damn story on a bilboard.
Those five words though – “They all gone. Only me.” are louder than a megaphone and grab more attention than a bilboard the size of a football field.
And it makes me so angry to read about his quiet suffering and the cowardly a-holes who insulted him behind his back. To put it simply, some people are just IDIOTS! 👿
Hi Carla —
I agree about being naive and I was as well. Talking about Eli behind his back was the message of the day and while I didn’t join in the brutality I didn’t know it was brutal — that’s just how Jews were thought of back in Nebraska in those days. I didn’t speak up or say anything or walk away because at that time I was 13-14 years old and I didn’t know any better because that was the status quo of the room. Disgusting!
I’m with you on Anne Frank. Her story and her horror should be required reading for every student in every high school. She brings home the message in a violent way history alone cannot fathom.
I agree Eli should have talked about the Holocaust all day long if that was his wont because he won that right — but the sad fact I later discovered is that Eli never spoke about the Holocaust to anyone because it was too painful to share. His silence and his tattoo being actively maligned by the very forces who needed the example of his lesson is an irony too hard to bear even now. The few details about Eli came from Human Resources, I believe, who needed personal information for his employment file… which is another sort of violation of privacy and the destruction of a trusted intimacy, eh?
Thank you for letting us remember Eli too, David. I guess that’s how this whole thing works. Your friend is my friend. My memories are your memories.
Right, soos!
It is a human chain of memory and emotion. Just because I went through something doesn’t mean you can’t weep with me afterwards. Eli may not have any family left but that does not mean he must remain alone.
Shared memory is a wonderful event when it happens. I think it’s a good protection against fear of the unknown. I’ve been there and done that and I will help you get through it, too.
Well said, soos! I am with you all the way.
Dave!
It’s so cool you called around today looking for the name of the bakery. The name will come to you one night while you’re sleeping.
I called the old TV station to see if Eli is still alive and to see if I could find out his last name. It seems in the big conglomeration of companies buying stations, busting unions and ripping out the old staff in favor of the new young who don’t demand a good salary or many benefits… I was unable to track him down: He was not remembered. I’ll have to see if I can find him through people I know who used to work there.
I appreciate your take on perpetuating the tattoos — though the fact that your childhood bakey disappeared from the memory of the community begs wondering about the convenience of shared memory.
It’s fab how you and soos blend! “Sunshine on my shoulder” has nothing on “Soos on Dave’s pate!”
That’s a fantastic and loving story, Dave. It must have been fun to track through the old fields of your youth with someone you knew. There are few places in the world where such a call would have such a warm and familiar afterglow!
It’s good to be begged, Dave!
😀
I appreciate your looking back with fondness on your time in NJ. It’s a great state with a lot of rich and important history and the people are good!
You asked earlier why Jews get hit so hard and I don’t know the answer. Looking back in history and the stereotype of the Jew — even as dramatized in Shakespeare’s play “The Merchant of Venice” — is they are smart and good with money. That combination is threatening to a lot of people and some think it is always better to try to poke someone in the eye to bring them down instead of lowering your pride and ask for a hand up.
The reason why the Jewish people always suffer comes from jealousy.
They are God’s “Chosen People,” according to the Bible.
I’ve felt that this has always been the reason why people have always schemed and plotted against them. It’s no different than the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers because their father gave Joseph a beautiful coat. The story is a metaphor for what has happened throughout history.
Today, Israel is probably the most stable democracy in the region. It has the best and most Western standard of living in the region. It has more freedom than the countries surrounding it.
Despite all of the modern day theories about the conflict in the Middle East, it still boils down to jealousy. People want something that someone else has and are willing to use force to take it away or break it.
Chris!
Thanks for your take on the jealousy that unfairly haunts the Jews. Your analysis is quite interesting and sound.
I know there are entities that are dedicated to wiping Israel from the face of the earth. I wish I could comprehend that kind of fury.
I can’t comprehend the fury either. I’m a live and let live kind of guy who enjoys meeting and getting to know all sorts of people.
I do know that the fury comes from years of parents and the society training their youth to hate, who then pass along the venom to the next generation.
It’s no different than prejudice that affects our country. Our open and free society allows competition of ideas and the bad ones usually lose after being tested and falling short. Even though we have an open society, it has taken years to progress as far as we have. Many more years of hard work still remain.
In closed societies, unfortunately, there is no competitive ideas arena. Those with the power usually win in those situations. As it usually works out, he who has the most weaponry becomes the winner in repressive regimes and societies.
Here’s Wikipedia’s take on Jews as a chosen people for an interesting read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as_a_chosen_people
Your analysis makes a lot of sense, Chris. Ancient grudges — perceived or real — can span generations and revenge is a powerful motivator for killing, but complete annihilation is another matter entirely.
The Wiki link is great and, as usual, tremendously helpful!
Can’t say I have ever met anyone like Eli, or any other holocaust survivor. But your writing about him brought him to life for my memory too. No we mustn’t forget these people and the ordeals they had to endure. I cannot even begin to imagine losing all my family and friends in a concentration camp.
I’ve read several books by survivors and actually have “Alicia My Story” by Alicia Appleman-Jurman on my desk here next to read. I am trying to remember the name of a book I have read several times and that was made into a movie by Martin someone I think. Now I need to go search and see if I can locate it again.
The only movie that has ever brought me to tears was Schindler’s List, and only at the end wherre the survivors he helped are filmed placing stones on his gravestone as a tribute to him.
I plan on making sure the grand kids know about this part of history.
Mik
Hi Mik!
It’s nice to hear from you.
It’s interesting you haven’t met a Holocaust survivor — if I think beyond Eli I can’t think of any others I’ve met even though I feel as if I’ve met many. I guess when you meet one it is as if you’ve met others.
I have studied Holocaust art — paintings and drawings done by those in the camps and most of them did not survive but their art lives beyond them. The art pieces are beautiful. Lots of pastels. Glowing skies. Green grass. Most of the drawings are in chalk and they are landscapes of their imprisonment but the images are idealized as if they were living in gardens instead of in prisons.
One survivor who saw current photographs of Auschwitz with grass everywhere was shocked! She said when they lived there if there had been grass they would have eaten it — there was nothing alive or naturally edible anywhere near them.
I will check into the book you mention and if you think of the other one, please let us know. I “Schindler’s List” was a great movie — Spielberg’s finest. He mad it to honor his mother and you see his love for her throughout the movie in spite of the horror.
Oral histories are important and I am glad to know you will share your knowledge of the Holocaust with your grandchildren and I am warmed to know they, too, may now remember Eli and his story.
Oh, and Mik —
P.S. … did you ever get your razor? If not, please let me know and I’ll get you one. Use the contact form here to send me your address.
😀
I think this web site is a greater tribute to the memories of the fallen than new tattoos – which you are correct in saying is forbidden. It’s not even ambiguously stated in the Torah – just flat out states, do not tattoo yourselves.
I have met a few tattooed survivors. I have family that perished in the Holocaust – one was shot in the forehead and her sister was forced to lay next to her body for weeks afterwards.
It’s shocking to me how people can continue to deny it happened. It’s like denying that water isn’t wet – completely absurd.
Hi Gordon, thanks for the link, and thanks for the tattoo confirmation!
Why was the sister forced to stay next to the body for weeks after? I’m am sorry to learn of your family loss.
I don’t comprehend the varied insistence there was no Holocaust, either, Gordon. There is some greater evil at work going on in that effort that I hope we never have to understand, let alone, face.
I imagine leaving her dead sister there was a sort of mental torture. Talk about monstrous behaviour.
Monstrous, indeed, Gordon.
Can you explain why tattooing is verboten?
It basically boils down to this: ancient pagans tatooed themselves to please their gods. Ours is a super jealous G-d, like a teenager on a bad sitcom. Ergo, anything related to pleasing idol worship is pretty much banned – hence no cutting of the face with a razor, getting a tattoo, and plenty of other things.
🙂
I thank you for the continued education, Gordon. It’s all so fascinating!
The anecdote I remember most about the holocaust is an exchange between a cameraman who was filming the camps at the time of liberation, and the (now freed) prisoners. They asked why on earth anyone would want to film the horrible conditions. The cameraman replied : “sooner or later, people will not believe this ever happened”.
In France the national front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, once claimed that the holocaust was a “mere detail of history” or something like that. He got prosecuted for that. The frightening thing is that his hard right stance appeals to 3 million voters here. He’s anti immigration and all sorts of things – believing there should be quotas on immigration, that the majority of immigrants are lazy or incompetent, etc.
There’s an excellent book by Martin Amis called “Time’s Arrow” which is a narrative which runs backwards : as the story progresses the horrors are reduced, the German guard is less deranged, etc. It’s an interesting take on the psychology of how these horrors could have been perpetrated by people who were ordinary like you and me.
The Second World War is a terrible endictement of humanity. It’s slowly starting to move out of living memory… but we have plenty other examples of terror and torture in living memory too.
The scary thing is that we as human beings are not any different than the Germans, Rwandans, Cambodians, or any of the many other groups of people who have gone insane on a mass scale.
Spaulding Gray in Swimming to Cambodia said something to the effect that there is evil floating around the world and every so often it settles down somewhere in the world and wrecks havoc.
We must always be vigilant so that intolerance and evil doesn’t win against the our better attributes of love and kindness.
fruey —
Thanks for the pointer to the “Time’s Arrow” book. Here’s the teaser from Amazon:
Amis attempts here to write a path into and through the inverted morality of the Nazis: how can a writer tell about something that’s fundamentally unspeakable? Amis’ solution is a deft literary conceit of narrative inversion. He puts two separate consciousnesses into the person of one man, ex-Nazi doctor Tod T. Friendly. One identity wakes at the moment of Friendly’s death and runs backwards in time, like a movie played in reverse, (e.g., factory smokestacks scrub the air clean,) unaware of the terrible past he approaches. The “normal” consciousness runs in time’s regular direction, fleeing his ignominious history.
I think the hate mongers in France and Germany who believe in Hitler and Fascism should be allowed to speak their minds without fear of government intervention and punishment.
Crushing that kind of hatred in public doesn’t kill the thought, it only drives the movement deeper into underground secret caverns where the evil can fester and grow in the dark and then explode with an unsuspecting fury that wounds the rest of us in the daylight air.
Let the bigots speak.
Let the racists have the floor.
Then we can all see how foolish they are and three million supporters will dwindle to three in the antiseptic light of public examination and condemnation.
Chris —
Beautifully said.
We must all remember the good fight and not be tempted into false confrontations that attempt to compare the real atrocities in history.
I know this is very very late but I just happened upon this site when I was searching about Holocaust tattooing.
I just wanted to make a comment on the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis as it was brought up here. The Israelis are not all innocent in the conflict. Neither are the all the Palestinians.
Yes, there are Palestinians that think it is ok to think of wiping out all Israelis and making all of Israel Palestine. But there are also Israelis who want to wipe out all Palestinians from the territory by oppressing them and hoping their desperation will drive them to other countries.
Right now, the Israelis are the ones with the greater power, military, equipmant, and the fact that they are able to confiscate Palestinian land and drive Palestinians from their homes/land and building settlements for the prosperity of the Jews. They have crossed over their boarders onto Palestinian territory, they do steal water and land, and resources and are oppressing the Palestinians.
They are the oppressors, occupiers, and also at the same time cry out that they are ALSO victims. How can they be all three? Yet the world has come to believe that the Israelis are innocent and Palestinians are the guilty.
the guilty and the innocent are on both sides.
I wish that they could really come up with a truly FAIR treaty to bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Yes there have been numeous treaties but they haven’t been completely fair to BOTH parties.
I just really wish that the Israeli government would remember the holocaust and the suffering of the Jews from then and take a look at the number of the Palestinians that are suffering. Its not the type of suffering of the Holocaust, but suffering is suffering. So please don’t think I am comparing the Holocaust with the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
I say the Israeli government because I know there are Israeli Jews who are voicing out against the occupation as well as Israeli IDF soldiers who are refusing to serve if they have to serve in the Occupied Territories. They see and know the suffering going on and hope for a better solution.
And not all Palestinians are readying their children to grow up to be suicide bombers either– when it comes to suicide bombers, I believe its not always the parents, but a child who grows up under the occupation and seeing the suffering around who grows up and feels hopeless that beomes vulnerable to hate groups who promote suicide bombings.
Most Palestinians are just trying to make a living and feed and house their families.
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David, I cried when I read about Eli and also that he did not talk about the Holocaust. I wish for him that he was able to find someone to speak about it with and vent some of the pain and anguish… and also so that others will be able to leanr and pass on to others the horror the Holocaust. It is too bad that you were not able to locate him to find out if he is still here or has passed away.
That makes my blood boil to know about the things your co-workers were saying about him behind his back!! It shocked me.
I am also shocked at the lack of the educating in the schools about the horror of the Holocaust as well. I remember studying about the Holocaust in High School but I had to do my own research on my own to find out about the medical experimenting on people!! We did not learn about that at all…
now, please keep an open mind…. although some of what I say y’all might think I am nuts… but it has to do with reincarnation– I started researching about the medical experiments because I was reading about reincarnation memories people had of the Holocaust.
There was one member who said since he was young he had memories of being 7-years old and being loaded onto a train (not a passenger train) without his family. He had blocked these memories for years but then one day he was not able to block them and new memories flooded in him… of that 7 year old boy (he even remembered his name from that life!!) being transported on the train without his family– I can’t even begin to imagine the confusion and terror he must have felt–I can’t believe people could do that to a child!! He was taken somewhere he didn’t know and was kept in some kind of a pen with another child that was 5 years old… he remembered the first name of that 5 year old child. He remembers that he was medically experimented on and when he was in the pen with the other boy they used to cuddle together and they were scared and harrassed by the German soldiers. …. then one day the German soldiers brough the mutilated and murdered body of the 5 year old in the pen with him and he said he remembers that 7 year old boy going mad after that…and shortly after he was also murdered by the Germans.
I cannot imagine where someone would get memories like these if its not reincarnation–unless somehow a deceased person’s soul can implant memories into another person… but anyhow, I was in tears reading about his memories and then researched about the medical testing during the Holocaust. I was shocked and disgusted at all the information I learned. I can never imagine the horror of those two boys…and all others they experimented on!!
TJ Furstein —
Thank you for your incredible comment!
I think you win the award today for most provocative post!
Welcome to the blog!
i dont think that the germans should of done that to thwe jews
i would have thought that they could have a little more respect