Latest news with #Umlauf
Chicago Tribune
10-04-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Addy Umlauf goes from second base to outfield for state champ St. Charles North. What's next? ‘Can't lay back.'
Call him a visionary. He's no optometrist, but when it came time to assess the potential of Addy Umlauf, a newcomer as a junior to his varsity last season, St. Charles North coach Tom Poulin had 20/20 foresight. He also had a bit of a dilemma. Umlauf's best position was probably second base, but senior Maddie Hernandez already had that spot nailed down in the North Stars' lineup. 'She came in as one of our more talented players,' Poulin said of Umlauf. 'She's a good contact hitter. She gets on base. With Maddie at second, Addy was repping in the outfield. 'We needed her to get really focused and work to her potential. Throughout the season, she was in and out of the lineup, and she earned her opportunity to start in the tournament.' Umlauf nailed down left field and proceeded to author the fairytale ending her coach envisioned. St. Charles North edged Oswego 2-1 in a Class 4A state semifinal at Louisville Slugger in Peoria and then topped Marist 7-2 to take the title for the second time in three years. 'Addy was the player of the game in the state championship,' Poulin said of his difference-maker's two clutch hits. 'She drove in both go-ahead runs.' And she did it each time with two outs. The sixth batter in the North Stars' lineup, Umlauf's first-inning RBI single broke a 1-1 tie. In the sixth, her drive to the warning track in right-center went for an RBI triple, breaking a 2-2 tie and kick-starting the winning five-run surge. 'Before the tournament we told her, 'Your bat is gonna help us in the middle to bottom of the order,'' Poulin said. 'And sure enough, she came through big time.' Umlauf also had a bunt single in the team's winning, seventh-inning rally against Oswego. 'I know my main position is second base but we had Maddie,' said Umlauf, who plays travel with the Dennison Silver Hawks. 'I had to find my role and I had to be able to hit to get in the lineup. 'We have a lot of talent and usually do, and you can't lay back and do nothing. I struggled a little bit in the middle of the season, but this competition drives me to do better. If I didn't have to work as much as I did, I don't think I would have produced.' Umlauf, who has played softball since she was 8, played basketball through her first two years in high school before giving it up. 'I enjoy the fast pace, here and there, but it wasn't my fit,' Umlauf said of basketball. 'I think I like the thought that goes into softball more. It's more my fit.' Her mother, Liz, didn't play sports but her dad, Rob, played baseball, pitching for Indiana before introducing her to softball. 'He's definitely my biggest supporter and critic all in one,' Addy said. 'But they've both been there through and through.' She spoke Wednesday at the team's indoor practice on the 24th day of the season after a game with Bartlett was postponed. St. Charles North (1-0) gets a later start since Poulin doesn't schedule games during spring break. 'Three straight years we had every game postponed by weather,' he said. 'Now, we have an extended spring training and kids know when they come back from break, it's a six-days-a-week commitment to get 32 games in. The parents love it. The kids love it.' Umlauf, who committed in September to Taylor in Upland, Indiana, certainly does. 'I think it's a big part of why we do so well the back half of the season,' she said. 'We don't play in the bad weather as much. Coach Poulin is known for producing good teams. 'He knows how to get the best out of these girls.'
Axios
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Umlauf sculptures and paintings up for auction
Ten pieces by Charles Umlauf are up for auction next week. Why it matters: Umlauf taught at the University of Texas for nearly 40 years and created large-scale sculptures, often cast in bronze. Much of his work is housed in museums, public collections and at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in Austin. Driving the news: Austin Auction Gallery will feature Umlauf's work in its estate and special collections auction from March 24 to 27, along with hand-carved antiques from Italy and France, midcentury and modern furniture, and other fine art. Zoom in: Umlauf's bronze sculptures up for auction include " The Kiss," " Eve With Apple," " Embrace" and " Ballerina." Three paintings by the late artist are also available. Starting bids for the pieces range from $1,500 to $8,000. What they're saying: Chris Featherston, an auctioneer and owner at Austin Auction Gallery, tells Axios he has noticed a surge in interest for Texas modernist art as baby boomers downsize and sell their collections. The gallery has previously auctioned off Umlauf's work. In a January auction, his piece " Saint Michael and Lucifer" sold for $28,000, a record price for an Umlauf bronze at auction. "That gave us even more credibility with the market," Featherston says, adding that it caught the attention of Umlauf collectors. Between the lines: Most of the Umlauf art in the auction comes from the private collection of John and Rebecca Kirkland, who purchased the work directly from Umlauf. A portion of proceeds from the auction will go to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden. Yes, but: You don't have to spend thousands to see Umlauf's work in Austin.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Auschwitz survivor blasts Germany's Merz over far-right cooperation
German Holocaust survivor Eva Umlauf appealed in an open letter on Thursday to conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz not to align his centre-right CDU/CSU bloc with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to pass legislation. Merz, who is widely viewed as the frontrunner to replace current Chancellor Olaf Scholz after upcoming elections, broke taboos on Wednesday by relying on votes from the AfD to pass a motion calling for a crackdown on migration in the lower house of Germany's parliament. Another vote on a CDU-backed package of migration policies is expected in parliament on Friday. "Don't do it, Mr Merz," reads the letter from Umlauf, which was published by the Süddeutsche newspaper. She wrote that she hoped not to witness the rise of far-right parties in her lifetime - but there is now a shift to the right throughout Europe, and hatred and agitation are becoming acceptable again. "Hand on heart: it scares me to death," wrote the 82-year-old Umlauf. "We have all seen where this path can lead." Umlauf was taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp when she was just two years old and, in her own words, would have been murdered if her train had arrived just three days earlier. "Don't underestimate the right-wing extremists. Turn back on the path you took on Wednesday. Approach the other democratic parties, find compromises," she appealed to Merz. The vote on Wednesday broke taboos, "but on Friday, for the first time in post-war history, a law could be passed in the Bundestag together with right-wing extremists," warned Umlauf. What happens in the Bundestag this week will go down in the history books, wrote Umlauf, "because this is exactly how it starts, this is how we normalize the enemies of democracy."
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Auschwitz survivors and world leaders set to mark 80 years since Nazi death camp's liberation
OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — The Soviet Red Army troops that arrived here on Jan. 27, 1945, helped uncover one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by — and against — humankind. Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people. The horrors there defied comprehension. Eighty years later, some former prisoners will return here to mark the 80th anniversary of their deliverance — a date that is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the eyes of so many around the world, the survivors' very existence is a resounding act of defiance against the world-historic cruelty and vast injustice of Adolf Hitler's reign of terror. Their stories of survival are also implicit pleas to the world: Never forget humanity's capacity to commit unthinkable crimes. Hitler's regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, including roughly 1 million people at Auschwitz. The Nazis also persecuted other peoples, including Poles, the Romani, Soviet prisoners, gay men and mentally and physically disabled Nazis tried to hide evidence of the genocide they perpetrated, including by burning the remains of roughly 900,000 Auschwitz victims who were killed in the gas chambers. Eva Umlauf was only 2 when she and her mother were liberated from the camp — too young to remember the actual day. But the Holocaust is etched onto her skin — A-26,959 tattooed on her left forearm, marking her for life, along with some other Auschwitz survivors. 'You are just a number,' Umlauf, 82, a pediatrician from Munich, told NBC News, explaining how this number will forever make her feel. 'But this number is not only on the skin. This is deeper.' For Umlauf, who traveled for the ceremony along with her sister, son and one of her grandchildren, this was more than a personal journey of memory and reflection. It was a moral responsibility.'They have to know that it's true. You know, because it's so, so unbelievable, unbelievable that nobody can believe this,' she said. But even given what has been established about the Third Reich's crimes against humanity, some of the most vital information has still not been uncovered. Notably, the names of more than a million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis are still unknown, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial center. Alexander Avram leads a team at Yad Vashem that has amassed more than 2 million 'Pages of Testimony' and historical documents in an effort to verify more identities. The project is known as the Hall of Names. 'There are no cemeteries, there are no tombstones … for most of the Holocaust victims,' Avram told NBC News. 'Each additional name that we can recover is, for us, another victory against the Nazis, because the Nazis didn't [only] want to … exterminate the Jews physically. They wanted to obliterate even their memory.'Avram said researchers have started experimenting with artificial intelligence to scour testimonial documents in the hopes of finding names that might have been previously overlooked. But that technology is useless without firsthand accounts provided by the shrinking pool of survivors. The Claims Conference estimates that only around 1,000 survivors of Auschwitz are still alive. In that regard, Avram's team is 'in a rush against time,' he said. The anniversary comes at a troubling and unsettled time. Hamas' terror attack on Israel, Israel's ensuing war in Gaza and the proliferation of hate speech on social media have fueled a worldwide spike in antisemitism. In some countries, basic knowledge of the Holocaust is eroding. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization that helps Holocaust victims seek compensation, released an eight-country survey last week showing that 46% of adults ages 18-29 in France, for example, 'had not heard or weren't sure if they had heard of the Holocaust prior to taking the survey.' Nearly half of Americans surveyed were unable to name a single Nazi camp, according to the Claims Conference's findings, and more than a quarter (26%) of Americans ages 18-29 disagreed with the following statement: 'The Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been accurately and fairly described.' World leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plan to fly in for Monday's commemoration. Dignitaries, including King Charles III, will be in attendance, too. But none of them will be allowed near a microphone. The organizers of the event have banned speeches by political leaders. 'We really believe that this is the last milestone anniversary where we'll have a visible group of survivors who are still able to tell us their stories,' Paweł Sawicki, deputy spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said in an interview with NBC News at the camp Saturday.'The choice for this year's anniversary was very simple: We need to put them into the spotlight,' he added. In recent statements, Western heads of state have attempted to underscore the importance of preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah. 'I am against turning the page, saying that was long ago,' German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a gathering of the Jewish community in Frankfurt earlier this month. 'We keep alive the memory of the civilizational split of the Shoah committed by Germans, which we pass down to each generation in our country again and again.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, visited the grounds of Auschwitz on Jan. 17, describing the 'sheer horror' he felt there and vowing to fight the rising tide of antisemitism in his country. Roughly 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps are expected to attend Monday's commemoration. In recent days, hundreds of visitors from around the world have come to the former camp to pay their respects. Josh Sesar, a 52-year-old from Los Angeles who made his second trip to Auschwitz on Friday, said he believed it is vital to see the grounds firsthand. 'I think it is not taught enough in school in America, and if you watch the news in America now, you see the philosophies that people are following now and they are happy to pretend that this never happened,' Sesar said. 'It is scary, because there are not so many survivors left, and so when there [are] no survivors, people even more so try to discredit history,' he added. Aron Krell, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and ultimately liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, said it is incumbent on Jewish people, educators, historians and other advocates to keep the legacy of the Shoah a video interview last week, Krell described his liberation as his 'second birthday.' 'I saw the light again in front of me,' Krell said. 'My second birthday is more important, really, than the first. We always celebrate it: Aron Krell has two birthdays.' Jesse Kirsch reported from Oświęcim, Poland, and Daniel Arkin from New York. This article was originally published on
NBC News
27-01-2025
- General
- NBC News
Auschwitz survivors and world leaders set to mark 80 years since Nazi death camp's liberation
OŚWIĘCIM, Poland — The Soviet Red Army troops that arrived here on Jan. 27, 1945, helped uncover one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by — and against — humankind. Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the soldiers liberated roughly 7,000 prisoners who had been brutalized by a Nazi regime hell-bent on exterminating the Jewish people. The horrors there defied comprehension. Eighty years later, some former prisoners will return here to mark the 80th anniversary of their deliverance — a date that is known as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the eyes of so many around the world, the survivors' very existence is a resounding act of defiance against the world-historic cruelty and vast injustice of Adolf Hitler's reign of terror. Their stories of survival are also implicit pleas to the world: Never forget humanity's capacity to commit unthinkable crimes. Hitler's regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews during World War II, including roughly 1 million people at Auschwitz. The Nazis also persecuted other peoples, including Poles, the Romani, Soviet prisoners, gay men and mentally and physically disabled people. The Nazis tried to hide evidence of the genocide they perpetrated, including by burning the remains of roughly 900,000 Auschwitz victims who were killed in the gas chambers. Eva Umlauf was only 2 when she and her mother were liberated from the camp — too young to remember the actual day. But the Holocaust is etched onto her skin — A-26,959 tattooed on her left forearm, marking her for life, along with some other Auschwitz survivors. 'You are just a number,' Umlauf, 82, a pediatrician from Munich, told NBC News, explaining how this number will forever make her feel. 'But this number is not only on the skin. This is deeper.' For Umlauf, who traveled for the ceremony along with her sister, son and one of her grandchildren, this was more than a personal journey of memory and reflection. It was a moral responsibility. 'They have to know that it's true. You know, because it's so, so unbelievable, unbelievable that nobody can believe this,' she said. But even given what has been established about the Third Reich's crimes against humanity, some of the most vital information has still not been uncovered. Notably, the names of more than a million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis are still unknown, according to Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial center. Alexander Avram leads a team at Yad Vashem that has amassed more than 2 million ' Pages of Testimony' and historical documents in an effort to verify more identities. The project is known as the Hall of Names. 'There are no cemeteries, there are no tombstones … for most of the Holocaust victims,' Avram told NBC News. 'Each additional name that we can recover is, for us, another victory against the Nazis, because the Nazis didn't [only] want to … exterminate the Jews physically. They wanted to obliterate even their memory.' Avram said researchers have started experimenting with artificial intelligence to scour testimonial documents in the hopes of finding names that might have been previously overlooked. But that technology is useless without firsthand accounts provided by the shrinking pool of survivors. The Claims Conference estimates that only around 1,000 survivors of Auschwitz are still alive. In that regard, Avram's team is 'in a rush against time,' he said. The anniversary comes at a troubling and unsettled time. Hamas' terror attack on Israel, Israel's ensuing war in Gaza and the proliferation of hate speech on social media have fueled a worldwide spike in antisemitism. In some countries, basic knowledge of the Holocaust is eroding. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization that helps Holocaust victims seek compensation, released an eight-country survey last week showing that 46% of adults ages 18-29 in France, for example, 'had not heard or weren't sure if they had heard of the Holocaust prior to taking the survey.' Nearly half of Americans surveyed were unable to name a single Nazi camp, according to the Claims Conference's findings, and more than a quarter (26%) of Americans ages 18-29 disagreed with the following statement: 'The Holocaust happened, and the number of Jews who were killed during the Holocaust has been accurately and fairly described.' World leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, plan to fly in for Monday's commemoration. Dignitaries, including King Charles III, will be in attendance, too. But none of them will be allowed near a microphone. The organizers of the event have banned speeches by political leaders. 'We really believe that this is the last milestone anniversary where we'll have a visible group of survivors who are still able to tell us their stories,' Paweł Sawicki, deputy spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said in an interview with NBC News at the camp Saturday. 'The choice for this year's anniversary was very simple: We need to put them into the spotlight,' he added. In recent statements, Western heads of state have attempted to underscore the importance of preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah. 'I am against turning the page, saying that was long ago,' German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a gathering of the Jewish community in Frankfurt earlier this month. 'We keep alive the memory of the civilizational split of the Shoah committed by Germans, which we pass down to each generation in our country again and again.' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for his part, visited the grounds of Auschwitz on Jan. 17, describing the 'sheer horror' he felt there and vowing to fight the rising tide of antisemitism in his country. Roughly 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps are expected to attend Monday's commemoration. In recent days, hundreds of visitors from around the world have come to the former camp to pay their respects. Josh Sesar, a 52-year-old from Los Angeles who made his second trip to Auschwitz on Friday, said he believed it is vital to see the grounds firsthand. 'I think it is not taught enough in school in America, and if you watch the news in America now, you see the philosophies that people are following now and they are happy to pretend that this never happened,' Sesar said. 'It is scary, because there are not so many survivors left, and so when there [are] no survivors, people even more so try to discredit history,' he added. Aron Krell, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at Auschwitz and ultimately liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, said it is incumbent on Jewish people, educators, historians and other advocates to keep the legacy of the Shoah intact. In a video interview last week, Krell described his liberation as his 'second birthday.' 'I saw the light again in front of me,' Krell said. 'My second birthday is more important, really, than the first. We always celebrate it: Aron Krell has two birthdays.'
