Anne Frank sapling coverage on CNN

(CNN) -- This is a story about a girl and her tree -- a tree that helped keep hope alive, even as the world closed in on her.

Three times in Anne Frank's widely read diary, the young Holocaust victim wrote about a tree. She could see it from the attic window of the secret annex where her family hid for two years, before being betrayed.

"From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind," she wrote on February 23, 1944. "As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be." Read more...

***make sure to click on the "Inspiration" tab below Anne's picture

Holocaust Survivor, Magda S., Speaks at Seattle University

Holocaust survivor recounts her life during WWII
Magda Shaloum endured Auschwitz and Muhldorf, meeting her husband shortly after

Seattle University Spectator By Richard Kaiser
Published: Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Photo: Candace Shankel The Spectator

Magda Shaloum was joined by her son Jack to speak in Pigott auditorium. Shaloum is a member of the Speaker’s Bureau of the Washington State Holocaust Resource Center.

With support from her son and cane, Magda Shaloum makes her way up the stage and the spotlight settles on her. She settles into her seat, she adjusts her sleeve buttons and pulls her skirt closer to her feet. She looks down, then forward to an eager au- dience as she begins to tell her story.

Shaloum is a Holocaust survivor who came to Seattle University on behalf of the university’s Jewish Student Union (JSU) April 21 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this month. Magda shared her experiences from life in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Muhldorf, a slave labor camp in Bavaria, Germany... Read full article

Photos from the Holocaust Remembrance Day Program

View photos from the annual Yom Hashoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day program on the Center's Facebook page.

Program was sponsored by the Holocaust Center and the Stroum Jewish Community Center. Thanks to the following for additional support: Claims Conference, Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, and the many volunteers who helped to make the program run smoothly. Thank you also to Leslie Rubenstein at the SJCC for taking many of these photos.

April 2010 -- New Resources

Presser, Dr. Jacob. Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. Trans. Arnold Pomerans. London: Souvenir Press, 2010.

“Beginning in 1940, 110,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands to concentration camps. Of those, fewer than 6,000 returned. Using 15 years of research, Jacob Presser graphically recounts stories of persecution, life in the transit camps and the process of going into hiding.” –from book cover

Florence, Ronald. Emissary of the Doomed: Bargaining for Lives in the Holocaust. NY: Viking, 2010.

Until March 1944, the Jews of Hungary enjoyed relative physical security, although Hungary was an ally of the Axis powers. In fact, Hungarian Jews managed to save thousands of their brethren from other central and eastern European countries by smuggling them into (and sometimes out of) Hungary. When German troops invaded, they brought intense pressure on the Hungarian government to round up Jews and transport them for“resettlement.” Thus began a valiant if largely futile effort to rescue them. Florence, a historian and novelist, recounts this struggle in a riveting and intense work. At the center of the narrative is an unlikely hero. Joel Brand was a former communist, a committed Zionist, and physically unimpressive. Yet he brought great energy to efforts to bargain with Hungarian and German officials to “ransom” Jews, exchanging their lives for material aid for the Axis cause. He did so despite the opposition of the British and American governments, leaving a legacy of bitterness that still persists. This is a fine examination of one of the saddest episodes of the Holocaust. --Jay Freeman, Booklist.


Kassow, Samuel. Who Will Write Our History?: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto. NY: Vintage Books, 2007.

In 1940, in the Jewish ghetto of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a clandestine and scholarly organization called the Oyneg Shabes was established by the Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum to record the experiences of the ghetto’s inhabitants. For three years, members of the Oyneg Shabes worked in secret to chronicle the lives of hundres of thousands as they suffered starvation, disease, and the deportation by the Nazis. Shortly before the Warsaw ghetto was emptied and razed in 1943, the Oyneg Shabes buried thousands of documents from this massive archive in milk cans and tin boxes, ensuring that the voice and culture of a doomed people would outlast the efforts of their enemies to silence them. – From book cover.


Webber, Jonathan. Rediscovering Traces of Memory: The Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia. Photographs by Chris Schwarz. Indianapolis: Oxford Indiana Univ. Press, 2009.

This beautiful book features photographs by Chris Schwarz, an acclaimed British photojournalist. His father’s origins in Lvov and his own interest in the Solidarity movement led him to Poland, where he teamed up with Joanthan Webber to work on the Traces of Memory Project. In 2004 he opened the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow to showcase his photographs as a way of bringing the story of the Jewish heritage in Polish Galicia to Poland and to the world. Schwarz died in 2007. – From book cover.

Soldier who liberates Buchenwald concentration camp speaks at Madigan Army Medical Center

World War II Soldier reflects on liberating concentration camp during Holocaust remembrance ceremony

By Julie Calohan, Madigan Healthcare System Strategic Communication Office

Photo by Bryan Kopp.

MADIGAN ARMY MEDICAL CENTER, Wash. -- For 65 years, Leo Hymas has been haunted by what he witnessed just outside of the German town of Weimar during World War II.

In his short military career of 11 months, Hymas had already lost his best friend in combat and disobeyed orders to kill two German prisoners of war, but discovering the Buchenwald concentration camp was something Hymas wasn't prepared to find.

Engaging in a firefight with German soldiers guarding the camp, Hymas and three other machine-gunners blew through the razor-wire fence with explosives, and captured or killed all of the guards.

Buchenwald became the first concentration camp discovered by American Soldiers, and Hymas, then 19 years old, was dubbed "Leo the Liberator."

But there are images and memories from that day which will never fade from his mind. "Buchenwald concentration camp was a place where people were literally worked to death," Hymas said.

"I've seen the ovens where the bodies were burned and I've seen the thousands of people who were treated so inhumanely." Hymas, now 84, shared his story as part of Madigan Army Medical Center's observance of the Holocaust Days of Remembrance, which takes place from April 11 to 18.

The program also included a traditional folktale by Dr. Julie Kinn, a research psychologist with the National Center for Telehealth and Technology located on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and a Prayer for Peace by Dr. Karen Fitzgerald, chief of Madigan's Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics department.

Hymas spoke at Madigan on the 65th anniversary of finding Buchenwald, and brought along mementos of his experience fighting in the European Theater, including an original Nazi party flag, which he seized from Gestapo Headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany.

During the observance's opening remarks, Madigan Commander Col. Jerry Penner III shared his thoughts about the liberation of the concentration camps.

"During World War II, the United States put 10 million men under arms," Penner said. "I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be one of those very select few Soldiers walking into one of these camps in Buchenwald, Dachau and others. It boggles the mind."

The day after Buchenwald was liberated, the war ended.

In the following days, the camp was visited by Gen. Omar Bradley, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gen. George S. Patton, who, according to Hymas, became physically ill at the sight of the emaciated prisoners and hundreds of dead bodies.

"General Eisenhower issued a statement to the world about what we had found there," Hymas said. "And I got to go home, where there was no one shooting at me."

Hymas, a resident of Whidbey Island, Wash., and a member of the speaker's bureau for the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, shares his wartime experience as a way to come to peace with his memories.

"I was blessed to help free many oppressed people," Hymas said. "What tiny little bit I did to help overcome that terrible, awful wickedness, as difficult as it was, was the best thing I have ever done in my life.

Watch a short documentary biography of Leo Hymas on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2oNoT0MPlk

Holocaust survivor speaking this Wednesday

Holocaust survivor and WSHERC Speakers Bureau member Magda S. will be speaking at Seattle University this Wednesday. The event is free and open to the public.

Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
6:00pm - 8:00pm

Seattle University, Pigott Auditorium

Magda S. was born in Hungary 1922, imprisoned in Auschwitz, and eventually sent to work at the slave labor camp of Muhldorf, where she met the man she would marry.

Magda S. was born to a loving family in 1922 in Gyor, Hungary. Following the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, the Nazis began systematically depriving Jews of their rights and forcing them into ghettos. They forced Magda and her family to leave their home and deported Magda, her brother and mother to Auschwitz. Read more about Magda...

List of Buchenwald Victims Now Online

By Jennifer Rosenberg,
About.com Guide to 20th Century History

List of Buchenwald Victims Now Online
Tuesday April 13, 2010

Just in time for the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation created a website to list the confirmed victims of Buchenwald. The website, Die Toten, 1937-1945 ("The Dead, 1937-1945"), contains 38,000 names.

Although, the website is currently only in German, you can still easily find and read the names. In addition to each name, the Memorial has attached a separate page for each person that lists information such as the person's birth and death dates along with their birthplaces. If you are a relative of someone who died at Buchenwald or know someone who is a relative, please contact the the Buchenwald Memorial if you have any additional personal information that they could be added to the website.

Writing & Art Contest entries currently being judged

This year we received over 750 entries for our Jacob Friedman Holocaust Writing & Art Contest! For each writing and art, there were three age group divisions: 5th & 6th grade, 7th & 8th grade, and high school. The 2010 prompt was:

How would your life be different if people were more respectful and tolerant of each other's differences? How does change begin with you?

It's been a busy week at the Holocaust Center as the art contest judges have been assessing the numerous (and excellent!) entries. Every surface available in the office has been covered with beautiful and enlightening illustrations, collages, and photographs. We look forward to announcing the winners of both the writing and art sections later this month!

Looking for something to watch tonight?

A tip from two of our Board Members, Sharon N. and Cheryl B.:

Don't miss tonight's gripping new documentary WORSE THAN WAR on PBS.

Wednesday, April 14th at 9 p.m. on PBS

(check local listings)

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen makes a convincing case that genocide - the systematic effort to eliminate an entire group perceived of as deserving of death - is even more destructive than armed conflict, and yet often can be prevented. Read more...

Based on Daniel Goldhagen’s book of the same title, WORSE THAN WAR is a personal exploration of the nature of genocide, ethnic cleansing and large-scale mass murder.

Watch the full film online after the premiere at pbs.org/worsethanwar

Opting In vs. Opting Out

"Opting In" vs. "Opting Out" - The Holocaust Center's Director of Education, Ilana Cone Kennedy, responds to apathy towards the Holocaust and genocide in her article "Opting In." In the "Opinions" section in the JT News.

Click here to find both articles.

Opting in
Ilana Cone Kennedy
Special to JTNews


Why it’s important to humanize and bring awareness of the Holocaust and all genocides

I work at a Holocaust Center. My daily language consists of the most obscene of numbers, concentration camps, death, suffering, and incredible personal miracles.

I am just about to complete my seventh year as the director of education. When I tell people where I work, I am often met with looks of pity or silence, and then a change of subject. “Isn’t that depressing?” is the most frequent question I receive.

Until recently, I would answer that I am inspired daily by the educators with whom I work. The teachers in our schools who teach this subject — a subject that is not required or mandated — are creative, insightful, and motivated. Seven years later I am only more impressed by their efforts and determination.

However, my answer to the question has changed. The gravity of the Holocaust — of any and all genocides — is severe. The depth of human suffering is beyond description. This tragedy did not end in 1945, but continues in the survivors’ memories, in their children, and in new generations of survivors of more recent genocides. As I type this, there are at least four places in the world on the brink of genocide. No one should suffer so extremely at the hands of another person or group of people. No one.

It’s easier for us to turn the other way, to bury ourselves in our own lives, to glance over the headlines without associating the individuals involved. It is easier because we have no explanation for innocent people being persecuted and suffering so greatly — we know it is unjust, we recognize the absurdity of it all, and this is why we can hardly bear to face it.

I am the mother of two young children. When they were born, as everyone warned me it would, my view of the world changed. I think I was always sensitive to people’s feelings, fears, and to the pain and hurt a person experiences at being rejected, put down, disappointed. After having children of my own, the stories of parents hiding their kids, sending them to safety, holding on to them — all of it was too personal.

The fear experienced by children, parents, grandparents, the grappling with the unknown, the efforts to save loved ones, and even the pursuit of joy that occurred in the worst of conditions — all of this becomes part of the world we live in. We wish this was history, but in fact, people around the world continue these experiences on a daily basis.

No, depressing is not the word I would use. Overwhelming, really, is more like it.I love my job. Many people have heard me say it. I work with the most incredible people — survivors, educators, and a staff of the most driven, intelligent, passionate people.

But, there are days I go home and feel overwhelmed by the suffering, pain, hatred, and ignorance that exists in this world. What can I, one person, do? Sometimes I feel hopeless. Still, I like to think that maybe I’m making a microscopic dent. I’m idealistic, I suppose. I try to live honestly by my values, to practice the things that I tell others Holocaust education imparts: To stand up to intolerance, recognize the dangers of stereotyping, be respectful of each other’s differences, know that your words and actions affect those around you…because really, if I can’t do it, how can I expect anyone else to? All I can do is to try to work toward these lofty ideals and hope that maybe others will find it worthwhile to do so too.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 11, I am thankful to the survivors for sharing their experiences and for trusting their listeners with their stories. I am thankful to all of those who have made an effort to remember, search for, and hear the stories of those that did not survive. On this day, we must not simply remember, we must feel, and we must act.

Read this article and/or another viewpoint "Opting Out" - click here.

WSHERC exhibit is traveling to...Pennsylvania!

The Holocaust Center's six-panel traveling exhibit, "Stories Among Us: Washington State Connections to the Holocaust," will be traveling to Albright College tomorrow. Albright College is in Reading, PA and the exhibit will be hosted by their Holocaust Resource Center. "Stories Among Us" will be on display in their main library from April 21st until May 10th.

To find out more about the Holocaust Center's traveling exhibits, click here.

Stories of Local Survivors: Frieda S.

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Week, we will be posting a links to stories of local (Washington State) Holocaust survivors.


Frieda S.


Frieda is standing just to the left of the instructor in the middle of the photo. She is wearing a white shirt.

Why are corners of this photo cut out? Click here to find out about this photo.

~ ~ ~

In 1933, the Nazi party was elected in Germany and Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Hitler and the Nazi party quickly put into practice their belief that Germans were “racially superior.” Jewish people were not only defined as “inferior,” but became the primary target for Nazi hatred.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. By the end of that same year, Nazi forces occupied Czechoslovakia. For the next 5 years, Nazi forces occupied country after country in Europe.

In 1943, at the age of 14, Frieda was deported to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in her native country of Czechoslovakia, because she was a “mischling” – half Jewish. Frieda’s mother was not Jewish, but her father was. Against the odds, Frieda survived the Holocaust in Theresienstadt.


"After the war people told me I was lucky to have been sent to Theresienstadt. It was the model camp. Intellectuals, artists and individuals who might someday provide something to the Reich were sent to Theresienstadt. I was sent to Theresienstadt because I was a “Mischling” (half Jewish). I didn’t feel lucky..." Read more of Frieda's story.





Frieda is a member of the Holocaust Center's speakers bureau.

What groups were targeted by the Nazis & their collaborators?

In the week leading up to Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) the Holocaust Center is posting challange questions and discussion topics on Facebook. Join the discussion here or on Facebook.


Today's question:

While Jewish people were the primary target for destruction by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, other groups were targeted as well for racial or political reasons. Can you identify one or more of these groups of victims?

Answers:

Poles
Roma/Sinti (Gypsies)
Homosexuals
Handicapped
Jehovah's Witnesses

More details on these victims groups and others who were persecuted click here.

Want more information on Nazi ideology and the reason the Nazis determined these groups "enemies" and "undesirable" - click here.

YOU are invited...

Yom Hashoah
Holocaust Remembrance Day—Community Commemoration
Sunday, April 11, 2010
1:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Stroum Jewish Community Center,

3801 East Mercer Way, Mercer Island

From Generation to Generation

L'Dor V'Dor

1:00 - Moments of Reflection and Reading of the Names
Remember those who perished at the Holocaust Memorial.

1:30 - Kaddish
Event Emcee: Marcie Sillman, KUOW
Join us inside the SJCC to say Kaddish and listen to musical selections from Temple Beth Am’s choir.

2:00 - “How the past leads us forward”
A panel of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.

2:45 - “Voices of Hope”
An inspiring play focusing on the Holocaust by SJCC Center Stage, directed by Daniel Alpern.

Also available during the day:
Holocaust Center resources of interest to continuing generations.
Be a Part of the Butterfly Project! Make butterflies in memory of the children of the Holocaust. The butterflies will be sent to the Theresienstadt Museum in the Czech Republic.

Free and open to the public. NO RSVP required. Please call the Holocaust Center at 206-774-2201 or email info@wsherc.org for more information.

Holocaust Center offers programs in the Tri-Cities

On March 18 and 19 the Holocaust Center offered two programs in the Tri-Cities area.

"Stories from a Holocaust Survivor - Frieda S." and "Creating Change: Teaching about the Holocaust and Genocide."

Almost 300 individuals from the community came out on a Thursday evening to hear Frieda share her experiences.

The following day, 35 teachers from around the region attended the intensive all-day teacher seminar. Sessions included: an overview of the Holocaust, rescue and resistance, camps and ghettos, and a special presenation by Dr. John Roth "Situating the Holocaust in a Genocidal World."

The Holocaust Center sincerely thanks the Red Lion Hotel for their sponsorship. Thank you also to the Shemanksi Foundations, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, and the Claims Conference for generous funding to make these programs possible. And of course, a big thank you to Jennifer Gilliland and Kiona Benton-City High School for hosting these programs and presenters Brad Veile, Stephen Pagaard, and Dr. John Roth.

See more photos on our Facebook page!