We enslaved millions of our own African American citizens, in horrifying circumstance, including their passage over to the Americas.
How much literature is there on them? It's likely too late, and given the deliberate depriving of education, unlikely there is that much undiscovered written record by slaves themselves of the inhumanity this country forced on them. But isn't there an endless array of topics, individuals and society to cover regarding our own horrifying and inexcusable history of enslavement and institutionalized racism?
Sure there are books. But it seems a trickle (or drops) compared to the never ending production on the Holocaust and the "Jewish experience."
Surely this must be another example of how if the halls of publishing, media and academia were truly fair in terms of opportunity and preparation to all parts of our society, how different the publishing record and media frenzy might be.
20
Totalitarianism is the result of political extremism. Is this the alternative to democracy which you desire?
2
"It is not clear what Mr. Schwarzer did with the journal before he was sent to Auschwitz, or how he retrieved it in the 1950s, when he was living in New York."
Some of these documents tend to be forgeries. Too well written for diary supposedly by teenager.
11
@Skeptical
Shame on you. You didn’t even read the article, did you? It clearly states she had won competitions for her poetry while alive. Clearly she was an accomplished writer, why assume this is a forgery?
Shame on you.
120
@Skeptical:
Don't know or care why your kneejerk reaction is to be "skeptical".
Suggest you read : "Life in a Jar the Irena Sendler Project" by Jack Mayer. A story that seems unbelievable but is true. She was a Catholic,Polish social worker who, unconnected to the Jews of Poland, spent the war going into the Jewish Ghetto and bringing out, one at a time, Jewish children and babies to save their lives. It was very, very dangerous.
She had helpers, but did most of the work herself. Toward the end of the war, she was captured and tortured by the Nazis, but she had saved so many lives. The names of these hidden children were placed in a jar, buried under an apple tree. That was so eventually they could find out "who they were"......
You wouldn't believe it if it was a Hollywood movie. But it was true. She saved 2500 children.
127
Teenagers can be some of the most insightful and mature intellects we could meet.
36
It is heartrending to read this poem written in staccato
like bullets popping on the pavement.
Yet it conveys the desperate search for hope even in the
throes of present annihilation.
16
What killed this beautiful girl and so many others was the extreme effects of nationalism...as proposed by what passes for our president today..."Never forget," on so many levels.
44
@Stu Reininger
You trivialize the Holocaust when you compare Nazi genocide to Trump's xenophobia, which is checked by both the House of Representatives and the federal courts.
15
@Chilawyer You trivialize Trump's xenophobia as well as the enabling of his attacks upon our constitutional democracy by McConnell and the entire Republican party. There is ample ground for justifiable comparison and good reason to fear the end result.
50
I was born in NYC at the tail end of the holocaust. My parents and their friends abandoned Judaism and any belief in a God who would let this happen. I was raised as an atheist with a strong social conscience. My family and their friends—members of the old left—fought for integration and equal rights for blacks. In fact one son of this pocket of the old left was one of the three civil rights workers who were brutally murdered for their work in the voting rights movement. My parents and their friends participated in many social justice movements and taught me to do the same. So this is how one Jewish family and their friends were influenced by the slaughter of their people.
52
@LoveNOtWar "Slaughter" is done to animals. Humans are "MURDERED", the only English word that describes the fate of genocidal regimes' victims, whose innocent lives are taken with malice aforethought.
Many decry genocides but back "gun control", which promoted eight 20th Century genocides, in which some 50,000,000 - including millions of children - were murdered.
Germany enacted "gun control" on 12 April 1928, before the Nazis took power. The goal: to curb fights between Nazi Party and Communist Party thugs.
When the Nazis lawfully took power in 1933, they found in police stations, lists of firearm-owners. Plainly the Nazis did not allow those whom they hated - of whom Jews were only one group - to hold onto firearms.
Disarming Jews wasn't decisive: Jews were one percent of Germans. The prompt disarming of the many other Nazi-hating Germans, quickly gave the Nazis an iron grip.
The Nazis were not wildly popular. They won 43.9% of the vote in an election (5 March 1933), even with Nazi party thugs having terrorized other parties' candidates. Even so, the Nazis - short of a majority - had to form a coalition. It had a slim majority in the Reichstag (parliament).
By at once disarming their foes, the Nazis stifled any resistance. By 1938, Nazi policy successes - e.g., the seizure of Austria and a revived economy - made the Nazis truly popular.
The Nazis murdered some 13,000,000 of whom some 6,000,000 were Jews (of whom 1,500,000 were children) and 750,000 Gypsies (Roma).
6
@LoveNOtWar
The Israeli journalist Gideon Levy said, "What is the lesson of the Holocaust? That this should never again happen to Jews? Or that this should never again happen to anyone?"
That was a rhetorical question.
I wonder whether Renia Spiegel wrote anything about politics. Polish Jews certainly had a strong secular, socialist tradition. Communism was as popular as Zionism. The Holocaust is not owned by religious Jews and Israel.
The final irony is that Bernie Sanders, from the old left, has changed the direction of American politics.
6
Not sure in understand why Renia and Zygmuts parents were deported but not her parents!!
@Kipper "Deported" or "deportation" describes a legal process, whereby an illegal resident is removed to a country, wherein s/he has a legal right to reside.
The Nazis carried-out a genocide against Jews and Roma (Gypsies). A genocide is the negation of Rule of Law. Terms rooted in a legal process have no place in describing a genocide. The Nazis transported Jews to murder facilities.
From the Nazis' perspective, Jews in any Western European country were "aliens", even if they had citizenship under those countries' laws. So, from the Nazis' perspective, they "deported" Jews to murder facilities, mainly in Poland.
Most transported to such places, were murdered on arrival (e.g., Treblinka), or murdered slowly, by starvation, exposure, lack of sanitation/medical care, shooting, beating, hanging, electrocution, etc.
Most - who write about genocides - adopt the murderers' perspective and so vocabulary. Thus, such authors use "exterminate" in place of "murder". In U.S. English, an "exterminator" is called to rid a building of harmful rodents or insects. The Nazis were very clear that Jews, at best, were "untermenschen" (sub-humans).
Those, who truly hate genocide, do not adopt mass murderers' perspectives and so do not use the mass murderers' vocabulary.
12
I looked in the faces of Holocaust survivors and read their stories in a recent traveling exhibition displayed in San Francisco. We and up and coming generations must never forget.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/arts/design/auschwitz-exhibition-review-holocaust.html
28
Heartbreaking.
26
So the Nazis, having discovered their hiding place, took the parents and Renia out into the street and shot them. Soldiers, likely heavily armed, shot an unarmed 18-year old girl.
Thank you for the reminder of patriotic nationalism's true face.
143
@Robert F In your effort to draw false comparisons between Hitler and Trump (thereby trivializing the Holocaust), you are mischaracterizing the essence of the Nazi movement. The Nazis were driven much more by hard core racism (including the false belief that Jews constitute a race) then by German nationalism. The latter was a vehicle to use resentment over WW I and the Versaille treaty, but the core of Nazis was a mystical belief in the superiority of Aryan blood and the readiness to commit genocide against "untermenschen," first the Jews. The Nazis were not too nationalist to recruit SS divisions from France, Spain, Russian, and even Bosnian Muslims.
16
@Chilawyer If you fail to see the same hard core racism in Trump and his followers, you are not paying attention.
46
The current day stories of young Kashmiri boys and girls being picked by Indian security forces in night raids bear semblance to Renia’s story.
Reading about horrific stories that happened in past, I always wondered how complacent people must have been to let this happen.
As I see perpetual cruelty going unnoticed, it make me realize that history repeats itself.
74
@Kashmiri Where's the evidence that India intends to murder every Kashmiri Muslim?
Why haven't Kashmiri Muslims emigrated to Pakistan? Perhaps Muslims fare better in Indian-ruled Kashmir tthan they would in Pakistan? Muslim Kashmiris are surely as rational as anyone else, so likely are guided by their best interests.
As to learning from history, be advised that in the 20th Century, "gun control" laws promoted eight major genocides: some 50,000,000 were murdered.
Germany enacted "gun control" on 12 April 1928, before the Nazi era, to curb fights between Nazi Party and Communist Party thugs.
This law helped the Nazis quickly to get an iron grip: on taking office (1933), the N-zis used lists kept in police stations, to disarm their foes.
Disarming Jews - one percent of Germans - wasn't decisive. Many others hated the Nazis.
In the 5 March 1933 election, the Nazis polled 43.9%, despite Nazi party thugs having terrorized other parties' candidates. Even so, the Nazis' parliamentary group had only a slim majority.
By 1938, Nazi successes - e.g., the seizure of Austria and a revived economy - made the Nazis truly popular.
The Nazis murdered some 13,000,000 of whom some 6,000,000 were Jews (of whom 1,500,000 were children) and 750,000 Gypsies (Roma).
Because "gun control" promotes genocide, "gun control" belongs in history's garbage can. It is as nasty an idea as would be the re-enslavement of African-Amercians. Neither idea merits even a millisecond of discussion.
7
The majority of my father’s family was murdered at Babi Yar in Ukraine, and most of my mother’s died from starvation or disease during deportation. Although I do have some names and dates, I have never been there, nor to any of the camps, because it’s just too much to bear. One day I hope that my son and daughter will have it in them to open that dark past and take a look for themselves.
61
I hope someday we will see published diaries of the lives of Iraqis living in the chaos of the Iraq war.
42
@Tom
A lot of them have blogs.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/iraq-blog-bio.html
Search Google for "iraqi bloggers". Duh.
4
The Communists called the Jews capitalists. The Nazis called them Communists; the far-right calls Jew radical liberals, while the far left calls them right wing agitators.
They can't be all of these things. Perhaps they are none of them. Simply people living their lives by a certain religious and cultural code that impedes on no one else and hated by those who can find nothing else to blame their misfortunes on.
What scares me most these days is that some people actually believe the lies made by others for personal or political gain.
131
@Seth Many of the World War II Soviet Communist leaders were Jews, e.g., Lazar Kaganovich, Leon Trotsky, Leo Kamenev, etc. By 1945, almost all of these had been murdered.
The Tsarist regime's centuries-long vicious oppression of Jews inclined many Jews to back the Communists (Bolsheviks). Such Jews stayed in Russia. Others - smarter - emigrated.
Ukrainians' hatred for Jews - and collaboration with the Nazis - was rooted in Jews' participation in Stalin's genocide in Ukraine (1932-33), in which some 7,000,000 were murdered by deliberate starvation and disease.
Stalin's genocide - in which some 20,000,000 were murdered - was promoted by "gun control".
An early Soviet "gun control" law - issued on 1 April 1918 - was published in Dekrety Sovetskoy Vlasti (Decrees of Soviet Power), Vol. II, 17 March - 10 July 1918, Document #22, pp. 40-41 (Moscow, 1959). This law - and the many that followed - promoted Stalin's genocide.
Many - dazzled by "gun control's" false promise of "safe streets" - cannot see the mountains of corpses piled-up by genocidal regimes.
Those, who back "gun control" are in error. Even if there were no Second Amendment civil right to be armed, "gun control" is a bad idea.
3
NYT, thank you for this article.
One caveat--
Soldiers are slain on the battlefield.
Governments execute (rightly or wrongly) persons for heinous crimes.
The use of the terms"slain" "executed" in this article are technically correct, but are, in my opinion, less brutal words than the fact that this young woman was MURDERED for the sole reason of her religion.
93
How did God allow the Holocaust to happen? I'm interested in the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Chasidic and Kabbalistic points of view. Please reply.
12
@Average Human Check out Holocaust Theology: A Reader, edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and published in 1989. This is an anthology of many different points of view, both Jewish and Christian. The excerpts from larger works written by well-known theologians and others are very brief, two to four pages, so it's not overwhelming. From my own perspective, I'd say it's important to remember that it is we humans who allowed it to happen. The reader can serve as a good introduction to a complex topic.
32
@Average Human
Please watch the multiple-award-winning documentary, "Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann.
23
Humans did it.
Humans advocated murder.
Humans tolerated murder.
Victims, perpetrators and bystanders.
Humans were murdered horribly
while the “world” looked away.
We cannot change what happened
to the people but we can and must
remember and try to learn,
to know and have these
victims live in our memory.
39
When my history class got around to WWII, which must have seemed like it occurred 1000 years ago to my seniors, I invited a 90 year old survivor of Belsen, living in a local nursing home, to my class. He was in a wheel chair and couldn’t speak because the Nazis cut out his tongue for refusing to act as an informant. He communicated by writing on a note pad. The tattoo was faint but still recognizable and all asked to touch it. It was so very obvious that at that moment, history suddenly hit these kids right between the eyes. That silent old man’s voice from the past was a far greater form of communication than anything I could muster. There were not a few tears in that room that day, including mine. I will add in closing that that old guy never wanted for company until the day he passed. I think I can also safely say that of those present, not one white supremacist has ever emerged.
256
@JRB Thank you for sharing this story. How heartbreaking and horrific. May his memory be a blessing.
76
@JRB Part of the job of teachers is to guide young people into being positively contributing people, to get outside themselves so they can help make the world a better place. Thank you for doing that so well for those young people.
31
@JRB Kudos for having - and following-up on - the inspiration to have this mute survivor speak to your students!!!
I urge you to follow-up and to explain to your students, that the Nazi genocide was just one of eight 20th Century genocides, promoted by "gun control" laws, in which some 50,000,000 - including millions of children like Renia - were murdered.
Many, dazzled by "gun control's" false promise of safe streets, cannot see the mountains of corpses, piled-up by genocidal regimes.
Thus, even were there no Second Amendment, "gun control" is a bad idea.
Explain to your students that Germany enacted "gun control" on 12 April 1928, before the Nazi era, to curb fights between Nazi Party and Communist Party thugs.
This law helped the Nazis quickly to get an iron grip: on taking office (1933), the Nazis used lists kept in police stations, to disarm their foes.
Disarming Jews - one percent of Germans - wasn't decisive. Many others hated the Nazis.
In the 5 March 1933 election, the Nazis polled 43.9%, and that despite Nazi party thugs having terrorized other parties' candidates. The Nazis' parliamentary group had only a slim majority.
By 1938, Nazi successes - e.g., the seizure of Austria and a revived economy - made the Nazis truly popular.
The N-zis murdered some 13,000,000 of whom some 6,000,000 were Jews (of whom 1,500,000 were children) and 750,000 Gypsies (Roma).
"Gun control" backers promote genocide. That's wrong, totally wrong!!!
1
Wow!
Hope it’s printed in all the languages of the world.
Am Yisrael Chai!!!
34
I remember vividly, the rich words of Frederick Buechner on Adolescence.
He outlined the Druids fascinated by mist...not rain, and not air either. Or dreams...not sleeping and not quite awake.
Read it here:
https://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2019/7/16/adolescence
Those years of adolescence, he reminded me, peer into two worlds simultaneously.
Not a child; nor adult...yet, both!
Now comes an adolescent living her life in those two worlds Buechner writes about....living under two worlds of utter darkness, Soviet and Nazi.
Light is revealed best by those who understand darkness.
I anxiously await this publication. Tragic times need to be understood over and over by each generation.
Empathy is born when we do this.
22
The intersection of the Soviets and the Nazis, along with its effect on the Jews (or, as the Soviets called them, capitalists) is heartbreaking.
I came late to a wonderful book, Esther Hautzig's The Endless Steppe, that deals in part with that. Of course, Mrs. Hautzig lived to tell the tale, which she did, for many years, to schoolchildren, teaching them about ideologies now -- my God -- back in fashion.
29
“As the memory of World War II, the Holocaust and the Gulag fades, so too does the antipathy to the illiberal ideologies that spawned Europe’s past horrors. This is evidenced in the rising electoral success of populist authoritarian parties of the extreme left and right, none of which have anything new to say, yet claim the mantle of ideological innovation and moral virtue.” James Kirchick, “The End of Europe”
37
@HapinOregon
Was the antipathy ever really present? In this era of Trump I have my doubts. Just think of all those that grew up in the shadows of the war. Too many are complicit, whether they are rank and file voters or they are corporate captains. No different from a Joe Kennedy, who knew he could reap wealth and power from the fascist. I no longer have the emotional connection to ww2 that not too long ago was a profound one.
6
@william phillips
I think, and would like to believe that the "antipathy to the illiberal ideologies that spawned Europe’s past horrors" DID exist. It's just that tribalism and authoritarian governments, by requiring less work and/or thought than do democracies, are easier to sustain .
11
iI’ve been to two prison.camps in Germany. I a have a difficult time dealing with this. I don’t wish this cruelty on anyone
28
How incredible, and sad, and still somehow wonderful. It’s true, love never dies.
46
I have several dozen postcards in my possession that my mother wrote from New York to her parents and brother while they were being held in the Gurs internment camp in France, prior to being sent by cattle car to Auschwitz where they were murdered.
She appears to have written them every day for several months, before finally stopping because all of the postcards were returned to her by the Post Office stamped "Undeliverable, Addressee Unknown."
My mother wrote in a tiny scrawl in German to get as much news as she could on each postcard. I have never tried to get the postcards translated, and maybe I should because I am sure I am mentioned on them, but I have never had it in me.
I never knew my grandparents and uncle, but I keep these postcards in a cigar box under my bed and look at them from time to time and think about them.
96
@A. Stanton Please publish them, with your mother's and family's stories if you can learn more. What a gift this would be to hear their stories.
63
@A. Stanton
I recommend that although you hesitate to have these postcards translated, they are a time capsule of historical importance to you of the daily lives at that time and deserve to be translated .
38
@A. Stanton
Any holocaust museum would welcome the postcards, along with a film of you talking about them.
Sharing them with others would be of benefit to all! When you are ready, that is.
I do hope you get to a point where you are able to read a translation. If you don't, that is understandable as well.
46
So many of us Ashkenazi Jews have relatives who were killed in the Holocaust and by the Soviets in Eastern Europe during that time. We will never know many of their stories because the Nazis and Russians destroyed not just our families but everything they owned. I often wonder about my family in Eastern Europe and what happened to them, and who of anyone survived. It is so meaningful to me as an Ashkenazi Jew that this diary exists.
My family actually knows this family in the US, and I've heard about the diary and was wondering when it would be released. It is simply incredible that Mr. Schwarzer survived Auschwitz and came back to collect the diary and return it to Renia's family. The diary and the story behind it is moving, heartbreaking and incredible all in one.
May Renia and all victims of the Holocaust rest in peace and may their memories be a blessing.
121
@A Foodie,
Such beautifully written thoughts that these people's memories being an eternal blessing. Adding to the tears streaming down my face from reading this article and the comments. Bless all the victims of evil, in such a way that will help those living to strike it down, again and again. Because it keeps coming back.
14
This is where nationalism leads. Let us never forget. This young lady's writing is beautiful.
57
Absolutely heartbreaking and so historically important ~ as another such diary will be 50 years from now, when people might read about recollections of being a child in a Texan internment camp and never seeing or hearing from parents again.
46
@Xtine
There is no comparison; your attempt to draw a parallel is odious.
15
@Austin Liberal There are people in this country who dream of making the comparison 100 percent accurate.
12
Many of us Ashkenazi Jews do not know what happened to our families since the Nazis and Soviets not only killed our families but also destroyed everything, including written history. A diary like this is so meaningful and special.
Renia's story is important to learn, and I'm so glad that her diary has been released. It's incredible that Mr. Schwarzer survived Auschwitz, retrieved the diary, came to the US and returned it to her family.
May their memories be a blessing. Especially now, may we never forget.
94
I am of Jewish heritage. Although my father avoided this subject (he had his reasons), I have always read much about all types of subjects. Reading books is something which I am truly grateful to my mother for. She strongly encouraged me to do so; starting at a very young age. This diary appears to be quite compelling and it piques my curiosity. I definitely would like to read it.
23
In an age of pixels on screens, what will become of the world without beautiful words and thoughts written in a girl's elegant script, with ink, on paper?
56
@Lonnie
I, too, when younger, did not want to read another thing about the Holocaust, and I too did it for my mental health. I was born in Poland to the Holocaust survivors whose families perished during the war. My Mother, who, like Renia, had come from Przemysl. Yet, after the war, she never visited it: it was too painful for her to return there.
With time, I changed my attitude toward the Holocaust "stories." Every article I encounter I read, every story that is told I listen to, every documentary that is produced I follow. I do it as a tribute to all those who perished and those who survived the atrocities of those unspeakable years. By doing so I have them in my mind even if for a minute. They deserve to be remembered not as Jews but as Renias and Zygmunts.
225
@Dorota Your words are poignant; @Lonnie, your words are heartfelt. Of course it is everyone's individual prerogative to choose what to read and what images to look at, especially when the material and the facts are devastating and brutal. Yet it feels especially urgent now that testimony of survivors and those who perished in the Holocaust be read, listened to and viewed, as anti-Semitism and violent acts directed at Jewish people are sharply on the rise in our country and throughout the world. Many younger people know little about the Holocaust. And there are Holocaust deniers who claim that it was all a hoax; that six million people were not exterminated. As the survivor population ages and dies, there will be few witnesses left. Written accounts, along with archival footage and artifacts, are invaluable, re educating and reminding people. And other genocides have occurred, even after the words’ Never again’ were first uttered. As long as people, leaders and/or societies demonize human beings because of skin color, religion or sexual preference, and mark them as ‘the other,’ there will be hatred, evil and unimaginable acts of terror and violence. Perhaps, by reading a young girl’s diary or looking at a photograph of one murdered child or adult, and his or her battered surviving possessions (a shoe, a coat), each will be remembered as an individual human being with a heart, a soul and dreams, and not a number or an unfathomable statistic.
37
Further testimony to the wasteful, useless cruelty of war- and how close every civilization is to sliding into cruelty and despotism.
99
@Shoshon In many countries, those in charge of public affairs are negligent. That's why many risk life-and-limb to enter the U.S.
Accepting your basic premise, I conclude that "gun control" laws should be uprooted. Nothing is so destructive as officials of a government "gone bad".
So, even were there no Second Amendment, "gun control" is a bad idea.
In the 20th Century, "gun control" laws promoted eight major genocides: some 50,000,000 were murdered.
Germany enacted "gun control" on 12 April 1928, before the Nazi era, to curb fights between Nazi Party and Communist Party thugs.
This law helped the Nazis quickly to get an iron grip: on taking office lawfully (1933), the Nazis used lists kept in police stations, to disarm their foes.
Disarming Jews - one percent of Germans - wasn't decisive. Many others hated the Nazis.
In the 5 March 1933 election, the Nazis polled 43.9%, even with helfp from Nazi party thugs, who terrorized other parties' candidates. The Nazis' parliamentary group had only a slim majority.
By 1938, Nazi successes - e.g., the seizure of Austria and a revived economy - made the Nazis truly popular.
The Nazis murdered some 13,000,000 of whom some 6,000,000 were Jews (of whom 1,500,000 were children) and 750,000 Gypsies (Roma). "Gun control" backers promote genocide.
Those, who back "gun control" are dazzled by "gun control's" false promise of "safe streets", so can't see the corpses piled-up by officials of genocidal regimes.
1
Long ago I made the vow to never read another thing about the Holocaust. I do this for my mental health. The Holocaust is a complete negative. A void in the history of the world, and proof that the world is nothing more than one big insane asylum, in which the most impossible evil thought can become a reality with full support of an entire nation. There is no happy ending, no bit of knowledge to be gleaned other than that human being can turn into absolute savages with the slightest prodding, and even the order to murder children, babies and pregnant women will be carried out with no question, once the flag is evoked. People will murder for the State. And laws can be used for evil. The only lesson we can learn from the holocaust, one that can make us sleep at night, when thoughts of the holocaust give us the night terrors, is that some people, stood up in those dark times, when Hitler and his monsters ruled all Europe, stood up with valor that is so rare that it is priceless, and even these people are being forgotten.
I can't read another story of another young girl, tortured, cruelly tortured, both physically and mentally and then turned to ash by an entire race of people, whom listened to the words of a madmen. People like this, are still here, and they are waiting for the words of the next madman, so maybe that's the true lesson of the holocaust, to be ever vigilant for the next madman. The next big ego. The next murderer. Never again!
Let every young girl grow old.
161
@Lonnie As a Jewish person, I say this with conviction: We MUST learn, we MUST remember, and WE must warn the world and work to make sure this NEVER happens again.
Yes, it is heartbreaking. But those of us who are most touched, most horrified, most traumatized by these stories must share them and keep both the memory of the victims and memory of this heinous genocide alive. We must tell their stories and never forget.
53
@Lonnie Beautifully stated. Thank you.
14
@Lonnie
Watch PBS’ “Worst than War” (on YouTube)
Human beings, given the ‘right’ conditions, are and will continue to be just as atrocious to each other as during WWII.
These experiences need to be told and taught, far and wide, so that one day they’ll be part of history: one not to be repeated ever again.
24
Lost life for such a sensitive soul. Her story ennobles me too.
45
Almost all of my father's family lived in Galicia, which was in eastern Poland and was annexed into the Soviet Union in Stalin's deal with Hitler to divided up that country. Except for two uncles who were in the Polish army and became German prisoners of war and my father, who was in Austria and was forced into a Nazi labor camp, the family was safe under the Soviets until 1942 when the German invaded. They all died at the hands of the Nazis, as did my uncles. I can't wait until an English translation of Renia Spigel's diary becomes available. I only wish that my father had lived to read it.
100
@Alan Mass I'm so sorry for your family's loss. May their memory be a blessing.
35
@Alan Mass The book is an English translation. I'm planning on making it part of my reflections during the High Holy Days.
13
@Alan Mass
My family, too, has roots in Galicia. My grandmother lost almost all her family to the Nazi madness; "lost" being a euphemism for "murdered".
The cruelty and intolerance of the world is never-ending. #NeverForget
29