Kamiak High School

Following their unit on the Holocaust, the Human Rights Club at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, WA planned a "teach-in" on partisans during the Holocaust. Not only did they want to build on their own knowledge, they generously organized the event to support the work of the Holocaust Center. The Human Rights Club arranged a showing of the film "Defiance" and moderated a discussion afterward.

Thank you to teacher and Human Rights Club director Shan Oglesby for sharing these photos and for her great work.

Transcription of Nuremberg Medical Trial - Artifact

The Holocaust Center recently acquired an 81-page transcription of the prosecution’s opening statement in the infamous Nuremberg medical case—U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.

The artifact was donated by Elsie Miller, the niece of Eleanor Still, who worked as a stenographer and legal assistant in the Nuremberg Trial. She told her niece that she had taken these legal documents, in order to prove that she was there, that she had heard the atrocities from the men themselves.

U.S.A. v. Karl Brand et al., also known as the "Doctors’ Trial," led to the U.S.-led indictment of 23 doctors and health administrators on four counts:
1. conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,
2. war crimes,
3. crimes against humanity, and
4. membership in a criminal organization (the SS).

The 22 convictions in this case and the particular charges raised had never before been seen. This case set a precedent for modern day bioethics and medical accountability.

The title page of the document is dated December 9, 1946. The content of the 81 pages range from the professional activities of each defendant to the detailed horrors of Nazi experimentation on thousands of Jews, Gypsies, tubercular Poles, and Russian prisoners of war. Considering its age, the documents are in good condition; the pages are yellowing but there is minimal wear.

We gratefully accept artifacts to our growing collection. We especially value and record the stories told to us by the donors. Please contact Dee Simon, the Holocaust Center's Co-Executive Director at delilas@wsherc.org if you have any items that you think would be a good addition to our collection. On view to visitors and used by the Speakers Bureau, these items are used in educational presentations.

Special thanks to Kelly Miller for researching this artifact and writing up this article.

New resources available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's library! For more information, or to borrow books, please email Janna at admin@wsherc.org.

Would you like to help the Holocaust Center AND purchase a riveting read? If so, please first go to http://www.wsherc.org/ and enter the title or key word into the Amazon search box on the homepage. Amazon will donate a percentage of your purchase to the Holocaust Center.

Be sure to check out some of our new and recommended books for the lazy days of summer!

From Paris to Bergen-Belsen, 1944-1945: Memories of a Deported Child
By Jacques Saurel

The Memoirs of Jacques Saurel, a young boy during the Holocaust, follow his involuntary journey from Paris, to Bergen-Belsen, to the infamous “Ghost Train”, on which half of the 2,000 Jews evacuated from Bergen-Belsen died. From this confrontation with horror at such a young age, Jacques conceived one great passion: life itself.

The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt
By Hannelore Brenner

Brenner, a Berlin-based journalist, focuses on 10 former child survivors, women in their late 70s, who went through the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. The insights of the survivors and stories of the camp's victims are unforgettable and full of poignant humanity, conveyed through letters, photos, diaries and remembrances.

Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany
By Peter Wyden

What happened in Nazi Germany to turn a fondly remembered childhood Jewish classmate into a serial murderess and tool of the Gestapo? Seeking answers, Peter Wyden traveled back into his own past. Wyden tells the story of Stella Goldschlag, whom he knew as a child, and her journey to noteriety as a "catcher" in wartime Berlin who hunted down hundreds of hidden Jews for the Nazis. The result is this deeply personal work, a true-life Sophie's Choice, unique in Holocaust literature.

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk
By Sid Fleischman

Motivated to create a personal remembrance of the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, Fleischman pairs Freddie, a struggling, ex-GI ventriloquist, with Avron, the ghost of one such victim, in a short, provocative tale that leavens the tears with laughter. Avron's wisecracking will counterbalance matter-of-fact accounts of Nazi cruelty for young readers, but it's likely to be older ones who will best appreciate the novel's eloquent "inner voice" of conscience, which takes on a definite symbolic cast and the way in which Freddie's public and private identities shift as the story progresses.

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
Edited By Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel

These essays, describing experiences of forced sex, "sex for survival," prostitution, sterilization, abortion, and general sexual humiliation, add greatly to what is known about the lives of Jewish women during WWII. Much of the content here is a philosophical extension of first-person accounts of sexual torture. The fact that this exhaustive volume represents the first set of essays on the subject written in English underpins a fundamental truth held by the editors: while English-speaking countries are comfortable discussing these horrors, the fates specific to the murdered women and survivors of sexual assault are considered by many to be too shameful for discourse.

A Partisan's Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust
By Faye Schulman

Faye Schulman was a happy teenager learning to become a photgrapher when the Nazis invaded her small town on the Russian-Polish border. She had a loving family, good friends and neighbours, most of whom where soon lost in the horrors of the Holocaust. But Faye survived, and the photographs she took testify to her experiences and teh persecution she witnessed. Decorated for heroism by several governments, Schulman, now in her eighties, tells an extraordinary story not just of survival but of struggle and resistance against oppression.

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp
By Christopher R. Browning

Employing the rich testimony of almost three hundred survivors of the slave-labor camps of Starachowice, Poland, Christopher R. Browning draws the experience of the Jewish Prisoners, the Nazi authorities, and the neighboring Poles together into a chilling history of a little-known dimension of the Holocaust. Combining harrowing detail and insightful analysis on the Starachowice camps and their role in the Holocaust, Browning’s History is indispensable scholarship and an unforgettable story of survival.

Against Forgetting - Concert by Choral Arts

Against Forgetting: A Concert of Remembrance for Victims of the Holocaust

Do not miss this moving concert of remembrance, featuring works by Gyorgy Sviridov, Herbert Howells and Leonard Bernstein. The program will also include premieres of commissioned works by Giselle Wyers and Eric Barnum and a performance of John Muehleisen's moving "When All is Done" for chorus and trumpet. Composers will be present for these performances.

Friday, May 20 at 7:00pm
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle

Saturday, May 21 at 7:00pm
Bastyr Chapel at Bastyr University, Kenmore

www.choral-arts.org for tickets and more information