BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference. - IAN KERSHAW Click Here to see a presentation and very informative site about YomHaShoah. Yom HaShoah - How to remember the Holocaust by Rabbi Yehudah Prero Shoah is the Hebrew word for "whirlwind." It is the term used to described the conflagration that swept up six million Jewish souls between 1938 and 1945. A war was waged against the Jews in which unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated against a defenseless people. Men and women, young and old alike, were butchered at the hands of the accursed Nazis, may their name be eradicated for all time. Every year, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the martyrs who sanctified the name of G-d in the camps, the ghettos, and in the gas chambers. A story is told of a unique Chanukah in Aushwitz. It was December, and a group of Jews in Aushwitz desired greatly to have a candle lit on the upcoming holiday. Obviously, there was no way the Germans would allow this ...

Dozens of letters found in an American archive reveal the desperate efforts of Anne Frank's father Otto to escape from the Nazis with his family. The letters - including some from his American relatives and friends - were written before the family went into hiding in Amsterdam in 1942. The 78 documents are to be released on 14 February by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Anne Frank's diary, found after the war, has moved millions of readers. He survived the Auschwitz death camp, but Anne died just before her 16th birthday in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The family went into hiding in a cramped attic in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation in July 1942 but a betrayal led to their arrest in 1944. The letters were found in New York a year ago by a YIVO researcher, Estelle Guzik. They reveal how in 1941 Otto Frank had tried to obtain visas for his family to travel to the US or Cuba. YIVO's executive director Carl Rheins said t...

Barack's pissing all over Bibi already, after Bibi's speech... this should come as a surprise to NO ONE! by Aaron Klein The Palestinian Authority has received signs from the U.S. that it should not take seriously Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent major address, according to a top PA official speaking to WorldNet Daily (WND). Nimer Hamad, senior political adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, also said the PA is not concerned about Netanyahu's policies since Abbas relies on American support for key Palestinian demands. During Netanyahu's speech Sunday, the Israeli leader called for a demilitarized Palestinian state and said Jerusalem would always be united under Jewish sovereignty. Hamad countered: "No matter what is the position of the Israeli government and no matter what are the statements of Netanyahu, what counts is what was promised to us by Obama, which is totally the opposite [of Netanyahu's positions]." "We received encouraging ...

by Will Heaven For the first time since the death of Pope John Paul II, Catholic-Jewish relations have become strained. Pope Benedict XVI, in an effort to heal a 20-year-old schism in the Catholic Church, has allowed a high-profile Holocaust denier back into his fold. But must the views of one lunatic bishop put an end to interreligious dialogue? Surely not. Now, more than any other time in our troubled history, Catholics and Jews must stand together against the threat of Islamism. The Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson is, by all accounts, a deeply unpleasant and ignorant man. Despite being educated at Cambridge University, he rejects the existence of the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. In doing so, he denies the Holocaust as a historical event, claiming that "only" 300,000 Jews perished. To Roman Catholics, these views are intolerable. The pope has expressed his disapproval in the strongest terms, saying to an American Jewish delegation, "The hatred that was...

As a former devout Catholic, this sort of fuzzy P.R. and obfuscation coupled with fence-sitting was typical from Catholic hierachy. And one of the things that drove me from the Church. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Pope Benedict XVI to make a "very clear" rejection of Holocaust denials after the Vatican's rehabilitation of a former bishop who questioned whether 6 million Jews were gassed by the Nazis. Merkel's rare and public demand came amid increasing outrage among Germany's Roman Catholic leaders over the pope's decision to lift the excommunication of British-born Richard Williamson. Merkel said she "does not believe" there has been adequate clarification of the Vatican's position on the Holocaust amid the controversy. Benedict last week expressed "full and indisputable solidarity" with Jews and warned against any denial of the horror of the Holocaust, but several leading German bishops have decried the decision and call...

Dear Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin: This is my public apology to John McCain, Sarah Palin, Republican voters, Christian evangelicals, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher and everyone else in the non-Jewish universe who stands four-square behind the State of Israel. While you have written, spoken and, yes, even prayed in strong opposition to any retrofitting of American policy on behalf of the Jewish state, nearly eight out of every 10 American Jews failed to demonstrate similar resolve on Election Day. Those dancing along with the Democratic faithful in Grant Park included Jews from almost all sectors of American life: young and old, Reconstructionist and Orthodox, wealthy and poor. So enamored were the revelers of the symbolism of electing a man of color to the Oval Office that they fatefully overlooked what he stands for and,worse, what he will not stand against. Who would have ever imagined that it would fall to our non-Jewish neighbors to take up the cause of Israel’s survival a...

Exactly 70 years after the 1938 Nazi pogrom widely seen as the precursor to the Holocaust, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Germans not to be indifferent to anti-Semitism. "Indifference is the first step towards endangering essential values," Merkel said during Germany's national memorial ceremony for Kristallnacht - "the Night of Broken Glass" - at the old synagogue in Berlin's Rykestrasse. "Germany needs a climate that encourages moral courage," Merkel said. "Xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism must never be given an opportunity in Europe again." Advertisement "It is a mistake to think it doesn't affect you when your neighbors are affected," Merkel added. "This mistake just leads us further and further into evil." On November 9, 1938, massive riots began across Germany and Austria. More than 91 Jews were killed, more than 1,000 synagogues were damaged and 7,500 Jewish businesses were ransacked and loot...

A 1939 Photograph of Peter Schiff Is Discovered, Ending a Decades-Old Mystery By MAEVA BAMBUCK On Jan. 6, 1944, Anne Frank wrote in her diary that her image of him was so vivid she didn't need a photograph to remember him. Indeed, more than 60 years later, no photograph had been found of Anne Frank's childhood sweetheart, leaving hundreds of readers around the world curious for a glimpse. But now, 81-year-old Earnst Michaelis has identified his dearest childhood friend, Peter Schiff, as the "Petel" or "Peter" from the diary & the mysterious boy who stole Anne Frank's heart. Despite "Anne Frank's Diary" becoming one of the world's most-read journals, selling an estimated 35 million copies, what Peter Schiff might have looked like was an enduring mystery. He met Anne Frank at school in Amsterdam in 1940, and they were inseparable for one summer. In her diary, Anne Frank affectionately called him "Petel," and she was '...

SAYING KADDISH. AT LAST. Holocaust survivor learns father's fate By ARON HELLER In 1942, 8-year-old Moshe Bar-Yuda walked hand-in-hand with his father to a collection point in his hometown in Slovakia and watched him being shipped off to a Nazi labor camp. The boy never saw him again, and for 66 years was left to wonder about his father's fate. Because of a newly opened Nazi archive, the mystery has been resolved. Bar-Yuda, now 74, was one of the first to obtain Nazi documents now available to the public after they were stashed away for more than 60 years in a secret German archive. Up to now, only limited queries were answered. The Bad Arolsen documents — transportation lists, Gestapo orders, camp registers, slave labor booklets, death books — contain references to about 17.5 million people, Jews and non-Jews. It is the largest registry of Holocaust victims ever. The archive showed that Bar-Yuda's father, Alfred Kastner, was killed in a Nazi gas chamber at the Majdanek de...

Menorah Lit at Polish Parliament This was a long time coming. As a great-granddaughter of Polish Immigrants who ran from religious persecution - this is wonderful event. A light of hope in some dim times for the Jewish people. Może Bóg Przynoszą Pokój do *Jews* Polski The Jewish community in Poland made history last week when Vice President Jaroslaw Kalinowski hosted a Chanukah menorah lighting in the Sejm, the Polish parliament. Poland has had a mixed history in its relationship with the Jews who settled there since the Dark Ages. Kalinowski lit the shamash candle last Monday night accompanied by Rabbi Shalom Stambler, co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Poland who organized the event, Chabad.org reported via Catholic World News Friday. "It is highly symbolic for Jews and non-Jews alike that the Chanukah candles could be illuminated from the very halls from which Polish laws are made," said Stambler. Jewish leaders noted that of late Poland has had a...

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER, SAQUATCH, the HOLOCAUST & AHMAHeadUpMyArse I always love Alan Dershowitz. His writing is right on point. I hate to give AhmaHeadUpHisArse anymore bandwith but exploding his B.S. must be done - to that I will give all the bandwith it takes. Particularly that crap about the Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. I talk to abusers every week who try to feed me their version of reality. I can tell you its very hard not to laugh in their faces. But I don't because these people are dangerously invested in making sure their version of reality is unchallenged and untouched. I've heard some pretty bizarre claims & twisted truth including some bending of the time-space continuum. Kudos to Mr. Dershowitz for challenging and exploding this dangerous lies. Double Standard Watch: Ahmadinejad Holocaust’s Myths by Alan Dershowitz In his speeches, most especially the one at Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats two myths about the Hol...

Holocaust survivors' children sue Germany for therapy fees When I read this article below - I was filled with mixed emotions. I sympathize that the children of Holocaust survivors suffer deep psychic scars and understand this lawsuit. On the other hand, I have to think about the many hearings I have sat in for moral support of abuse victims when they ask for child support in divorce or separation. The abusers will say yes and then disappear or never bother to pay for therapy for their own children - figuring "let the law find me" or "let her spend more money trying to force me to pay." Deadbeat parent organizations spend years chasing this stuff down. Sometimes, as in my own case, the other parent just plays games to be punitive. Another thing I thought of - is the compensatory claims made by African Americans for slavery here in the U.S. Perhaps this doesn't compare but it will be interesting to see how this shakes out. Is it a reasonable or unreasona...

STUPID IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER Does anyone know of any statement issued by Orthodox or Conservative leadership condemning Rabbi Eliyahu's statement? Remember, Rabbi Eliyahu is the former chief Rabbi of Israel. This is the same guy who said that God sent Hurricane Katrina because the people of New Orleans didn't study Torah enough. He was asked if he knew that the population of New Orleans was primarily black and non-Jewish, he said that was exactly what he meant. Oy! I'm truly ashamed. Reform files complaint against former chief rabbi by Neta Sela Movement files complaint with police against former Chief Rabbi Eliyahu, who said in radio interview establishment of Reform Judaism in Germany angered God, prompted Holocaust Members of the Reform movement, including Holocaust survivors, filed a complaint for libel with the police against former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu Wednesday, following his statements linking the Reform movement and the Holocaust. In a radio int...

Half a century on, Polish Jews rediscover religious heritage Great-grandfather Josef, (wielki dziadek) and Nana Magda -- wherever you are now - I hope you are reading this one! Ludmila Krzewska has decided it is finally safe to be Jewish ( ŻYDOWSKI ) in Poland again. She endured anti-Semitic taunts as a child. Her grandmother would have been killed by the Nazis had a Catholic family not taken her in. And her mother was too traumatized to practice Judaism after the war. That all caused her to bury her background as she grew to adulthood in Warsaw. But when the 25-year-old biology student ventured to recover her heritage five years ago, she met a different kind of rejection. She sought out Warsaw's Orthodox Jewish community, but was discouraged by one member because "I have a 'goyish' husband," she recalls. The message did not come from the rabbi - but it was enough. So she turned to Warsaw's fledgling Progressive Jewish community, her husband eventually conver...