Last edited Fri Jan 27, 2023, 05:37 PM - Edit history (1)

as a Holocaust Museum?

I also visited the LA Holocaust Museum in high school for an extra credit project.

And although not a Holocaust museum, I also walked through the Reichstag in Berlin where a false flag fire in 1933 was pivotal in establishing the Nazi dictatorship.

And visited the Wannsee House in Berlin, site of the 1942 Wannsee Conference where "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" was concocted. It is now a Holocaust memorial.

I will make time to visit as I’ve talked about it but have never gone.

Here is the web site
hmcev.org

I forget the name of the museum... It was in Manhattan and we went as a school trip in 6th grade. I had neighbors as a kid, Hilda and Herman that were survivors. Hilda kept cats... Heh, lots of cats. She took in any strays, had them neutered and kept them. At one point they had more than 50 cats. Lovely people.

The museum honors all holocausts..has sections on Germany etc

Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank was taken. They survived and eventually married and came to the States.

I trained as a surgical tech with both of them, and when I would gown and glove them I'd see their tattoos. Chilling. I came into contact with them over the years at a nearby hospital where I was working after I graduated. They were the nicest people you would ever want to meet.

Years later they agreed, at my request, to meet with my nephew for an interview. He then wrote one of his college term papers on their experience. They loved it!

BTW, they were somewhat famous in our area for their experiences in Germany, and as Dr.s had prestige to begin with. They didn't need to bother with my nephew, but were so gracious and kind to him. I can hardly believe the horrors they endured.

A friend's grandmother showed me the tattoo on her wrist from Auschwitz.

in El Paso in high school.

had the most amazing accent. She learned French from another Yiddish speaking prisoner. She was then taught English from a French/English speaking prisoner. She was truly the voice of western Europe by the time she reached America.

This friends’ Father was quite quick to show off his tattoo; after he was freed from whichever concentration camp he was in, he went into smuggling cigarettes across a Berlin checkpoint one way and toilet paper back the other way. He had figured out that toilet paper and cartons of cigarettes weighed about the same. The few times he was hassled at a checkpoint, he made sure
the guard could notice his tattoo. The guards realized he had already been through hell, and that they would be about the lowest creatures on Earth if they got after him for trying to make a few bucks.

So, yes I’ve known more than one, and yet you don’t list that option in your survey.

I don’t think people consider those who lived through that onslaught the same way I do, to me they are part of that “Greatest Generation” people like to talk about.

I also didn't ask if one has been to more than one concentration camp, more than one memorial or museum. I wasn't concerned about the number but the activity.

I do remember (very vividly) seeing films--gruesome films--of the death camps when I was 10 years old and my father was editing a documentary for television called the Rise and Fall Of The Third Reich that was based of William Shirer's books of the same name.

The films he was reviewing were far too ghastly to be aired on network television at that time (or likely now). I remember my Dad being somewhat uncomfortable--as these images were not appropriate for children--and him asking if I really wanted to witness this evil? I remember saying, "I don't want to, but I need to." He understood.

I'd grown up in Los Angeles, and was blessed to live in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish community (and I still do). These were (and are) friends and family, people I loved and people I love. At 10, I was well aware of the Shoah, but these films seared the reality of the Holocaust into my mind in a different way.

I remember in that moment making a commitment to myself: That I would give my life--if need be-- to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. To Jews, or to anyone.

Over the years, as a documentary filmmaker, I have had the honor to meet many Survivors, and have worked on many films and video projects telling their stories.

Some of these were major projects (including an Academy nominated documentary film) and many were small projects that were only seen by small numbers of people.

I always said yes, if the opportunity arose to document what happened. Including doing interviews with the Shoah Project, so the life-stories of Survivors would be preserved on tape.

I'm struggling a bit emotionally today. Thinking of the Survivors who I've been blessed to know, who are now of memory.

I cried today listening to Dachau Leid (Dachau Song) which was a song of protest and resistance to Naziism that spread to a number of death camps. It written by the Austrian Jewish playwright Jura Soyfer, who died in Buchenwald and set to music by the Viennese composer Herbert Zipper, who was a friend of Jura Soyfer before they were both interned first and Dachau, and then Buchenwald.

I had the honor to know Dr Zipper, who passed at 102 here in Los Angeles.

This has been an emotionally difficult day. I suppose that's fitting.

A recording of Dr Zipper conducting Dachau Lied here:

https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/music-of-the-holocaust-highlights-from-the-collection/music-of-the-holocaust/dachau-song

I lived in Germany for 4.5 years and I took two college level classes on Nazi Germany. The nazis both fascinate me and horrify me and I can’t seem to get enough information on the subject. I’ve been to 3 different concentration camps and countless museums and other pints of interest around Europe. My college professor was able to arrange for us to meet a camp survivor and he shared with us in vivid detail his experience. Even at 90 years old and roughly 55-60 years later, the man broke down in tears when he discussed what he went through.

I will say that the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC is first rate. You’d be hard pressed to find a better presentation on the subject anywhere else in the world. I visited it when it first opened about 20 years ago.

As an aside, my two daughters are 12 and 14 and they have read several books and discussed the holocaust a fair amount at school. Overall, I’m pleased with how the subject is being presented to them. For what it’s worth, they attend a public school in Ohio.

Who helped liberate Mauthausen .

My friend's dad was in the first group to liberate one of Buchenwald's sub-camps. He said after that day they took many fewer POWs

We had planned to go to Mauthausen , but it didn't happen because of time constraints.

Been able to go to Europe and see any of the camps. It is something high on my list of things to do when I have the opportunity

She is a very spirited woman and an articulate speaker about the Holocaust at schools and charity organizations.

It's good to be part of an intelligent, empathetic group

museum, etc. Plenty of movies that featured the death camps had me upset to the point that I felt traumatized. I've watched tours on TV. I've met children of survivors and soldiers who were liberators and witnessed the devastation. I have vague memories of meeting at least one survivor when I was young, but I cannot remember details.

Last edited Sat Jan 28, 2023, 01:45 AM - Edit history (1)

All of the above.

I'm adding content now because earlier I wasn't in the right frame of mind. It can be overwhelming to think about much less talk about.


I've talked about it before on DU.

I lived in Germany for many years. Went to several sites, to include Dachau, which also has various memorials, the Nuremberg Justice Building, both a memorial and museum, as well as multiple Days of Remembrance.

A friend of the family was a young soldier during WWII. He was there at the liberation of Dachau, and he was also there for the trials at the Nuremberg Justice building.

Growing up, our local grocer and his wife were both survivors of Auschwitz. I've talked with you about him. It was my relationship with him that lead to my mother sitting me down at age 5 and telling me about the Holocaust. It was a defining moment in my life.

Another survivor, not of the camps, but of one of the sweeps, was the mother of one of my schoolmates. She was a young girl in France when Nazi soldiers came through her village rounding up Jewish people. She and her brother were at school at the time. She was quick enough to grab her younger brother and run away with him to the nearby woods. They hid but still witnessed Nazi soldiers lining people up, to include children, and gunning them down.

The strength of the survivors is staggering to think about.

As were my aunt and uncle. Many of our family members perished in the death camps. Most of their friends were also survivors, most from the Polish city of Zawierce. I grew up surrounded by survivors, whose strength and perseverance awes me still, though they are all gone now.
I have been to Terezenstat, in the Czech Republic, Yad V'Shem in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Museum, local museums in New York, to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, to the Holocaust memorial in Budapest, including the Shoes on the Danube, memorializing Jewish men, women and children shot into the river, to the 9th fort in Kaunus, Lithuania, the Rumabala forest in Latvia, where more than 35,000 Jews were massacred during the war, to the Holocaust museum in Riga and a memorial in Paris.
I would like to get to Poland and see Auschwitz, where my father's parents and sister, for whom I am named, perished in the gas chambers.

He was a holocaust survivor I knew when I was a little girl.

I'd just written several paragraphs about him and his amazing wife here, but I deleted them.

It seems enough to say I loved them both, they shaped my life for the better. I'll always remember them and the lessons they taught me. They're forever in my heart.

Were murdered at the beginning of it all and never made it to camps. My grandmother escaped by leaving when their house had been stolen by germans in ww1. They were traveling in a cart digging up potatoes and her mother, and many siblings died from illness. She, and two sisters left when she was 16 for Canada. If she had not left she would have been murdered and I wouldn’t be here.

Her father and two brothers stayed. One escaped into the Russian army after his whole village was bayonetted by german soldiers including his wife and 3 year old daughter. He stayed there for the remainder of his life because he was not allowed to leave or to have visitors. My father tried to visit him while on a conference in Poland.

Her father and remaining brother would not leave their house although the brother who escaped to Russia warned them to. They were murdered for their house and for being jewish. Shot in the back of the head by a neighbor of 24 years, who was a teacher. There was never any justice or accountability.

My father visited Treblinka when he was there. We visited holocaust museums and the memorial where my relative’s names are engraved. I know what happened and I tend to find it too painful so I don’t visit those museums much or watch a lot of documentaries.

As for the other side of my father’s family they came to Canada from Romania a generation earlier. I am sure some probably perished in the holocaust but we don’t know much about it- for some reason my father, and grandparents did not talk about it or I have forgotten what they said. Also you have to understand that christian antisemitism and hatred of jewish people had already existed there for a long time so jewish people were already being brutalized and murdered in these countries long before the holocaust started which is part of how it happened.

My friend and neighbor who passed at 95 last summer, I don’t know if any of her relatives were survivors, I don’t think so. Her husband was a liberator fighting in WW2. I don’t know about her husband’s family. I know others who are relatives of survivors.

Not everyone talks about it or feels the same way about it. One friend whose parents were survivors… although she acknowledged it all she never discussed it with her young children so as not to upset them I guess. Another friend told me she had gone to a friend’s wedding, and at the wedding the groom, and his brother revealed that they had both been camp survivors which no one knew about them until then. So I am sure I have met some who are survivors who may not reveal it or discuss it. I have always been creeped out by tattoos for a lot of reasons and this is one, they remind me of the victims of the holocaust who were in camps.

reformed, conservative, and secular Jews in NYC.

Around half of my friends were Jewish. Being so much closer to the end of WWII back then you could say the memories, and effects were "in the air" so to speak.

I did see one friend's ?grandmother's small numbers tattoo below her wrist. While my dad was an only child, my mom had 3 brothers, and a sister; so on her side we had a on the higher end of medium with our cousins, and the adults.
I became aware that my Jewish friends didn't always have big families bc of all who perished from the Nazis.

And, yeah, I did see some of those documentaries with their horrifing, and hideous photos, and films of liberating the Camps when I was a tween, early teen.