The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust: The Activities of Vaad-Ha-Hatzala Rescue Committee, 1933-1945, Efraim Zuroff, Yeshiva University Press, 316 pages, $39.50
Rabbi Alan Lachtman began Shabbat services at Temple Beth David in Temple City on Dec. 8 by having the children\’s choir sing \”Light One Candle,\” a song by Peter, Paul and Mary. The song had symbolic meanings, both positive and destructive, for the congregation. Twenty years ago, on Dec. 6, 1980, the fifth day of Chanukah, two neo-Nazis broke into the synagogue, poured gasoline on the pulpit, and set the synagogue on fire. The sanctuary was gutted, the cabinet containing the Torah scrolls was singed and two Torah scrolls — one of which had been rescued from the Holocaust from a temple that had burned years ago — were damaged.
A shattered shop window with a yellow star, a mountain of shoes, an arch with the grim irony \”Arbeit Macht Frei\” inscribed upon it: These images alone can summon up the historic nightmare of the Nazi Holocaust.
During the darkest days of the Holocaust, 63 diplomats from 24 countries risked their careers, in some cases their lives, by issuing unauthorized visas and protective letters to save an estimated 200,000 Jews.The deeds of four of these brave envoys are honored in the documentary film \”Diplomats for the Damned,\” to air Sun., Nov. 26, on the History Channel.
A small but vocal group of demonstrators rallied outside Paramount Pictures in Hollywood last week, wielding signs and chanting slogans like \”Jodie Foster wants to glorify a Nazi\” and \”Stop Jodie\’s project now.\”
After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated five years ago this month, his wife Leah cast herself as the unforgiving scourge of the Israeli right, which she blamed for fostering the atmosphere in which a Jewish radical, Yigal Amir, pulled the trigger.
Mort Wolk hadn\’t slept a wink in two days. The invasion had been called off the day before due to bad weather, but Wolk had been on edge and too busy to rest. It was 4 a.m., and his plane was over Nazi-held Normandy. The only Jew and the only enlisted man on board, Wolk was part of Task Force A, a group of 40 paratroopers that had four hours to establish and secure a command post for the D-Day invasion.
The horrific racial persecution of the Holocaust is all too familiar to us. That dark period in history was marked by the brutal deaths of millions of innocent people and also involved the virtual enslavement of more than 10 million foreign laborers in Germany.
A prayer and study center honoring Jewish life has opened near the place that for more than half a century has been the paramount symbol of Jewish death.
All the time Deborah Oppenheimer was growing up, her grandparents remained silent, one-dimensional portraits in a silver frame in the living room. \”They were always there but never referred to,\” says Oppenheimer, who is in her 40\’s and the executive producer of \”Norm\” and \”The Drew Carey Show.\” \”I knew virtually nothing about them.\”
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