Holocaust items put on display for remembrance day
JERUSALEM (AP) - When Stella Knobel's family fled World War II Poland in 1939, the only thing the 7-year-old girl could take with her was her teddy bear. For the next six years, the stuffed animal never left her side as the family wandered through the Soviet Union, to Iran and finally the Holy Land.
"He was like family. He was all I had. He knew all my secrets," the 80-year-old said with a smile. "I saved him all these years. But I worried what would happen to him when I died."
So when she heard about a project launched by Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial and museum, to collect artifacts from aging survivors, she reluctantly handed over her beloved bear Misiu, Polish for "teddy bear," so the memories of the era could be preserved.
"We've been through a lot together, so it was hard to let him go," said Knobel, who was widowed 12 years ago and has no children. "But here he has found a haven."
The German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews during World War II. In addition to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis also confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little behind. Those who survived often had just a small item or two they managed to keep. Many have clung to the sentimental objects ever since.
On Sunday, Knobel's tattered teddy bear was on display at Yad Vashem, one of more than 71,000 items collected nationwide over the past two years. With a missing eye, his stuffing bursting out and a red ribbon around his neck, Misiu was seated behind a glass window as part of the memorial's "Gathering the Fragments" exhibit.
The opening came as other Holocaust-related events took place around the world.
In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 60 years to the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
Israel's main Holocaust memorial day is in the spring, marking the anniversary of the uprising of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, against the Nazis.
To coincide with the international commemorations, Israel released its annual anti-Semitism report, noting that the past year experienced an increase in the number of attacks against Jewish targets worldwide, mainly by elements identified with Islamic extremists.
At Sunday's weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the lessons of the Holocaust have yet to be learned. He accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons with the goal of destroying Israel.
"What has not changed is the desire to annihilate the Jews. What has changed is the ability of the Jews to defend themselves," he said.
Yad Vashem showcased dozens of items, each representing tales of perseverance and survival. They included sweaters, paintings, diaries, letters, dolls, cameras and religious artifacts that were stashed away for decades or discarded before they were collected and restored.
Yad Vashem researchers have been interviewing survivors, logging their stories, tagging materials and scanning documents into the museum's digitized archive.
Aside from their value as exhibits in the museum, Yad Vashem says the items are also proving helpful for research, filling in holes in history and contributing to the museum's huge database of names.
"Thousands of Israelis have decided to part from personal items close to their hearts, and through them share the memory of their dear ones who were murdered in the Holocaust," said Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. "Through these examples, we have tried to bring to light items whose stories both explain the individual story and provide testimony to join the array of personal accounts that make up the narrative of the Holocaust."
For 83-year-old Shlomo Resnik, one such item was the steel bowl he and his father used for food at the Dachau concentration camp. His father Meir's name and number are engraved on the bowl, a reminder of how hard they had to scrap for food. "We fought to stay alive," he said.
Approaching the glass-encased display, Tsilla Shlubsky began tearing. Below she could see the handwritten diary her father kept while the family took shelter with two dozen others in a small attic in the Polish countryside. With a pencil, Jakov Glazmann meticulously recorded the family's ordeal in tiny Yiddish letters. His daughter doesn't know exactly what is written and she doesn't care to find out.
"I remember him writing. I lived through it," said Shlubsky, 74. "Abba (Dad) wasn't a writer, but with his heart's blood he wrote a diary to record the events to leave something behind so that what had taken place would be known."
She said it pained her to part with the family treasure.
"I know this is the right place for it and it will be protected forever," she said. "Now is the time and this is the place."
"He was like family. He was all I had. He knew all my secrets," the 80-year-old said with a smile. "I saved him all these years. But I worried what would happen to him when I died."
So when she heard about a project launched by Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial and museum, to collect artifacts from aging survivors, she reluctantly handed over her beloved bear Misiu, Polish for "teddy bear," so the memories of the era could be preserved.
"We've been through a lot together, so it was hard to let him go," said Knobel, who was widowed 12 years ago and has no children. "But here he has found a haven."
The German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 6 million Jews during World War II. In addition to rounding up Jews and shipping them to death camps, the Nazis also confiscated their possessions and stole their valuables, leaving little behind. Those who survived often had just a small item or two they managed to keep. Many have clung to the sentimental objects ever since.
On Sunday, Knobel's tattered teddy bear was on display at Yad Vashem, one of more than 71,000 items collected nationwide over the past two years. With a missing eye, his stuffing bursting out and a red ribbon around his neck, Misiu was seated behind a glass window as part of the memorial's "Gathering the Fragments" exhibit.
The opening came as other Holocaust-related events took place around the world.
In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 60 years to the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
Israel's main Holocaust memorial day is in the spring, marking the anniversary of the uprising of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, against the Nazis.
To coincide with the international commemorations, Israel released its annual anti-Semitism report, noting that the past year experienced an increase in the number of attacks against Jewish targets worldwide, mainly by elements identified with Islamic extremists.
At Sunday's weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the lessons of the Holocaust have yet to be learned. He accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons with the goal of destroying Israel.
"What has not changed is the desire to annihilate the Jews. What has changed is the ability of the Jews to defend themselves," he said.
Yad Vashem showcased dozens of items, each representing tales of perseverance and survival. They included sweaters, paintings, diaries, letters, dolls, cameras and religious artifacts that were stashed away for decades or discarded before they were collected and restored.
Yad Vashem researchers have been interviewing survivors, logging their stories, tagging materials and scanning documents into the museum's digitized archive.
Aside from their value as exhibits in the museum, Yad Vashem says the items are also proving helpful for research, filling in holes in history and contributing to the museum's huge database of names.
"Thousands of Israelis have decided to part from personal items close to their hearts, and through them share the memory of their dear ones who were murdered in the Holocaust," said Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. "Through these examples, we have tried to bring to light items whose stories both explain the individual story and provide testimony to join the array of personal accounts that make up the narrative of the Holocaust."
For 83-year-old Shlomo Resnik, one such item was the steel bowl he and his father used for food at the Dachau concentration camp. His father Meir's name and number are engraved on the bowl, a reminder of how hard they had to scrap for food. "We fought to stay alive," he said.
Approaching the glass-encased display, Tsilla Shlubsky began tearing. Below she could see the handwritten diary her father kept while the family took shelter with two dozen others in a small attic in the Polish countryside. With a pencil, Jakov Glazmann meticulously recorded the family's ordeal in tiny Yiddish letters. His daughter doesn't know exactly what is written and she doesn't care to find out.
"I remember him writing. I lived through it," said Shlubsky, 74. "Abba (Dad) wasn't a writer, but with his heart's blood he wrote a diary to record the events to leave something behind so that what had taken place would be known."
She said it pained her to part with the family treasure.
"I know this is the right place for it and it will be protected forever," she said. "Now is the time and this is the place."
My father was in Patton's III Army and was among the first US troops into Buchenwald. He was part of elements of the U.S. 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, in the 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized as a private. He enlisted in 1944, deployed in August of 1994 and arrived in France in September. During their first combat engagement supplies were very short and they only had two rounds of ammunition each. During the Battle of the Bulge he told me it was the coldest he had ever been, his unit engaged in six days of basically non-stop combat.
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During World War II they used a roll of 35MM movie film for exposure, and would hand pack the film in the dark, cutting off a section at night and rolling it into a camera (no Walgreen's in World War II Germany).
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The family lore is that he came back with 19 pictures taken from the camp in Buchenwald. They were said to be worse than anything from any book, any movie, any documentary that had been seen. One night, when I was 13, my father got drunk (he put the fun in dysFUNctional) and told me all his World War II stories. I wish I had taped it - he had never before, or after talked about his war experiences. Most of that generation didn't it. He told me that the prisoners had heard that the Americans were coming and staged a revolt against the guards, as the Nazi's were preparing to close the camp and move the prisoners to a different location to continue extermination.
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The Soviet prisoners in the camp led the attack, with others ripping the remaining guards to pieces with their bare hands. The American soldiers that liberated the camp were so outraged with what they saw, a pile of bodies my father estimated to be 5,000 people, that they made the surviving German guards stand on top of it, and told them they would be shot if they came down. The jubilant prisoners were tossing some of their liberators into the air, despite their conditions.
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Later in the day he said "some general," showed up, thanked the troops and told they not to say a word about what they had seen that day.
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History now shows that the prisoners had gotten a hold of shortwave radio in 1941, and had stored in a hidden underground bunker, along with a small cache of weapons they built up through 1945 (think Hogan Heroes without the comedy). On April 8, 1945, desperate, because they knew from chatter the American army was close, the prisoners took a major chance, sending a Morse code message via shortware, begging for help. They sent each request twice, in six different language. An eternity for those not in the know to be exposed to signal detection and location equipment. What shock them more was they got a reply from US Army Third Headquarters that same day asking them to hold out.
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Turns out my father's story, the units involved, and his background all line up.
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What about the pictures?
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World War II is said to have changed my father, who of course I didn't know at the time (wasn't even a glint in his eye), so I have to go by family lore. Today they call it PTSD. You get therapy, counseling, medication, hospitalization and your encourage to talk out your experiences.
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In World War II it was called being shell shocked, and Patton was known to have slapped two different shell shocked soldiers for cowardice, including pulling his revolver on one (the movie version of Patton does not very accurately portray the second incident). They told you to smoke (it was good for you), and to drink up, and not talk about it. My grand parents took the pictures, and the story was they were put in a safe deposit box.
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My grandfather passed first, dying at 92. My grandmother second, dying at 90. There was nothing in the safe deposit box so now we believe they were thrown out or burned.
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My father? I don't think he ever really left France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany or Austria. He fought a war against himself for the rest of his life, medicating with scotch and cigarettes. He found a sympathetic employer and a kindred spirit in its owner. Bob LaPrade was a tail gunner on a B-29 and for whatever reason put up with my father's behavior. It helped that he was an extremely gifted engineer. By the time he was approaching retirement age the ravages of scotch and nicotine had taken a massive toll. His body was far too young to look like his. Just a few months after turning 72 his war finally ended, and only 10 days prior he has become reunited with his best friend from World War II, a battle buddy named Fritz, who took the last living picture of my father, that I still have. He looks so happy in it.
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And me? Well being Russian, Hungarian, and Italian by blood, with practicing Jewish family in my lineage I feel obligated to never forget. Not just in the sense that as we in society should never forget (and yet genocide goes on to this day), or to carry the memory of my father. My lineage was decimated by World War II, the village my grandfather grew up in shattered by the Nazi's and then eliminated by the Soviets.
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We can't forget. No one should ever forget. Or we will be doomed to repeat it again.
 @Howard Beale As a young girl, about 10 or 11, I had some friends whose father or grandfather was in the war in Germany. They had gotten into his closet and found pictures of the horrors of the war. I will NEVER forget the images. My own father was a Marine in the war and I never remember him ever talking about it. Either drunk or sober. Yes we must never forget.
@Howard Beale Howard, I'm also a combat veteran, although not to the same scale as your grandfather or the kids coming home nowadays. My experiences were in Honduras and points South in the bad ol' days of the 80's.
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Your grandfather was right. You leave a piece of yourself 'over there', a piece of your humanity. It's very difficult to bring that back and it takes years. Most never do. It's taken me nearly 30 years to get to the point where I actually care how other people feel, to be able to empathize again and it sounds like that was the struggle of several of your menfolk.
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If it means anything to you at all, here is a tip of a fellow cavalryman's Stetson to the Beale men. My respects and regards to you and yours, sir.
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I would also like to refer you to LocalLady's post above. Their stories should be told and their artifacts preserved in some format.
@Howard Beale:Â
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The Library of Congress has an on-going "Living History Project", in which those serving in the military in ANY conflict are able to tell their stories & have them included in the LoC for the future. I would encourage you to contact them, see if they would accept your "second-hand" story of your father, and if so put down as many details as you & your family can remember then submit it.
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My son, when he wsa younger, was in the Young Marines - that is how I first heard about the Living History Project. He interviewed both his Grandfather (my Dad, a Korean War vet) and my brother (USMC 1975-2005).  My son also wanted to interview his other Grandfather (USMC), but by then he was simply too ill - he passed away shortly after my son joined YM.
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WE are history - each and every one of us. And if we let the stories die, if we let them go unrepeated to future generations, then those future generations will not have learned a thing from our sacrifices.
Let us remember the passing of Cardinal Józef Glemp. Â
Some of you will feel akin to my feelings when looking at that poor old teddy bear. Suddenly the very air around me gets full of dust and the keyboard is blurry. I can only imagine how hard it was for her to part with it. Ms Knobel, I think you did the right thing. Your bear will outlive you, keeping the memory alive for more generations. God bless you. Â
When I was in the Army back in the 80's, my regimental commander required that all troops under his command tour Dachau. It was, and remains, a very sobering experience for me. Death hovers very close at a place like that and anyone who can tour a KZ [German: konzentrationslager] without feeling something is likely an undiagnosed psychopath.
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A lot of US citizens chide Israel for being quite independant in pursuing it's national goals without thought to the interests or desires of America, it's staunchest ally. For myself, I fully support Israel in it's desire to never be dependant on another government to protect them again. Make no mistake, were there not an IDF, the pogroms would be continuing to this day.
"What has not changed is the desire to annihilate the Jews. What has changed is the ability of the Jews to defend themselves,"Â
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No, what has not changed is the Islamic extremists' desire to annihilate all of those who do not worship Allah. Â It is Israel that is targeted and that is because of Palestine. Â Make no mistake, though...they hate all of us. Â You can't fix crazy.
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Regardless, it would be pretty cool if they loan these items to museums around the world like they did with King Tut's artifacts. Â It would be a very good learning experience for all.