A ONCE-A-WEEK (or so) LIST OF WHAT I GIVE A DAMN ABOUT. WITH 10 = MOST IMPORTANT; AND 1 = NOT SO MUCH
A JEWS BLUES ON HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
The festival of Passover tells the story of freedom from slavery.
This year it reminds me of my story as it does every year.
There was short drive down an unpaved track to one side of the Victorian era Matlock mansion past an abandoned streetcar. The path led to an L-shaped string of about a dozen connected faded gray automobile garages. At the midpoint of the two lines of garages was a narrow almost hidden doorway. That doorway opened to a large storage room. At one end of the room a dirty broken window ran the length of the wall and looked out on a neighboring property.
It is out of this window that I alone as a three year old child sang Czech nursery rhymes to an unknown and foreign neighbor while my mother and father toiled as indentured slaves in Melbourne 1949.
In the shed there was no running water, no toilet, no interior walls and no heat. This is where I and my parents lived for the first four years of my life in Australia.
The songs kept me company and moderated my fear. Perhaps this was a three year olds blues.
This began my trajectory.
QQ. 1: MAHMUD AHMADINEJAB : THE “HOLOCAUST” IS A HOAX.
In Auschwitz my fathers first wife Greta died in more than a sad circumstance. A child that she knew had her number called for the gas chamber. Greta accompanied the child so that she would not have to die alone.
QQ. 2: IT IS SUGGESTED THAT COACHED “SURVIVORS” ARE NOT SPEAKING FROM THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE BUT FROM CAREFULLY PREPARED SCRIPTS
A young boy in Prague was suspected by the Gestapo for stealing food. The boy was an inmate of an orphanage where my father was supervisor. The Gestapo gave my father an ultimatum. Find out the identity of the boy and give him up to us or we will kill all eighty of you.
My father gave the boy up.
QQ. 3 DEGESCH HAS PROVIDED DETAILED INFORMATION WHICH SHOWS JUST HOW IMPOSSIBLE THE HOLOCAUST CYANIDE GASSING CLAIMS ARE.
My mother's work detail out of Auschwitz built a railway line. The contractor was a company called Krupp. Some of my mothers friends threw themselves onto the electrified fence rather that suffer the hunger and cold and torture. Today Krupp thrives. When the camp was abandoned by her keepers my mother was taken in by a woman who repeatedly assaulted her and imprisoned her.
This assault was by a local Czech, not a German, Gestapo or Nazi. The war was over.
QQ. 4 THOSE P U T O N T R I A L C O N F E S S E D T O A L L C R I M E S .
T H E P E O P L E O F C Z E C H O S L O V A K I A S I G N E D P E T I T I O N S A S K I N G F O R D E A T H F O R T H E A L L E G E D T R A I T O R S .
My fathers house in Prague where I was born was nationalized by the Communist government in 1949. The housekeeper was appointed manager and all property became property of the state. We became tenants. The manager was required to file regular reports on our activities and behavior to the party.
Soon after we left, all of my fathers peers who remained were hung for activities against the state.
QQ. 5 ELIE WIESEL, A BRAZEN LIAR AND BIGOT WHO HAS REPEATEDLY CALLED FOR IMPRISONMENT OF HOLOCAUST “DENIERS,” MANAGED NONETHELESS TO GET HIMSELF A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN 1986.
My grandfather Joseph had nine siblings. Irma and Ida found their way to California before the storm. The rest and most of the extended family died. In Terezin, my grandfather Joseph died in my fathers arms suffering Typhus. My mothers father died in her arms from starvation. My fathers brother, his wife and infant daughter were all gassed and then there were all the others.
QQ. 6 TO OUTSIDERS, IT WAS PRESENTED BY THE NAZIS AS A MODEL JEWISH SETTLEMENT, BUT IN REALITY IT WAS A CONCENTRATION CAMP 'WHERE OVER 33,000 INMATES DIED AS A RESULT OF HUNGER, SICKNESS, OR THE SADISTIC TREATMENT METED OUT BY THEIR CAPTORS'.THERESIENSTADT WAS ALSO USED AS A TRANSIT CAMP FOR EUROPEAN JEWS EN ROUTE TO AUSCHWITZ AND TREBLINKA.
When my mother was six years old, her mother Anna went to a spa in the Czech countryside. She caught cholera. The spa management hid her away and did not allow medical attention in fear that the situation would destroy their business. Anna died. My mother spent the next years in an orphanage until she was taken to Terezin and then Auschwitz.
QQ. 7 AT AUSCHWITZ II (BIRKENAU), THE SS STAFF INTRODUCED THE PRACTICE OF TATTOOING IN MARCH 1942 TO KEEP UP WITH THE IDENTIFICATION OF LARGE NUMBERS OF PRISONERS WHO ARRIVED, SICKENED, AND DIED QUICKLY.
For unknown reasons my mother was never tattooed in Auschwitz.
In Sydney in 1990 mother went into a tattoo parlor and paid to have her number inscribed on her arm. She was quite mad.
QQ. 8 SURVIVORS OF GENOCIDE ARE FOREVER TRANSFORMED. THEY SPEAK OF HAVING LIVED THREE LIVES: THEIR LIFE BEFORE THE GENOCIDE, THEIR LIFE DURING THE GENOCIDE, AND THEIR LIFE AFTER THE GENOCIDE.
In 2006 my mother wanted to claim the dignity of her own life and death decision.
She had debilitating emphysema and no quality of life. The system in Melbourne would not allow her this decision and her death was as tragic as her life.
QQ. 9 IN 1964, AFTER YEARS OF CLINICAL EXPERIENCE IN DIAGNOSING AND TREATING CONCENTRATION CAMP SURVIVORS, WILLIAM NIEDERLAND, A PSYCHIATRIST AND A REFUGEE FROM NAZI GERMANY, PUBLISHED A LANDMARK STUDY PROCLAIMING THE EXISTENCE OF A SURVIVOR SYNDROME.
My mother was a City Councilor a political activist and was decorated by Queen Elizabeth II with an MBE for her community work.
Irene only got as far as grade 8 in school before Terezin
QQ. 10 HOLOCAUST DENIAL IS THE ACT OF DENYING THE GENOCIDE OF JEWS DURING WORLD WAR II, USUALLY REFERRED TO AS THE HOLOCAUST.
These days the Holocaust is often depicted as old news and as a political tool used by Jews to manipulate situations for their political and economic agenda. There is a term "Shoa business" that is used to describe the many accounts, books, films and other vehicles that continue to flow as a result of this event.
I am not part of the Shoa business. But I do still sing the blues.
Etched on my Stone Tablet
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