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Yahoo
15-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘In an age of Holocaust denial, this is extraordinary proof': The one-woman archive of Belsen's atrocities
If there is anyone who seeks to deny the enormity or depths of depravity of the Holocaust, they should perhaps pay a visit to the north London home of Hephzibah Rudofsky. There they will find a one-of-a-kind, one-woman archive of the realities of the Nazis' attempts to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. Among the more than 100 artefacts, photographs, papers and postcards are items carefully gathered from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany – which was liberated by British troops 80 years ago today, April 15. Several feature in Traces of Belsen, a new exhibition at London's Wiener Holocaust Library. Hephzibah's mother, Zahava, and grandmother, Rosy Kanarek, both survived what the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, the first reporter inside the camp's gates, described as 'the world of a nightmare'. About 70,000 people, mostly Jews, did not – their naked and emaciated bodies were piled around the camp. Zahava only discovered the trove of priceless possessions upon the death of Rosy in 2001, coming across a small suitcase at the back of a cupboard while clearing out her mother's room in a home for the elderly in Israel. Despite suffering extreme starvation and squalor in the camp, Rosy had evidently been determined to scrupulously collect and conserve every object she could. These included three tin bowls from which the family ate their daily meal. For Hephzibah, they represent not nourishment but aching hunger. 'The tinniness, the emptiness, the hollowness really affects me every time I see those bowls,' she says on a video call from a Passover holiday in Israel. 'It's chilling, in a sense, because there was so little food in them – they had scraps of turnips and water. The majority of people died of disease and starvation at Bergen-Belsen.' There were also postcards they exchanged with family in Switzerland, discussing food parcels that would never be given to them – all part of the Nazis' propaganda efforts to dupe the outside world as to what was happening to the prisoners behind the barbed wire. 'We are healthy,' Rosy even writes in one in 1944. After the war, meticulous as ever, she reclaimed the notes she had sent to her parents, making sure to have both sides of the correspondence in her hoard. We do not know why she amassed the collection, or how she was able to keep it in such pristine condition – she died before anybody could ask. But her granddaughter Hephzibah, now 61, has not stopped thinking about it. 'You couldn't write anything down, you couldn't keep notes of anything,' she says. 'And I wonder if my grandmother was keeping a diary in a sense. I always wonder if she felt, if she ever got out of there, this is to prove to herself what actually happened.' After discovery of the cache, when Hephzibah was in her late 30s, 'a tap was opened'. Finally, Zahava – just eight when she was transported to the camp – felt able to start speaking about the family's ordeal. One of the most precious items relates to Zahava's brother, Jehudi. Their mother had given him up to be hidden by a Protestant family in Holland. In the Westerbork transit camp 100 miles away, Rosy was puzzled to be passed a bag of dried beans, smuggled in by the Resistance. With nothing to cook with, what on earth was she supposed to do with them? At the bottom of the bag, however, she discovered a tiny photo of her son – alive and well. Indeed, he still is, aged 83, in Jerusalem, having been reunited with his family after the war. Among the torn fragments of documents in the collection is a sick note from Belsen late in 1944. It records that Rosy had been given time off work as the cleaner for the camp commandant. 'Why would anyone keep all those scraps of paper?' Hephzibah asks herself in amazement. Then there is the Honduran passport Rosy had bought in the hope the citizenship would give the family a way out of the Netherlands. In the end, it was useless. Rather, it was Zahava's papers that proved vital. Her birth in British Mandate Palestine gave her value in a potential prisoner swap and placed the family in the 'star camp' part of Belsen, where prisoners wore the Star of David sewn on to their clothing instead of uniforms. It was this British status that saved the family from being shoved into a cattle car to almost certain death at Auschwitz. 'They were literally about to board, and someone came up and said, 'You've been taken off this transport.' My mother often said that had he come 60 seconds later, the doors would have been shut,' says Hephzibah. 'Nobody would have found them and I wouldn't be here today.' Zahava's birthplace ultimately saw the family released from Belsen in an exchange in January 1945 before being sent to two further camps. As Jewish communities around the world celebrate Passover this week, one of the items Hephzibah finds most moving is a letter sent from the Biberach internment camp in Germany in March 1945. Rosy was begging her parents to send the unleavened 'bread of affliction' Jews eat to mark their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus. 'After everything they'd been through, they write to my mother's grandparents, in Zurich, and they're saying, 'We're desperate to have matzah.' I find it extraordinary that in spite of everything, they still believed in practising their religion. And Passover symbolises the freedom of the Jewish people.' In 2009, Hephzibah and her mother began taking their story to schools across the UK. The presentation has been delivered to tens of thousands of children who, Hephzibah says, 'are absolutely mesmerised by this archive'. One listener recently suggested she emphasises that the documents she shows the pupils are the originals. 'Because in this day of artificial intelligence and misinformation, they might think it's computer-generated. So I actually reinforce that these days.' The trauma would linger for decades. Zahava would have enduring health problems and a lifelong aversion to dogs (whose barking took her back to Belsen) and fireworks (which reminded her of gunshots). Meanwhile, Jehudi did not recognise his family, calling Rosy his 'mummy from Switzerland'. But Hephzibah carries with her Zahava's relentlessly forward-looking disposition. 'My mother made the best of everything. She never was angry. It was never 'poor me'. She literally cherished everything she had. In spite of everything she'd been through, she really felt blessed.' Zahava made it to London in 1958, where she married pharmacologist Dr Ralph Kohn (his knighthood in 2010 would make her Lady Kohn). They had three daughters and five grandchildren. Upon her mother's death, aged 86, in 2022, Hephzibah was still discovering objects squirrelled away. She had never before seen a set of ladles, for example, which her grandmother had taken among her belongings to Belsen. The burden of history – and the collection – has now fallen on Hephzibah's shoulders. 'I treat it really with the most love I've got for any possessions,' she says. 'It's a huge weight of responsibility as we see rising Holocaust denial. Well, you have such proof here, such extraordinary proof. And I feel I need to impart this to the next generation – because I don't want it to become one of those things that just goes into history books.' Traces of Belsen runs at the Wiener Holocaust Library until July 10; Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
15-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
‘In an age of Holocaust denial, this is extraordinary proof': The one-woman archive of Belsen's atrocities
If there is anyone who seeks to deny the enormity or depths of depravity of the Holocaust, they should perhaps pay a visit to the north London home of Hephzibah Rudofsky. There they will find a one-of-a-kind, one-woman archive of the realities of the Nazis' attempts to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe. Among the more than 100 artefacts, photographs, papers and postcards are items carefully gathered from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany – which was liberated by British troops 80 years ago today, April 15. Several feature in Traces of Belsen, a new exhibition at London's Wiener Holocaust Library. Hephzibah's mother, Zahava, and grandmother, Rosy Kanarek, both survived what the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, the first reporter inside the camp's gates, described as 'the world of a nightmare'. About 70,000 people, mostly Jews, did not – their naked and emaciated bodies were piled around the camp. Zahava only discovered the trove of priceless possessions upon the death of Rosy in 2001, coming across a small suitcase at the back of a cupboard while clearing out her mother's room in a home for the elderly in Israel. Despite suffering extreme starvation and squalor in the camp, Rosy had evidently been determined to scrupulously collect and conserve every object she could. These included three tin bowls from which the family ate their daily meal. For Hephzibah, they represent not nourishment but aching hunger. 'The tinniness, the emptiness, the hollowness really affects me every time I see those bowls,' she says on a video call from a Passover holiday in Israel. 'It's chilling, in a sense, because there was so little food in them – they had scraps of turnips and water. The majority of people died of disease and starvation at Bergen-Belsen.' There were also postcards they exchanged with family in Switzerland, discussing food parcels that would never be given to them – all part of the Nazis' propaganda efforts to dupe the outside world as to what was happening to the prisoners behind the barbed wire. 'We are healthy,' Rosy even writes in one in 1944. After the war, meticulous as ever, she reclaimed the notes she had sent to her parents, making sure to have both sides of the correspondence in her hoard. We do not know why she amassed the collection, or how she was able to keep it in such pristine condition – she died before anybody could ask. But her granddaughter Hephzibah, now 61, has not stopped thinking about it. 'You couldn't write anything down, you couldn't keep notes of anything,' she says. 'And I wonder if my grandmother was keeping a diary in a sense. I always wonder if she felt, if she ever got out of there, this is to prove to herself what actually happened.' After discovery of the cache, when Hephzibah was in her late 30s, 'a tap was opened'. Finally, Zahava – just eight when she was transported to the camp – felt able to start speaking about the family's ordeal. One of the most precious items relates to Zahava's brother, Jehudi. Their mother had given him up to be hidden by a Protestant family in Holland. In the Westerbork transit camp 100 miles away, Rosy was puzzled to be passed a bag of dried beans, smuggled in by the Resistance. With nothing to cook with, what on earth was she supposed to do with them? At the bottom of the bag, however, she discovered a tiny photo of her son – alive and well. Indeed, he still is, aged 83, in Jerusalem, having been reunited with his family after the war. Among the torn fragments of documents in the collection is a sick note from Belsen late in 1944. It records that Rosy had been given time off work as the cleaner for the camp commandant. 'Why would anyone keep all those scraps of paper?' Hephzibah asks herself in amazement. Then there is the Honduran passport Rosy had bought in the hope the citizenship would give the family a way out of the Netherlands. In the end, it was useless. Rather, it was Zahava's papers that proved vital. Her birth in British Mandate Palestine gave her value in a potential prisoner swap and placed the family in the 'star camp' part of Belsen, where prisoners wore the Star of David sewn on to their clothing instead of uniforms. It was this British status that saved the family from being shoved into a cattle car to almost certain death at Auschwitz. 'They were literally about to board, and someone came up and said, 'You've been taken off this transport.' My mother often said that had he come 60 seconds later, the doors would have been shut,' says Hephzibah. 'Nobody would have found them and I wouldn't be here today.' Zahava's birthplace ultimately saw the family released from Belsen in an exchange in January 1945 before being sent to two further camps. As Jewish communities around the world celebrate Passover this week, one of the items Hephzibah finds most moving is a letter sent from the Biberach internment camp in Germany in March 1945. Rosy was begging her parents to send the unleavened 'bread of affliction' Jews eat to mark their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, as told in the Book of Exodus. 'After everything they'd been through, they write to my mother's grandparents, in Zurich, and they're saying, 'We're desperate to have matzah.' I find it extraordinary that in spite of everything, they still believed in practising their religion. And Passover symbolises the freedom of the Jewish people.' In 2009, Hephzibah and her mother began taking their story to schools across the UK. The presentation has been delivered to tens of thousands of children who, Hephzibah says, 'are absolutely mesmerised by this archive'. One listener recently suggested she emphasises that the documents she shows the pupils are the originals. 'Because in this day of artificial intelligence and misinformation, they might think it's computer-generated. So I actually reinforce that these days.' The trauma would linger for decades. Zahava would have enduring health problems and a lifelong aversion to dogs (whose barking took her back to Belsen) and fireworks (which reminded her of gunshots). Meanwhile, Jehudi did not recognise his family, calling Rosy his 'mummy from Switzerland'. But Hephzibah carries with her Zahava's relentlessly forward-looking disposition. 'My mother made the best of everything. She never was angry. It was never 'poor me'. She literally cherished everything she had. In spite of everything she'd been through, she really felt blessed.' Zahava made it to London in 1958, where she married pharmacologist Dr Ralph Kohn (his knighthood in 2010 would make her Lady Kohn). They had three daughters and five grandchildren. Upon her mother's death, aged 86, in 2022, Hephzibah was still discovering objects squirrelled away. She had never before seen a set of ladles, for example, which her grandmother had taken among her belongings to Belsen. The burden of history – and the collection – has now fallen on Hephzibah's shoulders. 'I treat it really with the most love I've got for any possessions,' she says. 'It's a huge weight of responsibility as we see rising Holocaust denial. Well, you have such proof here, such extraordinary proof. And I feel I need to impart this to the next generation – because I don't want it to become one of those things that just goes into history books.'
The Independent
27-01-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
As the world commemorates the Holocaust, racism and intolerance continue to threaten our future
H olocaust Memorial Day is a moment to remember, to reflect on the present, and to contemplate the future of universal human rights. However, the immediate focus is always, and rightly, on the unique nature of the Holocaust, which targeted Jews for slaughter and was the culmination of millennia of antisemitism. Many others died at the hands of the Nazis, their allies, and collaborators, and they should be, and are, memorialised, but it was the Jewish people of Europe who suffered from the conscious state-sponsored perversion of modern industry, organisational techniques, and transport links to exterminate 6 million people in the so-called 'Final Solution'. Visitors to the Holocaust memorial centre at Auschwitz always remark on the sheer size of the site, and, as the largest of the concentration camps, the scene of more than a million murders, and the first to be liberated, it has come to be symbolic of this terrible episode. One out of every six Jews killed in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz. But it was only one of 44,000 such ghettos, transit camps, factories of death, and scenes of mass murder, and the names, each chilling, also deserve to be recalled: Sobibór, Treblinka, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, the Warsaw ghetto, Drancy, Westerbork. On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp at sombre commemorations attended by international leaders, including King Charles, such truths are freely acknowledged. There is an additional sense of poignancy now because so many of those first-hand witnesses who survived have passed away, some too frail to attend memorial events. There are fewer people around now who lived through the Shoah, and are brave enough to tell their harrowing stories, but their warnings from history are consistent and powerful – and more relevant than ever, retold more and more by their families and preserved in memoirs, documentaries, and archives, such as the Wiener HolocaustLibrary and the Yad Vashem international centre. They are relevant because of the persistence of antisemitism, as with the atrocities of 7 October and the recrudescence of ancient anti-Jewish theories. Sadly, recent years, as the Second World War recedes into history and memories fade, have seen a rise in racist extremism and intolerance in all its forms, perhaps most vividly in the rabid Islamophobia that has disfigured so much public debate. This is most distressingly displayed on social media, but also in more mainstream channels and propagated by politicians and public figures who should know better. Holocaust Memorial Day should give such leaders pause for thought about their words and actions, and remind them that language matters. Dehumanising language and attitudes towards minorities, refugees and immigrants have consequences, and, if unchecked, can lead to violence. The racist riots that broke out in parts of England last summer after lies were spread are more than sufficient evidence of that danger. When the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, now a member of the United States government, addresses a rally in Germany for the far-right AfD and tells them that their country should not feel guilt about the past, that is a symptom of something going very badly wrong in the world. 'Never again' is the phrase that comes to mind whenever the Holocaust is mentioned, but in the decades since the worst mass murders in history were committed, there have been too many more genocidal campaigns – in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Darfur. ' Ethnic cleansing ' is an all-too-common feature of modern warfare, not least in Sudan. Members of the Israeli government have had charges of crimes against humanity in Gaza levelled against them at the International Criminal Court. It is also a terrible irony, and a tragedy, that no representatives of the Russian government were invited to attend the ceremonies at Auschwitz to mark the role of their country in liberating the camp – where many Soviet prisoners of war died in horrific conditions. President Putin's brutal war of aggression in Ukraine, with its campaign of terror against civilians and suppression of Ukrainian national identity, is itself another crime against humanity, morally precluding his attendance. Bizarrely, too, the current occupant of the White House appears to advocate the use of force as a legitimate weapon to achieve territorial expansion, though only as a bargaining tactic. The same, it must be hoped, is also true of President Trump's suggestion that he'd like to see a 'clean-out' of Gaza and a million Palestinians possibly permanently and involuntarily displaced and relocated to Egypt and Jordan. So, these are dark, worrying times. Britain's chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, asks whether we are to be the generation that allows the horrors of Auschwitz to fade into oblivion. His answer is righteous and clear: 'Eighty years ago today, the gates of hell were finally opened, but true liberation is an ongoing task, a sacred duty to fight for a world in which every person's humanity is recognised and every soul cherished … in that spirit 'never again' is a phrase we recite, but a promise we live.'
BBC News
27-01-2025
- General
- BBC News
Islanders commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day in Jersey
Future generations need to "keep the truth alive" of what happened during World War Two, a guest speaker at Holocaust Memorial Day in Jersey has day honoured the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau - the largest Nazi concentration camp in Poland.A commemoration was held at the Occupation Tapestry Gallery in the Maritime Museum followed by the laying of wreaths at the Lighthouse Toby Simpson, director of the Wiener Holocaust Library, said it was important for people to learn about the island's history. He said: "On the Channel Islands, like in other places that were occupied by the Nazis, there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses who were able to tell their story directly."So, the responsibility to keep the truth alive is passing on to future generations, to our generation, and I think it's so crucial that we all remember where hatred can lead."So many people suffered and died, including here on the Channel Islands, and the scale of the Holocaust was so huge and its legacy so profound that it's crucial for us all to learn from it today." The Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied during the war. Jersey Heritage said hundreds of islanders were imprisoned in the island and Europe during the Occupation, and 21 of them died in German prisons and Simpson said the "legacy of history" and the impact was "still echoing today" in said: "It has been my privilege to meet many people whose parents and grandparents were themselves victims of the Nazis."In the context of a world where, unfortunately, people are still being persecuted simply for who they are and where war is ongoing, we need to remember the worst consequences of hatred and conflict."
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'The inhumanity that humans are capable of' on display in Holocaust exhibit at WWII museum
SOUTH KINGSTOWN – In the beautiful Rhode Island village of Wakefield sit dozens of symbols of evil, weapons used in mass murder. The International Museum of World War II has many disturbing reminders of the deadliest conflict in human history, but none are more haunting than those in the section containing remnants of the Holocaust. There's a uniform worn by a concentration camp prisoner; an empty can of Zyklon B, the gas that was used to kill innocent civilians, and a signed letter from Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. Thomas Brassil, the museum's director of educational programs and operations, said, "It's really important" to have such items on display "so we can learn from them." "Whenever talking about the Holocaust, it's very difficult to wrap your mind around it, and so having these items here for you to see shows the inhumanity that humans are capable of and a reverberation of the motto of the Holocaust: 'Never forget,'" Brassil said. In observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the World War II Foundation will show its film "A Promise to My Father" at the museum. The 2013 documentary tells the story of Israel Arbeiter, a Holocaust survivor from Poland whose parents and younger brother were killed in a concentration camp. (The foundation has added a second showing for Jan. 29 because its 50-seat theater got overbooked.) As part of the free event, Tim Gray, founder of the foundation, has urged guests to visit the museum's Holocaust exhibit. Here are some of the items they will see: A uniform worn by a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The gray and white striped pajamas and hat were worn by a young boy who worked as a cobbler at Auschwitz making and repairing shoes for the guards and other Germans, according to Gray. "He would be a cobbler for as long as he could work," Gray said. "If he got sick or something else happened so he could not work, he would be immediately sent to the gas chambers." An opened, empty can of Zyklon B. The pesticide released hydrogen cyanide and was used by the Nazis to murder more than a million people in gas chambers. According to Gray, prisoners were herded into rooms for what they thought were showers. "After penetrating the lungs through inhalation, Zyklon B caused in its victims excruciating pain, violent convulsions and, finally, a heart attack," according to "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away," a traveling exhibition about Auschwitz and its historical implications. A signed letter from Adolf Eichmann, whom Gray calls "the architect of the Holocaust." A leading member of the Nazi Party, Eichmann was in charge of organizing mass deportations of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps and extermination camps, according to the Wiener Holocaust Library. In the June 1944 letter to a friend, Eichmann refers to his busy work schedule and upcoming meetings with members of the Hungarian government and representatives of the German Railroad Administration. Is it likely that those meetings were to arrange transportation of prisoners? "Very likely," Gray said. A bag of coffee beans. Brassil said it might seem like an "odd item to have in the collection." The bag of coffee beans came from Block 11, a building at Auschwitz where the Nazis did some of their "worst experiments" and first tested Zyklon B, Brassil said. Coffee was given as a reward to "capos," prisoners who also acted as guards at the camp, Brassil said. A program for German Day at Madison Square Garden. On Oct. 3, 1937, "20,000 people poured into Madison Square Garden for a pro-Hitler rally," Gray said. "That just goes to show you, again, that antisemitism wasn't just limited to Germany. Standing beside a case holding the program, Gray said, "To me this is an example of or a reference point in history, where you say, 'It can't happen here.' Well, it did happen here." This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Take a look at the Holocaust exhibit at Wakefield's WWII museum
