70th anniversary of the liberaton of Auschwitz cncentration camp

[Darth Penguin]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/w...-years-on.html

More than one million people were killed at Auschwitz in Poland during World War Two. The majority were Jews and the former extermination camp is the world's biggest Jewish cemetery.

The site was also the death place for many people who did not fit into the Nazis' view of their world. Poles, lesbians, homosexuals and the disabled were amongst those also killed here.

Many of the concentration camps set up by the Nazis in World War Two were razed to the ground, but Auschwitz-Birkenauwas liberated before it was completely destroyed. Now it's a museum.

Survivors will lay wreaths and light candles at the so-called Death Wall at Block 11 on January 27th to mark 70 years since the camp's liberation, and remember those who never left.

[Darth Penguin]

Thousands of Isreali Holocaust survivors struggle in poverty

Hadasa Hershkovichi fled to Israel in search of a home after the Nazis murdered her entire family. But while million-dollar apartments pop up throughout her Tel Aviv neighborhood, Hershkovichi lives in a shack originally built as a laundry room on the roof of a five-story building.



"The cold winter wind is coming in through the windows so I shove newspapers around the edges to stop the wind coming in," said the Romanian-born Hershkovichi, who suffers from a combination of ailments that make it very hard for her to climb the stairs to her tiny apartment.
"This is not the way for a human being to live," the 80-year-old said. "I only have a few more years to live and I want a proper home."
Hershkovichi is one of 190,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Israel today. She is also one of the 50,000 estimated to live below the poverty line, according to the Association for Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors. Israel classifies a person as poor if they survive on around $600 or less a month.
"I'm ashamed, I want to cry but crying doesn't help," Susan Rotem, a volunteer with the Association for Immediate Help for Holocaust Survivors, told NBC News. "It's hard to be old but it's very hard to be old, sick and lonely."
Rotem and some 3,000 fellow volunteers help people like Hershkovichi by giving them meals and medicine, paying their bills, and keeping them company

[Darth Penguin]

Auschwitz Survivor Gena Turgel Walked Out of Gas Chamber Alive

"When I think back, I have to pinch myself sometimes to see if I'm really alive," the 90-year-old told NBC News.



Turgel, an elegant woman with more than a hint of mischief in her blue eyes, survived not one or two, but three Nazi concentration camps.
In the most notorious of all, Auschwitz-Birkeanau, she was herded naked into a gas chamber with hundreds of others.
Yet Turgel, who was 21 at the time, walked out alive.
She had no idea the Nazis had tried to kill her until a woman she knew said, "Don't you know what has just happened to you? You were in the gas chamber!"
Turgel still looks amazed to have cheated death.
"I completely lost my voice," she said. "I just never realized I was in the gas chamber ... it must not have worked."

[Natalka]

Just heard an interview with this woman - it was so touching to listen to her recount the story.



Miriam Friedman Ziegler, 79, of Thornhill, Ont., rolls up her sleeve to show her identification tattoo in Auschwitz, Poland on Monday, Jan. 26, 2015.

The 79-year-old from Thornhill, Ont., visited the camp on Sunday, accompanied by her daughter. It was cold, snowy and emotionally overwhelming.
Friedman Ziegler said she stopped in front of a barbed-wire fence -- the same spot where 70 years ago, a photographer captured an iconic photo of 13 wide-eyed children -- she was one of them -- looking on as the Red Army soldiers approached.

On Monday she reunited with three of the women who were captured in the black-and-white photo taken by Alexander Vorontsov, a Red Army combat photographer, shortly after the camp's liberation.
She posed with the others for a new photo at the hotel in Krakow between a slew of events for more than 100 survivors. In one photograph, she lifted her sleeve to show the prisoner number the Nazis tattooed on her skin upon entering Auschwitz. It mimics the original image in which she instinctively showed her tattoo to the arriving soldiers.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadia...tion-1.2206706

[madchives]

as we know more than jewish people were killed, gypsies and gay people also,
sighing, i can barely watch any coverage of what occurred, too sad.
and to see the people who survived and are able to return to where
they almost didn't.,,,, i only have no words
just a whole in my heart

[trishka]

The strength that would be required to go back to such a horrible place, I don't think I'd have that.

[Patty Smyth]

I was watching Schindler's List last night on History channel. While his story has been "popularized" more than others there were many, many people who took in Jews and hid them. Many manufacturers also did what he did and tried to keep them safe during the war.

[avoncallingu]

I travelled to Berlin with my then husband who was born in Germany as his Ukrainian mother had been displaced to work on farms. When the US troops invaded, they were cared for at US army installations until they emigrated to Canada. That is where she met her husband and gave birth to my former husband. We drove right by the laneway that led to Dauchau Concentration Camp, but I could not bring myself to visit. These people who went back to Auschwitz show the courage and stamina which helped them to survive at the time! May god bless them all and bring them peace in their souls!

[Darth Penguin]

I was watching Schindler's List last night on History channel. While his story has been "popularized" more than others there were many, many people who took in Jews and hid them. Many manufacturers also did what he did and tried to keep them safe during the war.

from what I remember of reading the book ( Schindler's Ark..it was called before the film was made) numptty yeas ago, Oskar Schindler wasn't that "good" a man at the start.He was motivated purely by profit before he truely understood what was going on and had a change of heart.

[trishka]

from what I remember of reading the book ( Schindler's Ark..it was called before the film was made) numptty yeas ago, Oskar Schindler wasn't that "good" a man at the start.He was motivated purely by profit before he truely understood what was going on and had a change of heart.

I'd read the same thing. I guess in the end what really matters is that he helped to save many Jews. I would recommend everyone read about Irena Sendler, who people now call the female Schindler. She helped to smuggle out 2,500 infants and kids out of the ghetto. She was caught and her arms and legs were all broken and she was severely beaten. She kept a list of the names of the children and after the war, tried to re-unite them with their parents. The ones whose parents did not survive she helped get into foster homes or adopted.

[gryphon]

My grandparents were liberated from there......To be honest they almost never talked to me about it. The holocaust was just something that was not discussed a lot with them. I think because of that I myself am uncomfortable around discussion of it...because of how I grew up

[Patty Smyth]

from what I remember of reading the book ( Schindler's Ark..it was called before the film was made) numptty yeas ago, Oskar Schindler wasn't that "good" a man at the start.He was motivated purely by profit before he truely understood what was going on and had a change of heart.

Well, yes, he was a profiteer and a womanizer lol but he did save those people in the end. Doesn't really matter how he got there, as long as he did.

Don't forget the camps were kept as secret as possible so he may not have known about them for years.

[Patty Smyth]

My grandparents were liberated from there......To be honest they almost never talked to me about it. The holocaust was just something that was not discussed a lot with them. I think because of that I myself am uncomfortable around discussion of it...because of how I grew up

I think you should ask them. My reasoning is that once they are gone those stories are gone with them. I know that when my mom died last year there were a lot of things that I should have asked her about our family history and now she is gone and was the last one of 12. I lost uncles in the war, don't know how or where.

You already know it's going to be horrible, but they triumphed. JMO

[Darth Penguin]

I think you should ask them. My reasoning is that once they are gone those stories are gone with them. I know that when my mom died last year there were a lot of things that I should have asked her about our family history and now she is gone and was the last one of 12. I lost uncles in the war, don't know how or where.

You already know it's going to be horrible, but they triumphed. JMO

ITA. If they are still alive, of course.

Should your gandparents or you are uncomfortable taking as a family about this, there may be an oral history group who may be intereasted in interviewing them and adding thier memories to the local Holocaust museum.

[Darth Penguin]

Well, yes, he was a profiteer and a womanizer lol but he did save those people in the end. Doesn't really matter how he got there, as long as he did.

Don't forget the camps were kept as secret as possible so he may not have known about them for years.

I certainly didn't mean to denigrate his memory in any way. Some-one who protected those lives would be incredibly brave as well as daring to pull that off under the noses of the Nazis .
Initially he was no better than many of his fellow business-men in taking the oppotunty to make his own fortune at he expense of those who had thier livihoods taken from them. However, he decided not to follow that road and ended up as an interntional hero. After all he ended up risking not only his own life but those of his famly and friends not to mention the non-Jewish workers in his factory.