Stories from WW2

[NJFemmie]

I wish I knew of stories to tell - but the "silence" of the Holocaust truly does affect generations. I know nothing about my family history beyond my parents, essentially... and even their lives I know very little about because of the pain they suffered.

I certainly do not diminish what has happened to other cultures, countries and races because of this war, but I can say that as I get older, the desire to know more about my pre-war family has become painful and frustrating.

I remember as a child, I would go through some serious separation anxiety when my mother would take trips to Poland to find ANY kind of information about her brother, who we suspect either died in, or was murdered in a camp. All I know is that they were separated, and never saw each other again. My mother was 14 at the time, and I think her brother was only a few years older.

[Jet]

"War Against the Jews"
by Lucy S. Dawidowicz

I would like to recommend, the book, The War Against the Jews by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, who is a scholar of Jewish life. The book is regarded as an in-depth, pioneering study of Nazi genocide.


About the Mrs. Dawidowicz and War Against the Jews

She was the daughter of Polish immigrants, was at the center of the study of the modern Jewish experience at Yeshiva University, where she held a chair in interdisciplinary Holocaust studies. Early in her career, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, she went to Europe, where she helped Jewish survivors of the war to re-create schools and libraries, and she recovered vast collections of books seized by the Nazis.

Before that, while in her early 20's, she had lived in Vilna, Poland, from 1938 to 1939, where she witnessed the onslaught of European anti-Semitism, writing about the experience in a memoir, "From That Place and Time," published by W. W. Norton last year. Her other books include "The Jewish Presence" (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) in 1977 and "The Holocaust and the Historians" (Harvard University Press), a critical survey of scholarship on the Holocaust, in 1981. Hopes Turn to Agonies

"There was a certain irony to my trip to Vilna," Mrs. Dawidowicz told an interviewer for Publisher's Weekly, speaking of her pre-war experience in Poland. "I went there with the romantic belief that it might become the world center for a self-sustaining Yiddish culture."

When she saw what turned out to be the beginning of the end of Jewish life in Poland, she immersed herself in Yiddish literature and Jewish history, so that she could help to preserve Jewish culture in the postwar world.

Mrs. Dawidowicz (pronounced dah-vee-DOH-vich), a small energetic woman who spoke in the accents of the Bronx, engaged in heated arguments within Jewish circles over both the nature of the Holocaust and the responsibility of American Jews for not doing more to prevent it.

Her major work, "The War Against the Jews," postulates that the destruction of the Jews was a central and inescapable element in Nazi ideology and was always a principle war aim of Hitler, just as important as his military conquest of Europe. In this view, she conflicted with other historians, who believed that the Holocaust was not a necessary part of the Nazi program but evolved in response to such circumstances as the defeats on the Eastern front.

"The War Against the Jews" (Holt, Rinehart & Winston) was called "a work of high scholarship and profound moral import" by Irving Howe, in his review in The New York Times Book Review. It is marked above all by its sobriety. Mrs. Dawidowicz allows the coolly accumulated weight of detail -- the growing force of the Nazi's anti-Semitic juggernaut, the evolution of the camps as places of scientific murder, the efforts by the victims to hold onto fragments of normal life -- to create its emotional and intellectual impact.

Mrs. Dawidowicz refused to judge the failure of the Jews themselves to mount a more active resistance to the genocide, and in this she clashed bitterly with a number of other historians.

Her belief was twofold. First, she felt it morally inappropriate for those who did not face the persecutions themselves to criticize the behavior of those who did. Second, she felt that in any case, Jewish resistance was doomed to failure. Given the Jews' isolation, their lack of arms and the overwhelming material superiority of their enemies, there was virtually nothing they could have done to alter their fate, she wrote. Defended Role of Jews

In her book The Holocaust and the Historians, Mrs. Davidowicz is critical of a number of historians and commentators -- Bruno Bettelheim, Hannah Arendt and Raul Hilberg are among those she mentions -- who described the European Jews during the war as passive, cowardly or, in the case of the Judenrat, set up by the Nazis as self-governing boards in the ghettos, even collaborationist.

Similarly, Mrs. Dawidowicz rejected a chorus of opinion to the effect that Jews in the United States were guilty of complacency and a failure to react effectively to the Holocaust.

In articles in Commentary magazine and The New York Times, she wrote, first, that the Jews here did undertake wipespread efforts to awaken the government and world opinion to the fate of the European Jews. Second, she argued that, in any case, whatever might have been done here, the Jews of Europe were caught in a vise from which virtually no escape was ever possible. The only way to save them, she believed, was to militarily defeat the Nazis as quickly as possible, and that fact justified the Allies' concentration on the war effort, rather than on efforts to save the Jews.

Mrs. Dawidowicz, whose maiden name was Lucy Schildkret, was born in New York in 1915 and educated at Hunter College and Columbia University. She recounts in "From That Time and Place" how she began to work for YIVO's Manhattan branch after her year in Vilna. She met her husband, Szymon Dawidowicz, an escapee from Poland there. Mr. Dawidowicz died in 1979.

Source material:
The New York Times

[Jet]

Originally Posted by NJFemmie

I wish I knew of stories to tell - but the "silence" of the Holocaust truly does affect generations. I know nothing about my family history beyond my parents, essentially... and even their lives I know very little about because of the pain they suffered.

I certainly do not diminish what has happened to other cultures, countries and races because of this war, but I can say that as I get older, the desire to know more about my pre-war family has become painful and frustrating.

I remember as a child, I would go through some serious separation anxiety when my mother would take trips to Poland to find ANY kind of information about her brother, who we suspect either died in, or was murdered in a camp. All I know is that they were separated, and never saw each other again. My mother was 14 at the time, and I think her brother was only a few years older.

Life has a way....NJFemmie....life has away....
I was involved with a Jewish girl whose mother had been sent to Bergen-Belsen as a child. She had been separated from her sister, never to be seen or heard from until....

one day, while visiting in Israel, my ex-girlfriend's mother had met up with several people on her trip in a search for information on Holocaust survivors. She took with her, the only known photograph of her sister.....

who just happened to be in the group of people searching for surviving members of their families. The sisters reunited after 40 some years, can you imagine? After the camps were liberated, my girlfriend's mother came to the US on a sponsorship from the Sears family (as in Sears & Roebuck) who brought many surviving Jews to the US.

God works amazing things....

[Mitmo01]

Hannah Arendt wrote an interesting book called " The Origins of Totalitarianism" and she is credited with the phrase " the banality of Evil"

She posited that the real people responisble for allowing the nazis to rise to power were the same normal people that went to work everyday blindly following orders and doing what they were told....

the people that were signing off on death orders were called "writing desk executioners" they were the workers who went to thier jobs everyday and did what they were told because they followed the rules...


she is very controversial but regardless of the differing opinons on her writing and her philosophy she actually made me think when i had to read that book...

the masses in germany and europe followed orders blindly and did what they were told...no dissent, no arguement, because of conditioning....I hope that in my lifetime im never put in that postion ever....i do not want to be a blind sheeple ever....I always want to have the spirit of dissent in my blood and in my bones even if it means im breaking the law somehow....i never want to forget what happend in that war...

[theoddz]

If you have HBO, I highly recommend the new 10 part series The Pacific. It's produced and filmed by the same outstanding group who produced Band of Brothers. I can't help but be extremely enthusiastic about this show, because it's about the unit I served with, the 1st Marine Division.

It's certainly worth watching and focuses on how the war affected the Marines who fought the Japanese in the Pacific. Every now and then, I run across an old Marine where I work, the most recent an old grizzled retired Sgt.Maj. who fought at the battle of Iwo Jima. He finally finished his 28 year career as the command Sgt.Maj of the Marine detachment aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, during Vietnam. When I met Sgt.Maj. Leo Tucker, I met a living hero. He truly was a hero of "the old breed". When I shook his hand and introduced myself, for some odd reason, it felt like I was touching across the generations of Marines who have served. He had served in the "fighting 1st MarDiv".

If you get a chance, watch it.

Semper Fidelis,
~Theo~

[Andrew, Jr.]

I believe that all vets are our heroeos, not just those who fought in wars. I am just so very proud of our men and women who volunteer, but never saw "war" so to speak. My hat is off to all of you.

Theo,

I have a major issue with Steven Speilberg, Tom Hanks, and HBO with the new movie "The Pacific". Most of our men and women from that time period just don't have the income to have HBO/cable. I believe it should have been made into a mini-series on regular TV. That way everyone could watch the show.

When I have gone to the WW2 Memorial in Washington, DC and you see the memorabilia left behind...it just brings tears to most everyone's eyes. It is our history. And the men and women who I see there still wearing their hats or parts of their uniform from days gone by, it may have faded but it is just as real today as it was back then. The reflection pond with the stars...that is my tipping point. It is magnificant. I don't think any photograph can do it justice. It is just that powerful.

Much love and peace,
Andrew

[theoddz]

Originally Posted by Andrew, Jr.

I believe that all vets are our heroeos, not just those who fought in wars. I am just so very proud of our men and women who volunteer, but never saw "war" so to speak. My hat is off to all of you.

Theo,

I have a major issue with Steven Speilberg, Tom Hanks, and HBO with the new movie "The Pacific". Most of our men and women from that time period just don't have the income to have HBO/cable. I believe it should have been made into a mini-series on regular TV. That way everyone could watch the show.

When I have gone to the WW2 Memorial in Washington, DC and you see the memorabilia left behind...it just brings tears to most everyone's eyes. It is our history. And the men and women who I see there still wearing their hats or parts of their uniform from days gone by, it may have faded but it is just as real today as it was back then. The reflection pond with the stars...that is my tipping point. It is magnificant. I don't think any photograph can do it justice. It is just that powerful.

Much love and peace,
Andrew

I totally get your point about making this series and others like it accessible to more people on a broader scale and not just those who can afford things like HBO. Thing is, The Pacific will end up being like Band of Brothers and will be, in time, picked up by non premium television networks. If I remember correctly, The History Channel wasn't long in running Band of Brothers, after its premier showing on HBO.

And, a word about Steven Spielberg......he has donated, free of any charge, to multiple schools and organizations, copies of Schindler's List. I think he realizes the importance of as many people of future generations seeing these historical productions as possible. I salute him for that.

There was a quote in the Band of Brothers series that I will never forget. In it, one of the Veteran narrators says something like, "I wonder if future generations will ever know what it cost the men who fought and died in this war".

Indeed.

~Theo~

[Andrew, Jr.]

Theo,

Thank you. I did not know that about Steven Spielberg and HBO. That makes me happy to know. I know I watch "Band of Brothers", "Schindler's List", and "Saving Private Ryan" with vets repeatedly. They will see a scene and then go talking for hours at a time about certain things they encountered in Germany, Poland, or where they were.

The one remark they all agree on about the movie "Saving Private Ryan" is that the first 10 minutes of the invasion was only Hollywood's version of what it was really like. They all say if you intensify it by 500 times that much, then that is what it was really like. The boats ran aground, tanks never made it to shore during the fighting, and the poor men. Men were just stacked on top of each other, either they were shot or drowned. The one thing I find interesting is that back then there were alot of soldiers who didn't know how to swim. Now it is a requirement.

If you ever get a chance to come to the East Coast, I would love to take you to the WW2 monument, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and Arlington Nat'l Cemetary. All are just breathtaking. And to watch the soldiers march at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is sobering. The detail of their march, and the changing of the guard. Unbelieveable. It makes one proud to be American.

One of the things I would like to do, in the Jewish faith it is customary to place a stone at the grave of a family member or friend or relative. I want to place a stone on Mr. Schlinder's grave. It would be such a privilage and honor to do so.