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Post by Leslie

The short answer, of course, is that Vladek Spiegelman is the main character in the Maus books and Anja is his wife. Vladek and Anja are Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust—the only members of their family who made it out of the camps alive. They are the parents of Artie Spiegelman, who is the author of the books.

Vladek and Anja are both flawed people who were deeply affected by their experiences during the war, as would be expected. Both carry great guilt over surviving the concentration camps and deal with their survival in different ways. Ultimately, the pain and guilt leads Anja to commit suicide. This decision haunts her husband and son, who are left to deal with her decision as best they can. The fact that she did not leave a note haunts Artie, who also feels a great amount of guilt over her decision. Vladek spends his life mourning Anja and deteriorates into a stubborn, miserly, and neurotic old man.

(Here again, I recommend subscribing to LitCharts for indepth character analysis/explanation of the Maus books.  https://www.litcharts.com/lit/maus/characters/vladek-spiegelman)

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Post by Leslie

I subscribed to LitCharts during the semester for additional insight and found some very interesting information. Since it’s a paid subscription (and you can’t access the content without paying), I’ve included some tidbits here. You can subscribe for one month for just $10. If you want more insight into the books, I highly recommend making the investment. There’s some very interesting analysis here, not just about the suicide, but everything in the books

Part 1, Chapter 5 quotes:

“In 1968 my mother killed herself … she left no note!”

Explanation:

Artie recalls one of the saddest moments of his life--the suicide of his mother, Anja. Anja always had a difficult relationship with her son. In his last interaction with her, Anja woke Artie up in the middle of the night to ask if she loved him, and Artie sarcastically said "Sure, ma." Artie felt that his relatives blamed him for Anja's suicide--they believed that because of his own issues (he had recently been released from a mental hospital) Anja had killed herself.

Artie's description of Anja's suicide--focusing on the fact that she left no note--is interesting because it suggests Anja's pain or spitefulness, or maybe Artie's denial, or maybe neither. By refusing to leave a suicide note, it would seem, Anja was trying to cause her family as much pain as possible--or else she was in so much pain that she couldn't even write anything. But perhaps it's wrong to make assumptions about Anja's behavior, as Artie clearly does. The fact that Artie faults Anja for not leaving a note suggests that he's still trapped in his own sense of guilt and responsibility, angry at Anja because she left no way for him to resolve anything at all.

“Well, Mom, if you’re listening … Congratulations! … You’ve committed the perfect crime … You put me here … shorted all my circuits … cut my nerve endings … and crossed my wires! … You murdered me, Mommy, and you left me here to take the rap!!!”

Explanation:

Artie creates a comic book in which he tries to come to terms with his mother's suicide. In the comic book, he depicts himself in a prison cell, yelling at Anja. Artie screams that Anja has sent him to jail for murder: she's killed herself, manipulating the rest of the family to blame Artie for the tragedy. Artie will always be "trapped" in the prison of his own guilt and shame.

The passage is important for two reasons. First, it reinforces the tense relationship between Artie and his family: Artie is an enormously complicated individual, and in many ways he's still living out the legacy of the Holocaust, in the sense that he's living in the shadow of his parents' pain and suffering. Second, the passage reinforces why Artie writes Maus in the first place: as with Anja's death, he thinks that he can use art, fiction, and even humor to move past his own pain and guilt.

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Post by Leslie

I found this quote from Artie while doing another search and thought I would make a second post to share it. It’s an excerpt from an interview/article published by the New York Times.

"The dialogue, too, [in the books] is boiled down from the real thing. There were only a few times, said Mr. Spiegelman, "when the way something was said [by his father or mother] was so perfect" it had to be preserved. The subtitle of the second volume, "And Here My Troubles Began," was one such sentence. Vladek utters this while telling of his life after Auschwitz -- obviously long after his troubles began. "The dissonance of that appearing in the middle," said Mr. Spiegelman, was part of its strength."

You can find the entire article here:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/spiegelman-maus2.html?scp=8&sq=arties&st=cse

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Wills and Why Vladek Doesn't Want to Spend Money

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Wills and Why Vladek Doesn't Want to Spend Money

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Post by Leslie

The purpose of a will is to ensure your estate is distributed according to your wishes to the people or organizations you want. I think Vladek doesn’t want to spend money while he’s alive because he survived in concentration camps by scrimping and saving. Holding on to what he had was not just “a good idea” but literally his means of survival. Changing such a deeply embedded or significant behavior, while would not be easy for him, was likely viewed by him as irresponsible—a behavior that should not be changed. Similar to those people who lived through the United States Great Depression of the 1930s, Vladek likely believed that any expenses that were not necessary for one’s literal survival were frivolous. If Mala had a dress that was in good condition, Vladek likely viewed a new dress as an unnecessary expenditure.

I don’t believe this was fair since Vladek and Mala were not living under the extreme conditions they did during the Holocaust, but I can see how it would be difficult for him to let go of those life-saving habits, mindsets, and behaviors. Today, people are more likely to seek professional help for letting go of such tendencies, but needing or seeking counseling in those days was seen as a weakness and something that was all but unthinkable.

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Post by Leslie

Artie seems to feel somewhat disconnected in his relationship with his father. I sympathize with Artie for the way his father dismisses him at times, but I have learned that we cannot change our parents. They have experienced lifetimes of pain, struggle, and disappointments that influence how we go through life—often just as the grown children have—and we must learn to see them for the flawed human beings they are and love them despite those flaws. I think Artie wants to embrace his father and see past his sometimes eccentric, sometimes outright thoughtless behaviors, but finds difficulty doing so.

I cannot add examples of Artie’s traumas beyond what the other students have written: his dreams of horrors that he never had to experience himself, and his feelings of guilt over not only his mother’s suicide, but also being the only family member who did not have to endure the atrocities his mother, father, and brother did—survivor’s guilt. I think he also feels guilty about not being able to feel closer or more accepting of his father. These incredible feelings of guilt cannot help but manifest themselves in all areas of one’s life.

The last line of the book—where Vladek called Artie by his dead brother’s name—was heartbreaking to me. This illustrated to me that despite all the time Artie spent with his father in his last days, Vladek was still not present in his relationship with Artie. The pain that Artie would likely carry with him throughout his life from this one, last memory would be an unimaginable burden in itself.

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How do Vladek and Mala Feel About Each Other

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How do Vladek and Mala Feel About Each Other

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Post by Leslie

I don’t think Vladek hates Mala; I think he more likely resents Mala for taking Anja’s place. Of course, getting remarried was Vladek’s choice, but the circumstances which led to Anja’s death were not his choice. Many men choose to remarry after their wife’s death because they long for some kind of companionship or they need the physical help. I think both of these could be true in Vladek’s case, and I think both of these factors could contribute to Vladek’s resentment: he resents the fact that life’s circumstances took Anja from him, and, as a strong, independent man, he likely resents the fact that he needs help as he ages.

I think Mala stays and endures Vladek’s hostility towards her for a couple of reasons. Perhaps she truly loves Vladek. While that’s possible, she doesn’t seem to display the loving behavior toward her husband that one would typically expect. I think it’s more likely that Mala views Vladek as a provider of security. Just as Vladek needs Mala to combat loneliness and the dependence that comes with aging, she needs him for the financial stability he offers her—something that becomes increasingly important as she ages perhaps. I think she probably left because the mistreatment became too much to endure. I think she likely returned for a couple of reasons: she probably felt some sense of duty to Vladek as he became more ill, and perhaps she found that the security he provided was more important to her than being treated well.

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Post by Leslie. I didn't know a more fitting place to post these links.

Here is a link from the Jewish Holocaust museum that discusses some common misconceptions about the Holocaust.

https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/holocaust-misconceptions/

And here is an article by the New York Times that says some of the reports of Mengele's experiments may be exaggerated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/books/review/mengele-david-g-marwell.html

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There were 11 million victims of the Holocaust (or 6 million Jewish victims and 5 million non-Jewish victims)

The number 11 million is a fictious number on a number of levels. "11 million Jews" is the population census that is mentioned in the 16th copy of the Wannsee Protocol, notes taken by Eichmann (January 20, 1942), only about the Jews. The issue also seems to be the differentiation between victims based on NSDAP race policy versus civilian deaths during war (i.e.: victims of genocide or casualties of war) if the latter, the correct number is probably between 30-35 million deaths, maybe more. The death toll on the territory of the former Soviet Union is generally regarded to be about 27 million including Soviet military.

It is best when referencing the total number of victims of the Holocaust to say 6 million Jews and millions of others. All Holocaust organizations are making a united move to adhere to this message, and we must maintain a consistent record as a center of Holocaust education.

Hitler was elected to political office(Often used to emphasize the power/importance of your vote; or the need to vote)

Hitler was not elected to office. By the end of 1932 the Nazis were the largest party in the German parliament (Reichstag), and the Nazis formed a coalition government with the conservative German Nationalists in 1933. The Nazis had 3 members of the cabinet, and the conservatives had 9. Hitler was appointed chancellor by President von Hindenburg, and not elected. In the last relatively free election in March of 1933, Hitler received 37% per cent of the vote.

"The Final Solution" was decided at the Wannsee Conference

While thousands of Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators or died as a direct result of discriminatory measures instituted against Jews during the initial years of the Third Reich, the systematic murder of Jews, or "The Final Solution" began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 - killing entire Jewish communities mainly through shooting or gas vans.

In ninety minutes, on January 20, 1942, fifteen mid-level Nazi officials met to ensure the cooperation of various administrative departments to make the killing that was already happening more efficient. It is important to note that while the "Holocaust by bullets" was inefficient and psychologically draining on its perpetrators, the killing centers did not replace the mobile killing. In fact, the Einsatzgruppen continued its actions well into 1943.

Number & Types of Camps

Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 40,000 camps (slave labor (30,000); concentration (980); POW camps (1,000); "care" centers; internment and killing centers (6)) and other incarceration sites. The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and mass murder. The total number of sites is based upon ongoing research in the perpetrators' own records.

The Allies could have saved more Jews

Perhaps, but most of the killing occurred while Germany appeared to be winning the war. By mid-March 1942, the Nazis and their collaborators, had killed 20-25% of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. By the time the war turned in favor of the Allies, February 1943, the Germans and their collaborators had killed 75-80% of the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. In addition, 75% of the Jews killed in the Holocaust perished before the tide of war turned in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Further, half of all Holocaust victims came from interwar Poland. Poland was in the core area of German-occupied territories during the war and remained out of reach from Allied forces till 1944. The decision to systematically kill all Jews - men, women, and children - was implemented extraordinarily quickly, at a time when Germany was at a zenith of military success, and when the Allies could do almost nothing to stop it.

The Role of Hitler - Precision of Language

Such phrases as "Hitler's War," "Hitler's Holocaust," "Hitler's army," "Hitler did this or decided this..." are easy statements to make. While we do not want to ignore or negate the crucial role that Hitler played, overemphasizing his role leads to "The 'One Man' or "Evil Man' Theory," namely that the Holocaust was the result of a single individual (Hitler's) will, plan, ideas and drive. We then unintentionally ignore the many collaborators and bystanders, and as a result might have our visitors conclude that the Holocaust was "an aberration, something that was the result of 'one sick individual," a view counterproductive to developing an accurate understanding of the Holocaust.

Norwegian non-Jews wore paper clips to express solidarity with Norwegian Jewry

Between 1,700 and 1,800 Jewish people were living in Norway when the Nazis occupied the country in June 1940. Most Jews were living in the capital city of Oslo at that time, and all but 200 Jews were Norwegian citizens. The new Norwegian collaborationist government followed German demands and quickly implemented anti-Jewish legislation. More brutal demands soon followed and in November 1942 the Nazi controlled Norwegian government began rounding up more than 700 Jews. They were subsequently deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau where most were killed while the remaining Jews were able to be smuggled by the Norwegian resistance to neutral Sweden.

However, the wearing of paper clips did not have anything to do with the operation to smuggle Jews out of Norway nor was it a symbol of solidarity with the Norwegian Jewry. Instead, the wearing of paper clips represented one of many non-violent examples of Norwegian nationalism and loyalty to King Haakon VII. These acts included listening to foreign news broadcasts, printing and distributing underground newspapers, and wearing symbols that showed their support for Norway. Some such symbols included wearing pins created from coins that showed the face of the king, wearing various "flowers of loyalty," wearing the symbol "H7" (which showed support for King Haakon VII), and wearing paper clips either on one's jacket or as a bracelet.

Many scholars believe Norwegians wore paper clips as a sense of national pride since the creator of the paper clip, Johan Vaaler, was Norwegian. Vaaler invented the paper clip in 1899 and, ironically enough, had to patent the invention in Germany because Norway did not have patent laws at the time. However, after he got the paper clip patented, Vaaler did not capitalize on his invention. In the ensuing years, the paper clip was manufactured and mass-marked by US and UK firms (most notably, the British based Gem Company who originated the "double-U" slide-on clips, which the Norwegians may have worn during Nazi occupation.)

German Jews were a large proportion of Germany's population

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the global Jewish population was around 15.3 million. Approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe, making Europe the home of more than 60% of the world's Jewish population, even though Jews only comprised of 1.7% of the total European population. The largest Jewish community was in Poland where 3,250,000 Jews, 9.8% of the Polish population, lived. Germany had approximately 565,000 Jews that made up less than one percent of its total population.

Adolf Hitler was Jewish

While this myth has endured over time, Adolf Hitler was not Jewish. The idea stems from rumors that Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. However, few historians and scholars believe this is true. Hitler's father, Alios, was registered as an illegitimate child with no father, meaning that Hitler was unable to produce the certificate of origin he required of every German citizen. Another rumor was that Alios's mother, Hitler's grandmother, worked in the home of a wealthy Jew and there is some chance a son in the household got Hitler's grandmother pregnant. While Hitler's grandmother did work for a wealthy Jewish family, no evidence suggests she was impregnated by someone in the family.

A Jewish doctor killed Adolf Hitler's mother

There have been some scholars that claim that Hitler's hatred toward Jews stems from the death of his mother. It is believed that Dr. Eduard Bloch, the Hitler family's Jewish physician in Linz, Austria, incompetently treated Klara Hitler's breast cancer, causing her to die in December 1907. However, according to Bloch's own testimony to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1943, Hitler thought Bloch had treated his mother's illness to the best of his ability and harbored no ill will toward him. Bloch recalled that after Klara's death, "[Hitler] stepped forward and took my hand. Looking into my eyes, he said: 'I shall be grateful to you forever.' Then he bowed." In the years that followed, Hitler would send Bloch postcards, warm holiday greetings, gifts of his artwork, and expressed concerned about Bloch's wellbeing after he implemented anti-Jewish laws once he became Führer. Bloch noted that in 1937 Hitler asked a delegation of Linz Nazis "for news of me. Was I still alive, still practicing?" and adding "'Dr. Bloch... is an Edeljude - a noble Jew. If all Jews were like him, there would be no Jewish question.'" Bloch further testified that "Favors were granted me which I feel sure were accorded no other Jew in all Germany or Austria." This meant that the higher ups in Berlin directed the Linz Gestapo to remove the yellow star from Dr. Bloch's apartment and office and allowed the Bloch family to remain in their home. Also, they were allowed to leave Austria in 1938 during the Anschluss - although they were not permitted to keep their lifesavings and the Gestapo confiscated all gifts and notes Hitler gave the Bloch's, as well as the record book that detailed Klara Hitler's treatment.

The Germans manufactured soap from Jewish bodies

The belief that Germans made soap from dead humans stems from French propaganda during World War I. Specific claims that Nazi forces were using the fat from Jewish bodies to make soap began to surface in concentration camps as early as August 1942. However, scholars believe that these stories were nothing more than rumors as the lack of proof, such as shipping bills, physical evidence from manufacturing plants, or receipts for economic transactions, has never been found, while such evidence is clear for shipments of human hair and gold teeth that were removed.

Moreover, these rumors disturbed leading Nazi member and head of the SS Heinrich Himmler since the Nazis' extermination plans were top-secret. After hearing that New York Rabbi Stephen Wise had mentioned the soap rumors to the American press on November 24, 1942, Himmler wrote to the head of the Gestapo Heinrich Müller on November 30. Himmler wrote:

In view of the large emigration movement of Jews, I do not wonder that such rumors come to circulate in the world. We both know that there is [at] present an increased mortality among the Jews put to work. You have to guarantee to me that the corpses of these deceased Jews are either burned or buried at each location, and that absolutely nothing else can happen with the corpses at any location. Conduct an investigation immediately everywhere whether any kind of misuse [of corpses] has taken place of the sort as listed in point 1, probably strewn about in the world as a lie. Upon the SS-oath I am to be notified of each misuse of this kind.

While scholars and historians disregard the soap rumor, some Holocaust survivors have presented small blue and green cakes of soap, claiming they were created from the human fat of Jews because they were stamped "RIF." However, senior researcher Aaron Breitbart at the Simon Wiesenthal Center explains the letters stand for "Reich Industry Fat." Nevertheless, Jewish prisoners within the camp believed the "I" was a "J" and the acronym stood for "Pure Jewish Fat." When these bars of soap were analyzed, no evidence of human DNA turned up in the findings, meaning that the soap allegations were nothing more than a terrifying rumor.

King Christian X of Denmark wore a Jewish Star badge to protest German orders that Danish Jews wear such badges

There is no proof that Danish king Christian X wore a Jewish Star to protest Nazi persecution, even though many throughout Europe believed he did. In reality, the Nazi occupiers of Denmark never required Danish Jews to wear any kind of identifying badge. Many historians believe the Nazis did this because implementing the Jewish Star badge would not only deepen Danish solidarity but also further Danish discontent toward Nazi ideology. Nevertheless, King Christian X and much of the Danish people supported their Jewish population and were against German occupation. To show solidarity with his people, Christian would ride on horseback in Copenhagen while scores of Danes would escort their king through the streets to protest Nazi rule.

Jews were foreigners and aliens who controlled the economy and culture of Germany and other countries

Judaism has been an integral part of Western Civilization since the beginning of the Fertile Crescent civilizations (circa. 5,000 years ago) and in Europe since Roman rule (1,500 years ago). Negative stereotypes about Jews became prominent in the late Roman Empire period. The stereotypes stem from the 4 th century when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Jewish people were vilified as "Christ-killers," a reference to the Biblical story of Judas's betrayal of Jesus Christ. During the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, Jews in Europe were increasingly persecuted. Jews were regularly beaten or killed, driven from their homes, put into ghettos, or pressured to convert to a different religion. They were forbidden to own land and prohibited from pursuing most occupations except for certain trades such as peddling goods, working in factories, dealing in grain, wood, and cattle, and "money trades," such as lending money for interest or banking. Because of these occupations, Jews were identified with money, creating the stereotype of Jewish people being selfish, unethical, and exploitative money grubbers. Unfortunately, this stereotypical impression of Jews has persisted for hundreds of years.

When Hitler and the Nazi power came to power in the 1930s, they combined these traditional stereotypes of Jews with the growing fear of a Jewish presence in mainstream European culture and society, which was occurring throughout the 19 th and into the 20 th century. They believed that the small number of Jews in Europe held too much power and stressed that there was a "secret" Jewish plot to take over the world. Sadly, this thinking permeated throughout the world, from France and the Alfred Dreyfus affair to Russia and Tsar Nicholas II, who wrote about his fears of a Jewish takeover, and in the United States where automobile mogul Henry Ford publicly preached of his distrust of the Jews. While these myths have been thoroughly debunked, many people still preach antisemitic ideology today.

In the late 19th century, eugenics became popular. Part of the theory of eugenics categorized people into specific "races," each with had its own unchangeable traits. Some "races" were considered biologically, culturally, and morally superior to others. The 1943 movement to categorize Jews as a "race" in the United States was part of this pseudo-science ideology of eugenics which has now been proven false.

The Nazis promoted racial antisemitism. It did not matter whether a person practice the Jewish faith. The Nazis believed Jews belonged to a separate race and had distinct "Jewish blood." This belief was false: there is no biological difference between Jews and non-Jews.

Additionally, race is a social construction, a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. These features include skin color, hair color and texture, eye color, and body shape and size. All these features are inherent in genes and cannot be changed. Judaism has created a culture that has evolved based on laws and rituals regarding diet, the Sabbath, and customs that can vary from place to place because the Jews live in many parts of the world. Any person can convert to Judaism if they wish to do so.

How did Adolf Hitler die?

There is much speculation surrounding the death of Adolf Hitler. Since his death on April 30, 1945, theories have ranged that he may have poisoned himself, shot himself, or both. As well, some conspiracy theorists claim that Hitler's "double" was killed, allowing the real Hitler to escape. The fact is there is a lack of physical evidence to determine how exactly Hitler died. While it is certain that Hitler died in his Berlin bunker, it is most likely that on the morning of April 29, 1945, Hitler married his companion of many years, Eva Braun, in a civil ceremony. The next day, the couple bit into thin glass vials of cyanide with the intent to die by suicide. Furthermore, Hitler shot himself in the head. The remaining Nazi loyalists in the bunker wrapped Hitler's body in a gray army blanket, carried him to the shell-blasted Chancellery Garden, saluted in honor, and lit his body on fire.

Dr. Josef Mengele made all selections upon arrival at the camps

Dr. Josef Mengele is known for being the Senior SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943 - 1944 and performing deadly experiments on prisoners. Mengele was one of the multiple physicians who "selected" prisoners upon arrival at the camp. While Mengele did make many selections, so did other doctors, especially when the prisoners were regularly forced to parade before the doctors at frequent selections inside the camps.

Every concentration camp had a gas chamber and crematoria

While some camps had both deadly mechanisms, this was not true for the majority of camps that were made for slave labor, transit, and political prisoners. By 1945, the Nazis had established thousands of camps. However, only six camps were designated killing centers. Nazi camps equipped with gassing facilities for the mass murder of Jews and other victims included Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek-Lublin, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Approximately 2,700,000 Jews were murdered at these camps, along with tens of thousands of Siniti and Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles, and other victims.

Auschwitz-Bi rkenau was the only camp that existed in Auschwitz

Auschwitz had many satellite camps that surrounded the main camp, encompassing a total area of 20 square miles. By 1944, more railroad tracks led to Auschwitz than to the world's largest railroad station - Penn Station in New York. In total, there were three major camps in Auschwitz that were surrounded by subcamps:

Auschwitz I: The original and main Auschwitz camp located in southern Poland. It served first as a Polish military barrack before being converted into a concentration camp during Nazi occupation at first for non-Jews.

Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau): The largest Nazi camp created. It was opened in October 1941 and was specifically used for the extermination of Jewish as well as Sinti and Roma peoples. Auschwitz II had four gas chambers on its premises.

Auschwitz III (Buna-Monowitz): The camp was used as a labor camp for chemical giant I.G. Farben.

All Jews in camps received tattoo ed numbers on their arms

All of those imprisoned in the camp system received a serial number upon first entering. This was assigned not only for identification, but also served an integral part of the Nazi system of dehumanization in the camps. These numbers were sewn onto uniforms, usually along with other patches of classification, such as reasons for arrest and national origin. Only individuals imprisoned at Auschwitz received tattoos, and not all who were imprisoned at Auschwitz were given a tattoo.

All Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge

Nazi-occupied Denmark was the only country in occupied Europe where Jews were not forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge. Jews in Nazi-occupied central Poland did not wear the yellow star badges. Instead, they wore white armbands with a blue Star of David.

What Pastor Niemoeller really said

One of the misquoted citations of the Holocaust is the "confession of guilt" by Pastor Martin Niemoeller. According to his widow, Sybil Niemoeller, these are his exact words:
First they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

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Holocaust Misconceptions - Illinois Holocaust Museum

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There were 11 million victims of the Holocaust (or 6 million Jewish victims and 5 million non-Jewish victims) The number 11 million is a fictious number on a number of levels. "11 million Jews" is the population census that is mentioned in the 16th copy of the Wannsee Protocol, notes taken by Eichmann (January 20, 1942), only...

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Post by Leslie

If Vladek had been limited to a single language, he would have been limited in his pool of potential allies. Knowing multiple languages helped him communicate with a wider variety of people who might be able to help him survive. This was not only outside the camps, but in the camps as well. As Angel suggested, his ability to communicate with the German guards opened him up to opportunities to work in a variety of vocations. Because his value to the Germans extended to multiple areas, he was allowed to remain living and working for them.

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Post by Leslie

As a visual representation of an idea, I believe that an image can be considered hate speech, and I do believe the image could be considered anti-Semitic.

Regarding the question of whether one could love both Nazis and Jewish people, I believe that, if one is a Christian, he or she is tasked with loving everyone. We are not tasked with loving their actions, however. Of course, even liking or accepting others is often difficult so loving others can be even more difficult. I heard someone from my church say that the Jewish people got what they deserved, and I was astounded. I wondered how anyone could possibly utter such ridiculous garbage, but in the last few days I have also heard people claim the world is flat. I find it incredible that people can hold so tightly onto some of the beliefs they have. The Germans who were carrying out Hitler’s orders believed—somehow, on some level—that they were doing the right thing. While I, personally, can’t imagine being led to follow such evil, I can see that people can be extremely naïve, weak, ignorant, and impressionable. It is for this reason that cult leaders can gain such a following. They are able to identify and play to these people’s naivete, weaknesses, ignorance, and impressionability to further their own warped causes. Consider Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh. I, personally, don’t know how to love these people because I’m not completely able to extricate their actions from who they are. I am able to recognize that the people who perpetrate such heinous actions—and the people like Ye who seem to support them—perhaps deserve my sympathy because they must be deeply tortured themselves. That being said, while I’m able to recognize God wants me to love them, I am apparently not that good of a Christian because disgust and anger are what I feel towards them mostly—not love.

Are Jewish people in danger in America? I believe we are all in danger to some degree. All we need to do is come across someone who sees us as their enemy because of our race (like the somewhat recent violence against Asians, and the ongoing violence against African Americans), our religion, our sexual preference, our political affiliation, our weight. The list goes on.

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What the Racism Scene May Contribute to the Book

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What the Racism Scene May Contribute to the Book

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Post by Leslie

I agree with other students’ opinion that it seemed to have come out of nowhere. According to the book, there was a hierarchy of importance or value on the lives of the “players.” Of course, Germans believed they were the superior race, and we got some insight as to where the Poles and Jews appeared on that hierarchical structure, but I don’t recall reading about Blacks in the book. (I do not use the term African Americans since the book events took place in Europe.) Perhaps Vladek’s racism was “born” in the camps. Perhaps it was pre-existing, but I believe it does offer something to the story. Art may have included this scene in his book to show that we, as a society, have not made great strides in our views towards others who differ from us. Even though Vladek, as well as all Jews, were mistreated in the camps based on nothing other than their ethnicities, he did not seem to question or feel his racism was misguided.

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Post by Leslie

Guido demonstrates that he is very quick-thinking several times throughout the movie:

·         at the theater telling the lady next to him that he can only hear out of his left ear when he is trying to get Dora’s attention.

·         after the restaurant was closed, describing what the inspector might have to eat so that the inspector would be “convinced” to order the only dish that was possible for Guido to deliver.

·         when explaining the sign, “No Jews or dogs allowed” to  his son.

·         when explaining to Giosue the “surprise” that Guido had in store for him on his birthday—when they were taken by the Germans

·         when Guido is translating the German rules to the new arrivals to the camp

·         the way he tricks his son to decide to stay “in the game” at the camp when Giosue wanted to go home

·         when he pretends to teach the German kids how to say thank you in Italian

These acts of thinking on his feet helped Guido out of difficult situations.

Vladek was also quick-thinking. He collected and saved every little thing he could get his hands on, knowing that it might be valuable later. He collected items that could prove useful when bartering with guards or escaping dangerous situations with other German enemies, he collected and saved food to help Anja and his friends survive, and he pretended to have skills he did not have. His quick thinking and resourcefulness helped him and those he cared for overcome many difficult situations.

Guido’s positive attitude absolutely helped Giosue survive the camps without being too affected by the reality of the situation. On some level, I imagine that maintaining a positive attitude for Giosue helped Guido survive as well. He knew that his family’s well-being was dependent on him and his ability to survive.

Vladek’s hope came from his resourcefulness. With every scrap of food or discarded item he was able to secure and save, his hope of surviving his various other hopeless situations was reinforced. He was able to draw on his previous successes in difficult situations to give him hope of surviving the next one—a sort of survival by momentum.

I’m not convinced that the world will never forget. We keep repeating our despicable acts of violence towards others who are different from us. Perhaps we do not seem to be learning because the continued violence takes a slightly different “face.” Perhaps we have learned the evils of slavery, although we continue to subjugate others in different ways. We continue to place more value on some lives than others’. While slavery and death camps are not discussed openly in conversation or often covered in news, these acts still exist in industries such as human trafficking and even in present-day migration camps in the United States. Other countries have their own camps:

·         China’s “political education” camps designed to hold hundreds of thousands of people, supported by a high-tech surveillance system

·         Syria’s prison complex dedicated to the torture and mass execution of civilians

·         Northeast India’s detention center capable of holding 3,000 people who may have lived in the country for decades but are unable to prove they are citizens.

·         Myanmar’s rural encampments where thousands of people are being forced to live on the basis of their ethnicity.

·         On small islands and in deserts at the edges of wealthy regions—Greece’s Aegean islands, the Negev Desert in Israel, the Pacific Ocean near Australia, the southern Mediterranean coastline—there exists various types of large holding centers for would-be migrants.

These bulleted items are documented on The Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/why-concentration-camps-are-still-with-us

Based on these continued examples of discrimination, it seems that we have either forgotten or don’t care about our past, or we fail to see how we are perpetuating these practices of suppressing others.

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(For some reason, my posts are not recognizing I'm logged in to Padlet, but according to Padlet, I am. This is Leslie.)

I think it is probably easy for people to say “I would have done [this] or [that] under the same circumstances,” but I believe that, when asked what we might have done in a similar situation, those questions are almost always asking what we might do in extremely difficult situations. While we might be able to provide an answer we would like to be true—one that is consistent with our morals or values—I think if they were put to the test, our actions might be very different. All that being said, I would like to think I would resist. If I truly believed I would end up dead in the long run, I would like to think I went out fighting. To go along submissively with my oppressors would, in my mind, feel like I was agreeing with their actions—almost deserving their mistreatment. In this case, the courage I would need to resist would come from believing what’s right and wrong. This, however, is a selfish approach. On one level, it’s easy for me to sit here and say I would fight against the oppression, but I think another consideration would be “who is counting on me?” Do I have others who are relying on me or needing me to come out alive? If I knew that friends or family members needed me to survive in order to help them in their lives, I’m certain I could do whatever it takes to be there for them. I have been tested with the question of choosing a life of pain and disappointment against one of being there to help with aging parents and husband, and I chose to endure the pain so I would be there for them in their times of need. This, as the prompt states, requires a different kind of courage—one that is selfless.

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I feel like a will is to help the family after the head of the family passes away. With Mala, with Vladek not giving any money in the will, she could be given nothing, and will be living with nothing to help her survive. I don't think it's fair that Vladek does this, since he did choose to marry Mala, and what is his is also hers since they are joined together.

I think Vladek is reluctant because he grew up that way, and he might not fully trust Mala. You see this multiple times in the story, with Vladek being stingy and worrying about money. But also, Vladek could see Mala as just trying to take his money, when she was not his true love in the end.

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I feel like the murder-suicide was to protect the children and protect herself from the hardships that Tosha knew was inevitable. I feel like in a messed up way, it could be seen as merciful, since it helps shield the kids from experiencing torture and then death, rather than just getting the death part over with. My thing that makes me very uncomfortable in this situation is that she chose to do this without anyone knowing, as well as the possibility of the children living through the war. I feel like no one should murder anyone, even if its supposed to be protecting them from torture and hardships.

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I think maybe the author named this volume "Where My Troubles Began" because this is truly where he starts highlighting his own struggles, rather than his fathers. Throughout the first book, he touches on his fathers struggles in the Holocaust, but now, it's changed to focus on the depression and sadness he feels after his father's death, while also focusing on how generational trauma affect his life.

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https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/educational-resources/josef-mengele.html

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/medical-experiments/josef-mengele/

It's interesting, according to this website, because apparently other scientists would focus on weapons, but he focused on scientific studies with Jewish prisoners. It's just dirty, and you wonder how sick someone has to be to do these things to people.

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Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele- CANDLES Holocaust Museum

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I feel like the reason that Artie added this part in the story was maybe to add context of who Vladek was, which was someone who had prejudice towards other people. I also think that the reason this was maybe include, was to show that Vladek grew up with this prejudice, and was taught this way in Poland, or you see how Polish people looked at other races, which is just plain sad and wrong.

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I feel like looking at Mala through the story, you can sympathize with her. Throughout the story, she is just seen as a ungrateful, needy woman who does not do any service to Vladek. Vladek treated her awful throughout the time they were together, and to build up on that, she of course has to be compared to Anja, which in itself, would make me feel lesser than if I was put in her position. So throughout the story, you feel sorry for her, and of course, she has every right to leave Vladek in the end since he treated her so awful.

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I do not think that one can love both Nazis and Jews. Although there has been much time passed since the Holocaust, there is still a lot of bad blood there. Ye did not have the right to post that or say anything about Hitler. Ye was not there nor does he know how those people felt. I do think that these images are anti-Semitic. Those images are horrible. I do think it is hate speech and I am glad that Elon Musk banned him from Twitter. It is not his first time, but maybe Ye will actually not be let back on this time because what he said/did was offensive to many people.
I think that Jews could be in danger in America, but not all of them. I still think there are people in America that consider themselves to be "Nazis" and would do anything to see an innocent person suffer. I do not think these people are actively in danger though.

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I feel like Mala and Vladek had their own issues. I do feel as if Mala wanted money, and Vladek would not give it to her. She was too pushy when it came to money and the will. But, at the same time I do not feel like Vladek met her needs. He was kinda mean to her. I think Vladek loved her but in the end he just did not want to spend his days alone. He treated Mala almost like she was his maid. Towards the end of Mala and Vladek's relationship I feel it was just for money, but I do not blame her for leaving him.

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This part of the story came slightly as a shock, since it came out of nowhere. I do not think it offers anything to the story other than acknowledging things.

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I think that this is titled "and here my troubles began" because I feel like Art is starting to face reality a bit more, and is starting to hit a block in life in many ways. He is struggling with a writer's block issue, as well as feeling guilty for living an easier life than his father who passed. Art begins to overthink a lot more aspects of his life, like his novel and his career, and struggles to work through his mother's suicide, survivor's guilt, and loneliness. I think that after the pretty sudden success of his novel, that became a somewhat isolating feeling since his father was now passed, and it was entirely his job to share his father's story "well enough". The title "and here my troubles began" is very fitting because Art starts facing a lot of real-world issues and hardships with his career, mental health, and family. In this novel, Vladek's life starts to become more brutal as well, which definitely fits the title.

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I do believe that it was me in this case, I would fight. Personally, if I knew I was going to die I would rather die knowing I did everything I could. I would not just cause a fight, but if there is one I don't know if I would be able to back down. I am a very passionate person and although I think this is what I would do, I don't know if Its what I would do. Maybe I would just not say anything and do whatever they asked.

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Both of these stories are beautiful but haunting at the same time.
All of Maus, Vladek did everything he could to make sure Anja and the people he knew was safe. He tricked people, lied, and did some bad stuff. But at the end of the day, they were safe.
This connects with the movie because the father tried the whole movie to make sure his boy was safe, even if it ended with him dying to make sure this was the case. The boy and his mother were able to escape the horrible place and move on.
Both of these stories have darkness that many cannot escape. They both told stories that should be remembered in today's history.

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Cade Womack

The picture that Ye posted basically has a Jewish star connected to a Nazi symbol, with the Nazi symbol being in the middle of the star.

I feel like you can't really love a people group that promoted the slaughter of over 6 million people, as well as love the group that was the ones slaughtered. It doesn't line up. Ye has no right talking about these events, saying he loves Jews and Nazis, when he didn't even live in the 1940's and go through the things that those people went through.

I feel like the image is very anti-semitic, because it disrespects a huge event that caused so much hurt and pain to millions of people. How would you like it if someone posted a disrespectful image of you or your culture when they aren't even apart of that culture. I believe that that image is also a hate speech. I don't know if Ye was intentionally being hateful, because lets be honest, the guy is crazy, but it is something that is very hateful and makes fun of another culture. With this star saying things with that, especially with a huge fanbase of listeners, this could also put Jewish people in danger in America. We have seen this time and time again, with asian hate and the aftermath against the black community after many different events that have happened in this country. Even though this is true, I feel like the backlash Ye has received, as well as him losing fans because of this statement, shows that many people in America stand with and support Jewish people.

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I don't think you can love Jewish people and Natzis due to what Natzis symbolize in history. Natzis were a military organization that was created to eliminate the Jewish population.

The symbol of the Star of David was not only a way to identify Jewish people, but was also a part of Jewish culture. The image that Ye put out on twitter combines the Star of David and the Swastika that was used to identify the Natzis. Combining these two symbols is insulting to the Jewish community and to their hardships that they faced in history. I would also argue that it is hate speech as well for what I previoulsy stated about the image.

I would say that Jews/Jewish people that live in America could potentially be in danger. The rising amount of people that either believe that the holocaust was fake or didn't exist shows how uneducated the citizens of the united states are to global problems. If this ignorance continues to rise, it could be possible for racist people to influence the future generations of US citizens to be against non-white Americans. Which could potentially lead to a second holocaust.

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Mala Speigelman was one of the suvivors of the holocaust. She married Vladek Speigelman after Anja Speigelman died. Her interest was money. She initally likes Vladek due to their shared status of being holocaust survivors. That feeling slowely turns to hatred when Vladek becomes ill and starts hording money and random items. She then takes the remaining money that was available  at the bank and runs away. After Vladek gets worse and reunites with Mala, she gets back together with him and takes care of him out of pity. Overall, Mala was a holocaust survivor who is empathetic and puts her safety and priorities first before anything else.

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I believe that the section was added to the story to show that despite Vladek going through the holocaust due to the German's racism, he feels that the Jewish race is superior to the African/African American race. In a way it shows the similarities between the German and Jewish race when it comes to racial ideals.

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Mala was treated poorly throughout the entire book by Vladek and he was always comparing her to his late wife. I don't think Vladek hates her but he does not like her and only wants his first wife back and uses Mala as a helper so he is not completely alone. She stays at first because she wants to help Vladek and also wants to be financially secure. She then leaves because she was unable to spend another second with Vladek and then she comes back because he finally gives her what she wanted all along money.

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I am not sure it just seemed to come out of nowhere and was gone just as quick. I don't know if it offers anything to the story but it might be trying to show how crazy it is that someone can experience those types of atrocities just based on their religion and then turn around and still hate a people only based on their skin color.

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Before I watch a movie, I always like to read reviews and look up spoilers, pictures, and read articles about whatever film I'm about to watch. I don't really mind spoilers because I like to know what's coming up, but for Life is Beautiful, I avoided any type of spoilers and reviews so I could come in not knowing what to expect and I'm glad I did. After the movie, I did read reviews though and I was sad to see a lot of negative reviews saying the movie was too lighthearted to be a movie about the Holocaust. I have to disagree with these reviewers. While there were lighthearted moments, there were plenty of devastating moments as well, such as the entire sequence where Guido is trying to find his wife in the concentration camp and is executed soon after and when Guido and his son are walking around the camp at night in the fog and run into the pile of skeletons and dead bodies. I liked the lighthearted moments the best, though. I believe the lightheartedness made more of an impact on me because it showed us that the humanity of the Holocaust, that before the pain and suffering there was joy and love, that the Jewish people had full and happy lives before being sent to concentration camps, being married, having children, joking around with friends, little things like that that we often disregard. The lightheartedness in the beginning also made the dark turns all the more shocking and depressing. I really believed Guido would make it out alive and they would live happily ever after because the entire film had a hopeful presence about it until the very end, which then feels like a punch to the gut. When the officer took Guido behind the wall and shot him and walked out, I honestly believed Guido had shot the officer instead and swapped their clothes, because that was more on-brand to the comedic moments the movie had had so far. It took me a while to process that's not what actually happened. The beginning of Life is Beautiful reminded me of the beginning of Maus, with both parents meeting and falling in love. The biggest comparison I made when watching the movie was the comparison between Guido and his son and Tosha and her children and Richieu. Guido made sure to keep his son happy and carefree by playing a game and not letting him know the extent of the horrors around them while Tosha also kept her children happy and carefree, but by not letting them see the horrors around them at all and killing them before they could. Both are examples of bravery by parents out of love for their children. Guido and Tosha had different ways of protecting their children, but they had the same goal, not to let them know what was truly happening and give them the privilege of staying innocent. Another comparison I noticed between the two was that Jews who knew more than one language were useful to the Nazis, such as Vladek teaching the Polish officer English and Guido pretending to know German to translate orders given. Both Life is Beautiful and Maus did an excellent job of humanizing the victims of the Holocaust and showing their humanity.

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I was going to say something similar to Cade's response before I even read it, so now that I have read the previous responses, I'm going to say I agree with Cade. I am a very quiet, weak and non-confrontational person so I know if were faced with life-or-death in a concentration camp I would stay as quiet and obedient as possible, making sure I did nothing to upset anyone and just try to stay alive as long as possible by doing the right thing. I would certainly be a coward, not a hero. I would support those around me who were brave enough to stand up and fight back, but I would not. I am a very anxious people-pleaser and it eats me up inside whenever anyone is angry or upset at me or thinks little of me because of something I've done, so I try to stay out of everyone's way and not do anything at all. That would be my response to the Nazi's, just stay out of the way and do what I'm told while hoping someone braver than I would do the fighting for me.

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The Making of the Movie, Life is Beautiful

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The Making of the Movie, Life is Beautiful

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Posted by Leslie
I found an interesting article titled, "How a Jewish Historian Helped Benigni Fend Off Holocaust Denial Charges in Life is Beautiful." The article discusses how the historian worked with Benigni to change Benigni's original ending (Benigni also wrote the screenplay) to make it more dark--more realistic. As a comedic actor, Benigni had wanted a more lighthearted ending where the entire family survived, but the Jewish historian insisted that if Benigni would not change the ending, he risked alienating the Jewish community and corroborating accusations of Holocaust denial. Read more about that on the website (link below).

The article also provides some great information about Italian Jews and the Italian alliance with Germany. As I was watching the film, I was a bit confused about why the Germans came into Italy to collect Jews. This article answered all my questions about that. The article says that approximately 7,172 Italian Jews were killed in the concentration camps.

Read more about these things and more at the website below.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2018-10-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-a-jewish-historian-helped-life-is-beautiful-fend-off-holocaust-denial-charges/0000017f-e8eb-dc91-a17f-fcefd3a20000https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2018-10-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-a-jewish-historian-helped-life-is-beautiful-fend-off-holocaust-denial-charges/0000017f-e8eb-dc91-a17f-fcefd3a20000
https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2018-10-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-a-jewish-historian-helped-life-is-beautiful-fend-off-holocaust-denial-charges/0000017f-e8eb-dc91-a17f-fcefd3a20000

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In October 1998, Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" was released in the United States. It was a runaway success at both the box office and end-of-year awards ceremonies, winning three Oscars - including best actor for Benigni himself.

But 20 years on, the film's historical consultant, Jewish-Italian Marcello Pezzetti, tells Haaretz that Benigni originally wanted a different ending for the film, one that risked alienating the Jewish community and corroborating accusations of Holocaust denial.

The film begins in fascist Italy in 1939, and goes on to chronicle how an Italian-Jewish father, Guido (Benigni), convinces his young son, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini), that their incarceration in a German concentration camp is all an elaborate game. This "game" sees the inmates competing to score points, with the first to 1,000 points winning the star prize of a tank.
>> Life Is Beautiful: A clown's guide to the gas chambers
It was a storyline that sparked fierce debate, both in Italy and in the United States, where it was released by Miramax Films. It has also proved strangely hypnotic for Israelis, with at least two academic books published on the film in Hebrew (the most recent in 2016).

"The film was an instant success in Italy, but a campaign of criticism was launched - notably by the Italian newspaper Il Foglio," recalls Paolo Mereghetti, veteran film critic for Italian daily Corriere della Sera. "In keeping with Theodor Adorno's idea that there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, critics argued that telling a story of love and hope against the backdrop of the biggest tragedy in modern history trivialized and ultimately denied the essence of the Holocaust."

A scene from the 1998 Roberto Benigni film "Life is Beautiful." Credit: Miramax Films

"Personally, I think Benigni's movie was not offensive," says Italian critic Mereghetti. "Treating topics like the Shoah as taboo risks hindering our comprehension. It is necessary to study it and compare it to other historical events."

Italian critics compared Benigni's movie to another Holocaust movie released the same year - Radu Mihaileanu's tragicomic "Train of Life," where Eastern European Jews organize their own deportation train to flee the Nazis. [SPOILERS] However, in the last seconds of that film, a character reveals it was all just a prisoner's dream. In comparison, "Life is Beautiful" ends with young Giosué being driven out of the death camp on a tank and being reunited with his (non-Jewish) mother, Dora (played by Benigni's real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi), after his father has been executed by the Nazis.

Benigni, a natural clown but also a man of surprising intellect, was often able to assuage the film's detractors with his ineffable charm. Yet he would have faced an overwhelming tsunami of criticism if he had kept the ending he originally scripted.

But Pezzetti, a history consultant from Milan's Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation, convinced him to make a vital change - one that ultimately helped the film secure the approval of Italy's Jewish community and its Holocaust survivors.
Benigni's trump card
Pezzetti, who has traveled to Auschwitz more than 250 times and interviewed hundreds of Holocaust survivors over the years, was Benigni's trump card in the movie's representation of the Holocaust.

A scene from the 1998 Roberto Benigni film "Life is Beautiful." Credit: Miramax Films

He was originally hired to ensure that the film looked authentic, specifically the death camp scenes and costumes. However, he says his most important intervention came before filming began. "After sitting a full-immersion Holocaust history course with me, Benigni told me he now had to keep his distance while he drafted the screenplay," recalls Pezzetti, speaking to Haaretz via phone from his Rome home.

"However, when he came back, he presented a screenplay [co-written with Vincenzo Cerami] with an unrepentantly happy ending. None of the protagonists - Guido, his son Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini) and his wife (Dora) - were murdered in the death camp."

Pezzetti says his response was uncompromising: "I told him, 'Either you have one of the protagonists die in the camp, or I cannot represent Italy's Jewish institutions and Milan's Center of Documentation in supporting this movie - because never after decades focusing on the subject have I found a Holocaust story with a happy ending.'"

It wasn't easy to convince a comedian who had built his career on making people laugh that it was the right move to end the film on a tragic note.

"I found myself in the awkward position of reproaching him, advising him to choose between himself and the child," recounts Pezzetti. "It made no sense having the mother die in the story, since she was not Jewish. In the end Benigni gave in, and accepted having his character die instead of the child.

"It was a necessary twist for an otherwise embarrassingly happy ending. Even a fairy tale about the Holocaust must contain an element of death - otherwise you just couldn't call it a movie about the Shoah."

A scene from the 1998 Roberto Benigni film "Life is Beautiful." Credit: Miramax Films

"It was a hard pill for the producers to swallow," Pezzetti adds, since they feared it "would damage Benigni's standing as an Italian comic celebrity. But I told him the Holocaust did not differentiate between the stars and the common people."

Ultimately, the two men agreed on a compromise: "I would have preferred for the son to die, because that's what the Holocaust is," says Pezzetti. "It would have been more consistent, but at the end of the day it was Benigni who had the final word on the screenplay - it wasn't me writing it. Benigni wanted to sacrifice himself for the child, but in the Holocaust there was no such thing: Persecutors decided a person's fate, not the victims," he adds.

Benigni's spokeswoman, Cristiana Caimmi, told Haaretz that Pezzetti's claims about lobbying for a different ending are "all true," adding that Pezzetti played a crucial role in the creation of "Life is Beautiful."
Survivors on set
Pezzetti had other objections to Benigni's first draft, he says, noting that crucial aspects of life at the death camps were missing. For instance, Pezzetti convinced Benigni to show the selection between women, men and the elderly at the entrance to the camp. Additional efforts even included bringing Holocaust survivors to the set to offer last-minute advice. One of them, Rubino Romeo Salmonì, reportedly inspired Benigni with his Auschwitz memoir "In the End, I Beat Hitler," where he used black humor to poke fun at his tragedy.

Pezzetti admits that, ultimately, Benigni did not represent the death camp realistically, and nor did he intend to - "as epitomized by the self-consciously 'elegant' shot of the pile of bodies in the death camp, which is visibly a drawing." Still, he believes that critics who slammed the movie for trivializing the Shoah overlooked some aspects that were actually helpful in creating a better understanding of the Holocaust.

"At the time, and still now, Italy and Italians fail to be aware of the nation's direct role in the Holocaust, and tend to see it as something foreign that only concerned Germans and Jews," Pezzetti says. "Because Italy dropped out of the alliance with Germany on September 8, 1943 [when the country's surrender was officially announced], Italians came to see themselves as victims of the Germans - and after the war they granted amnesties to the persecutors of the Jews."

After September 1943, with the Allies invading Italy from the south and the Mussolini regime collapsing, Germany invaded its former ally and established the puppet state of the Italian Social Republic, which played a major role in the deportations of over 7,000 Jews. In total, about 7,172 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust, a figure that climbs to 8,879 when including the territory island of Rhodes, which was under Italian rule at the time.

"While Italy did not have its own death camps, it did have anti-Semitic laws and performed the early phases of the Holocaust by arresting and deporting Jews," says Pezzetti. "By telling the story of a fully integrated Italian-Jewish man who has to endure the Racial Laws under fascism, showing visually the signs 'Entrance forbidden to Jews and dogs' outside shops, Benigni helped raise awareness of the Italian role in the Holocaust," he adds.

Italian Jews, he notes, were more assimilated than those in other European states: "Speaking to Polish and Italian survivors, I noticed that the former see themselves as first Jews and then Poles, while Italians always put their sense of belonging to their country ahead of religious identity. You can see this in the movie: Guido is a fully integrated Italian."

In the first part of the movie, where Guido is busy courting his wife in the Italian town of Arezzo, the portents of fascism are visible - although, faithful to the movie's comic nature, Benigni presents them playfully: He tells his son that signs forbidding entrance to Jews and dogs are just a shopkeeper's extravaganza. "Everyone does what he feels: I know a hardware store that bans entry to Spaniards and horses," Benigni's character jokes.

For Pezzetti, though, Benigni's finest moment is when he pretends to be a ministerial envoy visiting a local elementary school in order to meet his future wife, a teacher, and finds himself forced to stage a presentation on why the Italian "race" is superior to all others. Benigni jumps on a table to describe himself as the prototype of a perfect subject from the Italian race, while analyzing the shape of his ear in front of an audience of attentive kids. According to Pezzetti, who was on set, Benigni improvised the entire scene.

The historian notes that this year marks the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of Italy's Racial Laws, which legalized racial discrimination against Jews - including the expulsion of Jewish students and teachers from public schools, the banning of Jews from holding positions in public administration, and the confiscation of business and real-estate assets above a certain value or number of employees.

"Twenty years ago when the movie was released, the existence of such laws in Italy was not even taught in schools," recounts Pezzetti. "I remember urging teachers to educate children about them as part of my work as a Jewish historian and researcher, but they had no idea what I was talking about."

That ignorance still persists, says Pezzetti, citing an incident in September in the northeastern port city of Trieste, which is where Mussolini first announced the Racial Laws. The city's right-wing mayor, Roberto Dipiazza, blocked an exhibition on the 80th anniversary of the laws enactment, organized by a local school, claiming the poster advertising the event was "too strong." The poster featured the frontpage of the local newspaper from 1938 announcing the expulsion of Jewish students and teachers from public schools. "Do we still need to bring up these things?," the mayor asked in a statement.

Pezzetti stresses that "with the populists in government and an atmosphere of growing resentment against migrants" in Italy, "the lessons of 'Life is Beautiful' are all the more topical 20 years on."

He mentions a scene in "Life is Beautiful" where an Italian fascist speaks of a math exercise where German elementary school kids are asked to calculate how much their government has to spend to support the sick and disabled. In the movie, the woman who is telling the story of the school exercise is surprised not at its content but at its level of difficulty for primary school kids, which Benigni uses to show the lack of human sensitivity at the time. That scene referenced the Aktion T4 involuntary euthanasia program, and was based on the exact text of a Nazi school exercise. It "is reminiscent of debates on how much the state spends or saves in catering for migrants in need in today's Italy," says Pezzetti. "The attitude toward them is evocative of how Ostjuden [Eastern Jews] and Roma people were seen then."

Rather than condemning Benigni for doing his job as a comedian, Pezzetti believes Italians should have made greater use of the movie to learn more about themselves. "Germans playing the Nazis in Benigni's movie kept apologizing, because they know that's part of their own history. Italians are not self-aware in the same way," he says.

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How a Jewish historian helped Benigni fend off Holocaust denial charges in 'Life is Beautiful'

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In October 1998, Italian filmmaker Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" was released in the United States. It was a runaway success at both the box office and end-of-year awards ceremonies, winning three Oscars - including best actor for Benigni himself.

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(I'm logged in to Padlet, but for some reason, I'm not being recognized here. This is Leslie.)
Here is a link to an article I found on some of Dr. Mengele's horrific experiments on Jewish prisoners.

https://www.urologichistory.museum/collections/the-scope-of-urology-newsletter/issue-1-spring-2020/mengeles-experiments

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From Amazon:

NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER • Visually and emotionally rich, MetaMaus is as groundbreaking as the masterpiece whose creation it reveals.

In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago.

He probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.

Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.

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Yesterday, Ye (a.k.a. Kanye West) went on to InfoWars with Alex Jones and declared “I like Hitler.”  Minutes later, the rapper said, “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” This symbol was then sent as a tweet. Elon Musk then banned Ye from Twitter.

Below this post is the yellow star Jews were forced to wear to identify themselves during Hitler's Third Reich. Compare the two. Can you love Nazi's and the Jewish people? Are these images anti-Semitic? Is an image "hate speech?" Are the Jews in danger in America?

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The movie was so so much better than I was expecting. It made me cry. There were clearly some differences between how the stories are told, as Life is Beautiful was more of a romantic, beautiful, piece while Maus definitely hits the keys on the violence and horrors of the Holocaust. This doesn't make one better than the other, but I do think that the tone plays a big part in how the piece of media is recieved. I also think that there were some big differences between Guido and Vladek themselves, like their demeanor and how Guido is much more eccentric and playful, but they both used their strengths to survive, or help others to survive. Guido saved his sons life by convincing him the entire thing was a game, but Vladek used his intelligence and talents to work to save his own life and those he loved. I think that the movie is definitely a great way to help the world to never forget, since I think that movie will be just as beautiful and touching to most people who see it.

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For me, I know that whenever you've been working towards something for so long and you finally get success from it, it can sometimes leave you unsatisfied, or wanting even more from that success. I feel like that might've happened for Artie, just because he worked for so long for success, and finally earned it through Maus.

Another reason that he is paying a price is that he father died. He never had the best relationship with his father, but still that is his own blood, and working on the book with him was important to him. Having his father pass away is tough to him, even when he might've disliked him in certain moments. Arties is also experiencing writer's block, and that isn't helping his situation in the slightest. So with all of that bundled up, you see him struggling, and you see him get into the characters that he wrote about in the first book, to try and write a followup.

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Knowing me, I am really afraid of dying and death. It's a mystery that is always talked about, and it scares me to death that so many people die without even knowing it some days. I feel like if I was in a concentration camp, I would probably follow the rules and try to stay alive as long as I can. I feel like I would be to scared to stand up, which sucks because I feel like if you have your freedom taken away, you should stand up and fight against the oppressors, even if you most likely will be killed for it. I know I would probably not try and be rude to other people that were in the same position as me, but I would probably try to be sneaky and just follow their orders.

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Life Is Beautiful was a movie I wasn't expecting to be as powerful as other movies I have seen about the holocaust. I loved how funny it was, and I loved how the father, Guido, sacrificed so much and placed his needs for his son's needs. In ways to protect, and help his son not have a traumatic experience in the camp. I could see some resemblance in Maus from this movie, just with some of the things that happened to the family in the movie, and Vladek's family in the book. But I felt like the tone of Life is Beautiful was to show the beauty of life before the war, and how many people, like Guido and Dora, had to sacrifice so much to keep their son's life beautiful. It was moving, sad, but also so pure in the way that the story was told.

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https://thispodcastwillkillyou.com/2020/12/01/episode-61-typhoid-theres-something-about-mary/

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Your long wait is finally over - the season four premiere of This Podcast Will Kill You has arrived! And to mark the special occasion, we're taking on a topic that is both classic TPWKY material as well as enormously relevant to current discussions in public health. Typhoid fever has been the cause of untold death and devastation throughout human history, and despite our advancements in both treatment and prevention of the disease, it continues to wreak havoc on millions of people around the world every year. This week, we take a trip through the terror of typhoid, starting by tracing the journey this bacterium makes through your body before taking a look at the long history of typhoid in human populations. And what story of typhoid would be complete without Typhoid Mary? We examine the plight of Mary Mallon in the context of today's COVID-19 pandemic and discuss the tension that often arises between individual and community rights in matters of public health. Finally, we wrap things up with a look at the current status of typhoid fever around the world (spoilers: it's pretty terrible) as well as some promising developments on the horizon (spoilers: okay, it might not all be bad!).

We are so excited to be back with you this season, coming through your headphones with some casual chat about diseases throughout human history! As always, we are happy to hear from you about what you'd like us to cover, so send any suggestions through our website contact form . For your TPWKY merch needs, check out the sweet offerings on our shop's page . And for extra reading, you can find references for each episode on the episode page or check out our bookshop.org affiliate page or our list.

Adler, Richard, and Elise Mara. Typhoid fever: a history. McFarland, 2016.

Uzzau, S., Brown, D. J., Wallis, T., Rubino, S., Leori, G., Bernard, S., ... & Olsen, J. E. (2000). Host adapted serotypes of Salmonella enterica. Epidemiology & Infection, 125(2), 229-255.

Bourdain, Anthony. Typhoid Mary: an urban historical. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2001.

Everest, P., Wain, J., Roberts, M., Rook, G., & Dougan, G. (2001). The molecular mechanisms of severe typhoid fever. Trends in microbiology, 9(7), 316-320. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0966-842x(01)02067-4

Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Typhoid Mary: captive to the public's health. Beacon Press, 1996.

Britto, C., Pollard, A. J., Voysey, M., & Blohmke, C. J. (2017). An appraisal of the clinical features of pediatric enteric fever: systematic review and meta-analysis of the age-stratified disease occurrence. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 64(11), 1604-1611.

Kiple, Kenneth F., and H. Micheal Tarver. The Cambridge world history of human disease. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Gonzalez-Escobedo, G., Marshall, J. M., & Gunn, J. S. (2011). Chronic and acute infection of the gall bladder by Salmonella Typhi: understanding the carrier state. Nature reviews. Microbiology, 9(1), 9-14. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2490

Cirillo VJ. Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930): Physician during the typhoid epidemic in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Journal of Medical Biography. 2014;22(1):2-8. doi: 10.1177/0967772013493239

Crump, J. A., Luby, S. P., & Mintz, E. D. (2004). The global burden of typhoid fever. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 82(5), 346-353.

Cirillo, Vincent J. "Fever and reform: the typhoid epidemic in the Spanish-American War." Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences 55.4 (2000): 363-397.

Buckle, G. C., Walker, C. L., & Black, R. E. (2012). Typhoid fever and paratyphoid fever: Systematic review to estimate global morbidity and mortality for 2010. Journal of global health, 2(1), 010401. https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.02.010401

Cirillo, Vincent J. "" Winged sponges": houseflies as carriers of typhoid fever in 19th-and early 20th-century military camps." Perspectives in biology and medicine 49.1 (2006): 52-63.

WHO newsroom: Typhoid Fever (May 2020). https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/typhoid-fever

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, you won't pay a penny more, but we'll get a small commission which helps us keep things running. Thanks!

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Episode 61 Typhoid: There's Something About Mary

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Your long wait is finally over - the season four premiere of This Podcast Will Kill You has arrived! And to mark the special occasion, we're taking on a topic that is both classic TPWKY material as well as enormously relevant to current discussions in public health.

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Why did the author add this section to the story? Does it offer anything to the story other than to acknowledge Vladek's racism?

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Mala was a family friend who became Vladek's second wife. Discuss his treatment of her throughout these two volumes. Does Vladek hate her? Why does she stay (and leave) and stay?

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https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oskar-schindler?series=11

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Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) was born on April 28, 1908, in Svitavy (Zwittau), Moravia, at that time a province of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. An ethnic German and a Catholic, he remained in Svitavy during the interwar period and held Czech citizenship after Moravia was incorporated into the newly established Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.

After attending a series of trade schools in Brno and marrying Emilie Pelzl in 1928, Schindler held a variety of jobs, including working in his father's farm machinery business in Svitavy, opening a driving school in Sumperk, and selling government property in Brno. He also served in the Czechoslovak army and in 1938 attained the rank of lance corporal in the reserves. Schindler began working with the Amt Auslands/Abwehr (Office of the Military Foreign Intelligence) of the German Armed Forces in 1936. In February 1939, five months after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, he joined the Nazi Party. An opportunist businessman with a taste for the finer things in life, he seemed an unlikely candidate to become a wartime rescuer. During World War II, Schindler would rescue more than 1,000 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, Nazi Germany's largest camp complex.

Emalia

Following the German invasion and occupation of Poland, Schindler moved to Krakow from Svitavy in October 1939. Taking advantage of the German occupation program to " Aryanize" and "Germanize" Jewish-owned and Polish-owned businesses in the so-called General Government ( Generalgouvernement), he bought Rekord Ltd., a Jewish-owned enamelware manufacturer, in November 1939. He converted its plant to establish the Deutsche Emalwarenfabrik Oskar Schindler (German Enamelware Factory Oskar Schindler), also known as Emalia.

While Schindler operated two other factories in Krakow, only at Emalia did he employ Jewish workers who resided in the nearby Krakow ghetto. At its peak strength in 1944, Emalia employed 1,700 workers; at least 1,000 were Jewish forced laborers, whom the Germans had relocated from the Krakow ghetto after its liquidation in March 1943 to the forced labor camp and later concentration camp Krakau- Plaszow.

Although the prisoners deployed at Emalia were still subject to the brutal conditions of the Plaszow concentration camp, Schindler intervened repeatedly on their behalf. He used bribes and personal diplomacy both for the well-being of Jews threatened on an individual basis and to ensure, until late 1944, that the SS did not deport his Jewish workers. In order to claim the Jewish workers to be essential to the war effort, he added an armaments manufacturing division to Emalia. During the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in March 1943, Schindler allowed his Jewish workers to stay at the factory overnight.

Subcamp of Plaszow

After the SS re-designated Plaszow as a concentration camp in August 1943, Schindler persuaded the SS to convert Emalia into a subcamp of Plaszow. In addition to the approximately 1,000 Jewish forced laborers registered as factory workers, Schindler permitted 450 Jews working in other nearby factories to live at Emalia as well. This saved them from the systematic brutality and arbitrary murder that was part of daily life in Plaszow.

Schindler did not act here without risk or cost. His protection of his Jewish workers and some of his shady business dealings led SS and police authorities to suspect him of corruption and of giving unauthorized aid to Jews. German SS and police officials arrested him three times, while he owned Emalia, but were unable to charge him.

Schindler's List

In October 1944, after the SS transferred the Emalia Jews to Plaszow, Schindler sought and obtained authorization to relocate his plant to Brünnlitz (Brnenec) in Moravia, and reopen it exclusively as an armaments factory. One of his assistants drew several versions of a list of up to 1,200 Jewish prisoners needed to work in the new factory. These lists came to be known collectively as "Schindler's List." Schindler met the specifications required by the SS to classify Brünnlitz as a subcamp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp and thereby facilitated the survival of around 800 Jewish men whom the SS deported from Plaszow via Gross-Rosen to Brünnlitz and between 300 and 400 Jewish women from Plaszow via Auschwitz.

Though classified as an armaments factory, the Brünnlitz plant produced just one wagonload of live ammunition in just under eight months of operation. By presenting bogus production figures, Schindler justified the existence of the subcamp as an armaments factory. This facilitated the survival of over 1,000 Jews, sparing them the horrors and brutality of conventional camp life. Schindler left Brünnlitz only on May 9, 1945, the day that Soviet troops liberated the camp.

After World War II

After World War II, Schindler and his wife Emilie settled in Regensburg, Germany, until 1949, when they immigrated to Argentina. In 1957, permanently separated but not divorced from Emilie, Schindler returned alone to Germany. Schindler died in Germany, penniless and almost unknown, in October 1974. Many of those whose survival he facilitated-and their descendants-lobbied for and financed the transfer of his body for burial in Israel.

In 1993, Yad Vashem awarded Oskar and Emilie Schindler the title " Righteous Among the Nations" in recognition of their efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust at great personal risk.

Also in 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council posthumously presented the Museum's Medal of Remembrance to Schindler. Rarely presented, this medal honors deserving recipients for extraordinary deeds during the Holocaust and in the cause of Remembrance. Emilie Schindler accepted the medal on behalf of her ex-husband at a ceremony in the Museum's Hall of Remembrance.

Schindler's story garnered more attention thanks to Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List, based on a 1983 novel of the same name by Thomas Keneally that recounted Schindler's life and works. The movie received popular and critical acclaim.

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) was born on April 28, 1908, in Svitavy (Zwittau), Moravia, at that time a province of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. An ethnic German and a Catholic, he remained in Svitavy during the interwar period and held Czech citizenship after Moravia was incorporated into the newly established Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.

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Teaching English saved Vladek's life. How was it valuable to know multiple languages?

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Learn English | English and ESL Classes | Berlitz

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No matter why you need to learn English, the English classes with Berlitz will help. Our ESL classes are designed for any learner.

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The 1997 film Life is Beautiful is (essentially) the same story as Maus, but the telling of the Holocaust is quite different. Consider the stories of Vladek & Anja Spiegelman (as told by their son, Art) and Guido & Dora Orefice (as told by their son, Giosue). Then compare the contrast examples from these stories. What role did cunning and determination play in day-to-day survival? How was hope kept alive amid all the death around them? Do these stories~ in the genres of graphic novel and film~ adequately help the world to "Never Forget?"

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On page 79, Artie asks this father about Jews who fought back in Auschwitz. Think about the bravery it took to resist, knowing that it would result in one's death. Think about the bravery it took to hang on day-by-day, knowing that you death could be at any time. Which path might you have chosen and why?

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The path I would have taken if I was in that situation would have been neither the path of resisting or hanging on day by day. If I was put into that situation, I would take the path of self preservation - (s***ede) - The reason that I would do this is because I would be too frightened to attempt to resist, and I would be too out of shape, unhealthy, and lack the strength to continue fighting to survive day by day.

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It was valuable to know more than one language because survival was determined by how useful Jews were. This could be by working until they died or by translating or writing letters in different languages for soldiers, and prisoners.

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In the movie Life is Beautiful, the father used his cunning tricks to seem useful to the German soldiers by pretending to understand German. He also keeps his son alive by making the action of going on a train to the camps seem like a game and that they have to do different activities to rack up points up to 1,000.

In the MAUS books, father uses his cunning tricks to make himself useful to Polish, and Jewish prisoners and German soldiers by stating that he can speak German and English, and that he can make shoes and is a tin maker.

Both the movie and the books show the efforts that Jew in both Germany and Italy had to do in order to survive the Holocaust.

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Dr. Josef Mengele was known as the angel of death during WWII. His human experimentation on prisoners is well documented. Gather some information about these horrid war crimes and share them here. Trigger warning: images are likely to be horribly graphic.

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I found this article on him
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039625720300734
It has a lot of details, so warning. It is horrible what he did to children and other people. This article focus more on what he did to eyes.

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Abstract

The infamous doctor Josef Mengele was known as the Angel of Death for choosing and condemning Jews, gypsies, and other prisoners to the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Less known was his active participation in Schutzstaffel ophthalmic research with equal disregard for life and ethical principles. Mengele was not an ophthalmologist, but he worked in close collaboration and complicity with two genetic researchers at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Karin Magnussen and Otmar Von Verschuer. The objective of the eye color protocol was to demonstrate hereditary differences in iris structure determined by race and ostensibly to "cure" heterochromia. Mengele sent heterochromous Gypsy eyes to Magnussen, extracted from the bodies of inmates who died (or he killed). Mengele injected adrenaline into children's eyes in an attempt to change eye color and to study environmental influences. Mengele was undoubtedly influenced to conduct these human experiments by his great ambition to publish to obtain academic promotion. These ophthalmologic experiments not only solidify Mengele's reputation as an angel of death but also show the symbiosis that existed between the concentration camp physicians and others in the Nazi medical establishment. Ophthalmology, like all of medicine, has had its share of unethical experimentation, but none with more disregard for life and ethical principles than that of Mengele at Auschwitz.

Section snippets

Complicity between Mengele and Nazi geneticists

Josef Mengele was considered a promising young geneticist with academic aspirations by the time he entered service at Auschwitz on May 30, 1943. Before his assignment to Auschwitz, he received a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935 and pulished his thesis "Racial Morphological Research on the Lower Jaw Section of Four Racial Groups". ¹⁶ This enabled him to obtain in 1937 a research position at the Institute of Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt

Heterochromia iridis in families

Ophthalmological research was conducted by Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau in close collaboration with Karin Magnussen, who was investigating the "heritability of the development of eye color as the basis for examination of race and descent." As a part of her research, she had visited a Gypsy family from Northern Germany who had several members with both heterochromia iridis and numerous twins. ⁸,¹⁵ A few months later in March, 1943, the family was sent to Auschwitz under Himmler's "Auschwitz

Human experiments on changing the color of eyes

Mengele also performed human experiments to assess the influence of environmental factors on eye color, particularly the influence of hormones and pharmacological agents. His intention was to duplicate the studies that Magnussen had performed on the eyes of rabbits. ¹⁵ His experimentation had questionable scientific basis, such as the search for a "cure" for heterochromia as if it was a disease to be corrected. ¹⁵,²⁵ While Magnussen had used drops in her animal experiments, claiming later that

After the war

In January, 1945, as the Soviet Army advanced through western Poland, Mengele fled Auschwitz. In 1949, he went on to Argentina, and later to Paraguay and Brazil, with an International Red Cross passport. ²,¹⁵ Mengele died in 1979 of a stroke while swimming at a beach near São Paulo, Brazil. ⁹ Magnussen continued her research and submitted an article in 1949 using data collected at Auschwitz by Mengele, ¹³ reporting the examination of the eyes of "31 Central European subjects" without specifying

Conclusion

The human experiments on heterochromia among Gypsies represent one of the most horrific crimes among the many that Josef Mengele committed in the Auschwitz camp. His research protocols highlight the symbiosis that existed between Mengele and well-known researchers from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, such as Otmar Von Verschuer and Karin Magnussen. Keep in mind that nearly 50% of German physicians became members of the Nazi Party-the largest of any professional group. ⁷ Psychoanalyst Alexander

Disclosures

The authors have no financial support and no conflicts of interest.

Methods of Literature Search

Literature was researched on MEDLINE (since 1946) and PubMed with the following search terms: Mengele, Nazism, Human experiments, Auschwitz, Heterochromia iridis and National Socialism. The bibliographies of books about Josef Mengele provided a plethora of valuable references. Other resources utilized included Google Books and Google Scholar. investigated through PubMed, Google, and Google Scholar. The books on Josef Mengele and Otmar von Verschuer were manually studied for related material in

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dan Halioua (Lycée Yavneh Paris) for help in the archival research.

View full text

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The eyes of the angel of death: Ophthalmic experiments of Josef Mengele

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The infamous doctor Josef Mengele was known as the Angel of Death for choosing and condemning Jews, gypsies, and other prisoners to the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Less known was his active participation in Schutzstaffel ophthalmic research with equal disregard for life and ethical principles.

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Artie has confusion, guilt, anxiety, and depression following the publication and worldwide success of Maus I because he did not expect it. He wrote that book to tell his father's story to help better understand what his father went through and their family history. Also, to show his artwork. Vladek was never able to read the book because he passed. I think Artie feels guilty for writing someone else's story and it makes him miss his father.

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Artie's relationship with his family seems complicated. He has trauma that comes up in dreams and everyday thoughts. He had a dream of having to pick a parent to save, both of which he loved dearly. Or whenever he dreamt about being taken away by soldiers or imagining gas coming out of his shower head. Although he never experienced these things, he was told these stories of how it happened to someone that he was close to because it was his father. Even though these things were just dreams, they were vivid dreams and repeat through his mind daily.

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The author named his second volume "And here my troubles began" because it was at this point in time that his life started getting more complicated. Throughout his first book, it was very chaotic because of the topic that he was talking about, but in the end it was not his life and he did not live it. It wasn't until Mala left his father, and then his father passed. Although they may not have been the closest but it was still his father. He had already lost his mother so loosing his father was very hard on him. I do not know how the story ends or what happens in the rest of the book so I am unsure of the rest of his troubles. From what I know so far, the beginning of this book is whenever Spiegelman started showing more of his own depression and grief and his father dies in the beginning of the book, so there is probably more troubles to come.

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I can see both Vladek's and Mala's sides. Mala wants a husband who spoils her, but at the same time, she takes it too far. Vladek misses Anja and isn't in love with Mala, so he does not want to spoil her. I feel as if Vladek went through so much and had so little at one point, he lives in the mind state, it never went away. Mala never had to go through the hardships that he did and so, therefore, did not care about spending money, she just knew he had it. I do agree with being money-conscious, but Vladek does take it to far.

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I feel like this was a good decision. Tosha decided to kill herself and the children before they were taken. There were not many who escaped from concentration camps depending on where they went. Tosha did not know what was going to happen, all she knew is that their chance of dying was high. I feel it was the right decision and a selfless decision. Tosha knew that she had no chance of keeping the children safe if they were taken, so it was more humane for such innocent souls to die before they saw horrors. 

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I feel like this was a good decision. Tosha decided to kill herself and the children before they were taken. There were not many who escaped from concentration camps depending on where they went. Tosha did not know what was going to happen, all she knew is that their chance of dying was high. I feel it was the right decision and a selfless decision. Tosha knew that she had no chance of keeping the children safe if they were taken, so it was more humane for such innocent souls to die before they saw horrors. 

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Art Spiegelten has truly endured a lot of emotional moments when it comes to his family. To the death of his mother, to not seeing his father often, to even hearing about his older brother Richieu, Art has had a difficult ups and downs with is family. With the family trauma that Art endures, you can see it when he talks about the dreams he has of being in the Holocaust and even hearing his parents talk about Richieu. Also through his actions, I remember that in the book, he would do certain things or believe certain beliefs just because he was taught that way when he was younger. So through those things, his family really affected his whole life.

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I feel like Spiegelman named his second volume Here My Troubles Began because that is when he started struggling with hardships, maybe not as much as his father, but still went through something very difficult. Throughout the beginning of the volume, Spiegelman struggles with the death of his father, and also the depression that comes with it. Not only that, but he is experiencing writer's block, hiding behind the characters that made him an accomplished writer. Depression, anxiety, and grief are all very difficult to go through, and throughout the first book, you don't really get an understanding of what Art as a person goes through. I feel like in this book, instead of only talking about his father, we will also get an understanding about the hardships that Art also goes through, even if it's not as bad as the trauma his father endured.

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https://www.urologichistory.museum/collections/the-scope-of-urology-newsletter/issue-1-spring-2020/mengeles-experiments

This links details what Mengele did to twins prisoners and the different experiments he attempted at Auschwitz.

Additional Links:

https://youtu.be/ocq2zy2ZCTM

This is an interview with survivors of Dr. Mengele's twin experiments.

https://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-Josef-Mengele-Novel/dp/1788735889

This is the link to the novel titled, "The Disappearence of Josef Mengele"

https://youtu.be/__9TirxBDyE

This is a link to a lecture of the documentary titled "Forgiving Dr. Mengele"

https://youtu.be/gdgPAetNY5U

This is a link to the interview by Buzzfeed for the survivor Eva Mozes Kor, who was the focus of the documentary that is located above.

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BATTLEFIELD UROLOGY TALK PREVIEW

Mengele's Medical Experiments

Before the war, Josef Mengele had received doctorates in anthropology and medicine, and began a career as a researcher. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938. He was assigned as a battalion medical officer at the start of World War II, then transferred to the Nazi concentration camps service and assigned to Auschwitz in May 1943; there he saw the opportunity to conduct medical research on human subjects. His experiments focused primarily on twins, with little or no regard for the health or safety of the victims.

Josef Mengele frequently assumed an enthusiastic posture on the railroad platform at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as trainloads of captives arrived from across German-occupied Europe. Pointing in one direction, the SS-physician sent the healthiest prisoners to factory work as slave laborers; pointing in the opposite direction, he sent countless women, children, the frail and the elderly to die in gas chambers and be cremated.

A third group, primarily twin children, who would serve as involuntary guinea pigs for his spurious and ghastly human experiments, were delivered to well-supplied barracks where Mengele conducted grisly and often fatal surgical experiments in a pseudoscientific quest to uncover the secrets of genetics. Mengele's mocking smile and soft but deadly touch earned him the title "The Angel of Death". Dr. Olga Lengyel, a prisoner at the concentration camp, revealed that Mengele supervised the birth of a child with meticulous care. Within an hour, mother and child were sent to the gas chamber. Dr. Gisela Perl, a Hungarian Jewish gynecologist, described the aftermath of one brutal killing by Mengele. "He took a piece of perfumed soap out of his bag and, whistling gaily with a smile of deep satisfaction on his face, he began to wash his hands". One witness described how Josef Mengele ripped an infant from its mother`s womb, then hurled it into an oven because it wasn`t a twin as he had hoped. A third witness recounted how Mengele kept hundreds of human eyes pinned to his lab wall ''like a collection of butterflies".

Mengele was fascinated with twins. He was interested in differences between identical and fraternal twins as well as how genetic diseases originated and affected them. His experiments also distinguished between genetic traits and those developed by the environment of the child. He operated on children to find genetic weaknesses in the makeup of Jewish or Gypsy people, thereby providing scientific evidence for the ideas of the Nazi party. Mengele hypothesized that his subjects were particularly vulnerable to certain diseases because of their race, and that they had degenerative blood and tissue.

Mengele or one of his assistants subjected twins to weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes. He performed experiments such as unnecessary amputation of limbs. He intentionally infected a twin with typhus or another disease and transfused the blood of the infected twin into the other. Many of his subjects died while undergoing these procedures. After an experiment was complete, the twins were sometimes killed and their bodies dissected. Miklós Nyiszli, a prisoner doctor at Auschwitz, recalled one occasion where Mengele personally killed fourteen twins in one night through a chloroform injection to the heart. If one twin died of disease, Mengele killed the other so that comparative reports could be prepared after death.

He was known for experimenting with eyes. One of his studies regarded heterochromia iridum, a condition in which people's eyes are differently colored. After he killed heterochromatics, Mengele removed their eyes and sent them for study to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Genetics in Berlin under the helm of Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, an outspoken admirer of Adolf Hitler. Mengele also attempted to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects.

His experiments on dwarfs and people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays. Many of the victims were sent to the gas chambers after about two weeks, and their skeletons were sent to Berlin for further study.

Mengele firmly endorsed Nazi racial theory and engaged in a wide spectrum of experiments aiming to illustrate the susceptibility among Jews or Gypsies to various diseases. He attempted to demonstrate the "degeneration" of Jewish and Gypsy blood through the documentation of physical oddities and the collection and harvesting of tissue samples and body parts. Many of his "test subjects" died as a result of the experimentation or were murdered in order to facilitate post-mortem examination. Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Gypsy twins together back-to-back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering.

Mengele was also interested in the etiology and treatment of noma (a form of gangrene affecting the face, usually caused by a bacterial infection and typically occurring in young children suffering from malnutrition or other disease). This latter disease, widespread in Mengele's "Gypsy Family Camp", had been previously almost unknown in Europe. Mengele's first experimental subjects were Gypsy children.

On Mengele's orders, children suffering from noma were put to death in order for pathology investigations to be carried out. Organs and even complete heads of children were preserved and sent in jars to institutions including the Medical Academy in Graz, Austria.

In the first phase of his experiments, Mengele subjected pairs of twins and people with physical handicaps to special medical examinations that could be carried out on the living organism. Usually painful and exhausting, these examinations lasted for hours and were a difficult experience for starved, terrified children (for such were the majority of the twins). The subjects were photographed, plaster casts were made of their teeth and jaws, and their fingerprints and toe prints were taken. As soon as the examinations of a given pair of twins or dwarf were finished, Mengele ordered them killed by phenol injection so that he could go on to the next phase of his experiments, the comparative analysis of internal organs at autopsy.

Although gynecology was not his specialty, Mengele conducted experiments on pregnant women. He had them infected with typhoid in order to determine whether their children would be born with the infection too.

Ruth Elias was pregnant when she was transferred from Theresienstadt (Nazi ghetto located in Czechoslovakia) to Auschwitz. She said, "I delivered a beautiful big blonde girl, but Mengele ordered that my breast be bound so that, as he said, "We can see how long a newborn baby can survive without food". After watching her baby suffer for several days, a female Czech doctor gave Elias a syringe with an overdose of morphine to end the child's agony.

Forced sterilization experiments by means of X-ray, surgery and various drugs were also conducted at Auschwitz. The targets for sterilization included Jewish and Gypsy prisoners. The purpose of these experiments was to develop a method of sterilization, which would be suitable for sterilizing millions of people with a minimum of time and effort.

On the night of January 17, 1945, as the Soviet army approached Poland from the east, Mengele left Auschwitz, salvaging what records he could from his experiments on twins, cripples and dwarfs. From that night, he never stopped running. He fled westward, where he joined a retreating unit of Wehrmacht soldiers, exchanging his SS uniform for a Wehrmacht officer's. American soldiers arrested him in Weiden, Germany, more than 400 miles west of Auschwitz, and held him for two months in two prisoner camps. But the Americans released Mengele when they failed to identify him as the same Josef Mengele listed on "wanted for mass murder and other crimes" circulars compiled by the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Allied High Commission in Paris. For that, he had his vanity to thank. It was Mengele's decision not to have his blood group tattooed on his chest or arm when he joined the SS in 1938 that clinched his freedom.

With luck, assistance from his prosperous family and a network of friends, he evaded recapture and fled to South America (Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil). In February 1979, aged 67, Mengele suffered a stroke and drowned while swimming near Bertioga, Brazil. He was buried in Embu on the outskirts of São Paulo under the fictive name of Wolfgang Gerhard. His body was exhumed in 1985. An American scientist, Lowell Levine, a forensic scientologist brought to Brazil to work on the skull - one of dozens of experts assembled for the task - declared, "There is absolutely no doubt at all that this is Josef Mengele."

Josef Mengele was dead. Four decades after World War II ended, there was still a clear message in 1985: The horrors inflicted by the Nazis SS Hauptsturmführer doctor had not been forgotten nor dismissed as acceptable wartime behavior.

Erwin W. Rugendorff, MD, PhD

Olga Lengyel: Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz. Chicago Review Press, Incorporated,2005
John Martin: In Evil Footsteps. World War II, October 2019, PP 26 - 37
David G. Marvel: Mengele - Unmasking the "Angel of Death". W.W. Norton & Company, 2020
Eva Moses Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri: Surviving the Angel of Death. Tanglewood. Terre Haute. IN, 2009
Miklós Nyiszli: I Was Doctor Mengele's Assistant. Translated from Polish by Witold Zbirohowski-Koṥcia, 2010
Gerald L. Posner and John Ware: Mengele: The Complete Story. Cooer Square Press, 2000
Wikipedia: Josef Mengele

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Josef Mengele, who came to be known as the Angel of Death, directed a special group of Auschwitz arrivals, primarily twin children, to well-supplied barracks where they became involuntary guinea pigs for grisly and often fatal surgical experiments in Mengele's pseudoscientific quest to uncover the secrets of genetics.

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https://www.thoughtco.com/mengeles-children-twins-of-auschwitz-1779486
The most famous of Mengele's experiments are the experiments he performed on twins. Despite the horrible experiments they went through, I was surprised to find twins had at least some privileges compared to other prisoners, like getting to wear their own clothes and getting to keep long hair.

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From May 1943 until January 1945, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele worked at Auschwitz, conducting pseudo-scientific medical experiments. Many of his cruel experiments were conducted on young twins.

Notorious Doctor of Auschwitz

Mengele, the notorious doctor of Auschwitz, has become an enigma of the 20th century. Mengele's handsome physical appearance, fastidious dress, and calm demeanor contradicted his attraction to murder and gruesome experiments.

Mengele's seeming omnipresence at the railroad unloading platform called the ramp, as well as his fascination with twins, incited images of a mad, evil monster. His ability to elude authorities after World War II-he was never captured-increased his notoriety and gave him a mystical and devious persona.

In May 1943, Mengele entered Auschwitz as an educated, experienced, medical researcher. With funding for his experiments, he worked alongside some of the top medical researchers of the time. Anxious to make a name for himself, Mengele searched for the secrets of heredity. The Nazi ideal of the future would benefit from the help of genetics, according to Nazi doctrine. If so-called Aryan women could give birth to twins who were sure to be blond and blue-eyed, the future could be saved.

Mengele, who worked for Professor Otmar Freiherr von Vershuer, a biologist who pioneered twin methodology in the study of genetics, believed that twins held these secrets. Auschwitz seemed the best location for such research because of the large number of available twins to use as specimens.

Mengele took his turn as the selector on the ramp, but unlike most of the other selectors, he arrived sober. With a small flick of his finger or riding crop, a person would either be sent to the left or to the right, to the gas chamber or to hard labor.

Mengele would get very excited when he found twins. The other SS officers who helped unload the transports had been given special instructions to find twins, dwarfs, giants, or anyone else with a unique hereditary trait like a club foot or heterochromia (each eye a different color). Mengele was on the ramp not only during his selection duty but also when it was not his turn as a selector, to ensure twins would not be missed.

As the unsuspecting people were herded off the train and ordered into separate lines, SS officers shouted "Zwillinge!" (Twins!) in German. Parents were forced to make a quick decision. Unsure of their situation, already being separated from family members when forced to form lines, seeing barbed wire, smelling an unfamiliar stench-was it good or bad to be a twin?

Sometimes, parents announced they had twins, and in other cases, relatives, friends, or neighbors made the statement. Some mothers tried to hide their twins, but the SS officers and Mengele searched through the surging ranks of people looking for twins and anyone with unusual traits. While many twins were either announced or discovered, some sets of twins were successfully hidden and walked with their mothers into the gas chamber.

About 3,000 twins were pulled from the masses on the ramp, most of them children. Only around 200 of these twins survived. When the twins were found, they were taken away from their parents. As the twins were led away to be processed, their parents and family stayed on the ramp and went through selection. Occasionally, if the twins were very young, Mengele would allow the mother to join her children to ensure their health.

Processing

After the twins had been taken from their parents, they were taken to the showers. Since they were "Mengele's children," they were treated differently than other prisoners. Though they suffered through medical experiments, the twins were often allowed to keep their hair and their own clothes.

The twins were then tattooed and given a number from a special sequence. They were then taken to the twins' barracks where they were required to fill out a form. The form asked for a brief history and basic measurements, such as age and height. Many of the twins were too young to complete the form by themselves, so the "Zwillingsvater" (twin father) helped them. This person was actually an inmate assigned to the job of taking care of the male twins. Once the form was filled out, the twins were taken to Mengele. He asked them more questions and looked for any unusual traits.

Life for the Twins

Daily life for the twins began at 6 a.m. They were required to report for roll call in front of their barracks, regardless of weather conditions. After roll call, they ate a small breakfast. Then each morning, Mengele would appear for an inspection.

Mengele's presence did not necessarily cause fear in the children. He was often known to appear with pockets full of candy and chocolates, to pat them on the head, talk with them, and sometimes even play. Many of the children, especially the younger ones, called him "Uncle Mengele."

The twins were given brief instruction in makeshift "classes" and were sometimes even allowed to play soccer. The children were not required to do hard work or labor. They were also spared from punishments, as well as from the frequent selections within the camp. The twins had some of the best conditions of anyone at Auschwitz until the trucks came to take them to the experiments.

Mengele's Twin Experiments

Generally, every twin had to have blood drawn every day. They also underwent various medical experiments. Mengele kept his exact reasoning for his experiments a secret. Many of the twins that he experimented on did not know the purpose of the experiments, or what exactly what was being injected into or otherwise done to them. The experiments included:

Measurements: The twins were forced to undress and lie next to each other. Every detail of their anatomy was carefully examined, studied, and measured. Features that were the same between the two were deemed to be hereditary, and those that were different were deemed environmental. These tests would last for several hours.

Blood: The frequent blood tests and experiments included mass transfusions of blood from one twin to another.

Eyes: In attempts to fabricate blue eye color, drops, or injections of chemicals would be put in their eyes. This often caused severe pain, infections, and temporary or permanent blindness.

Shots and diseases: Mysterious injections caused severe pain. Injections into the spine and spinal taps were given with no anesthesia. Diseases, including typhus and tuberculosis, would be purposely given to one twin and not the other. When one died, the other was often killed to examine and compare the effects of the disease.

Surgeries: Various surgeries were performed without anesthesia, including organ removal, castration, and amputation.

Death: Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was Mengele's prisoner pathologist. The autopsies became the final experiment. Nyiszli performed autopsies on twins who had died from the experiments or who had been purposely killed just for after-death measurements and examination. Some of the twins had been stabbed with a needle that pierced their hearts, which were injected with chloroform or phenol, causing near-immediate blood coagulation and death. Some of the organs, eyes, blood samples, and tissues would be sent to Verschuer, Mengele's former professor, for further study.

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Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death," and the Twins of Auschwitz

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From May 1943 until January 1945, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele worked at Auschwitz, conducting pseudo-scientific medical experiments. Many of his cruel experiments were conducted on young twins. Mengele, the notorious doctor of Auschwitz, has become an enigma of the 20th century. Mengele's handsome physical appearance, fastidious dress, and calm demeanor contradicted his attraction to murder and gruesome experiments.

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https://allthatsinteresting.com/josef-mengele

This is a link to an article that talks about how Mengele became the "Angel of Death", his experiments and what happened to him after the war. If you're interested in other historical figures and things that have happened throughout history that aren't commonly touched upon in schools I highly recommend looking at other articles on this site, allthatsinteresting.com. I've spent hours reading through articles on here and they always have really interesting (thus the name) historical and news-related things. It's been one of my favorite sites since middle school. There are several other articles on here that go in-depth of other people who worked for Hitler and give behind the scenes looks at concentration camps and how life was like in Nazi Germany.

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Dr. Josef Mengele's medical facility at Auschwitz was perhaps the most horrifying place the Holocaust produced. Who was this man behind it all and what made him the notorious "Angel of Death"?

Ask a person to name the worst crime in living memory and the Holocaust will probably be what they come up with. Ask them to name the worst crime scene of the Holocaust and Auschwitz is the natural answer.

Ask a person who knew that camp what the worst part of it was, and the killing center at Birkenau is the hands-down winner. Ask a survivor of Birkenau to name the most terrifying murderer in the whole complex and they'll give you the name of Dr. Josef Mengele.

On June 6, 1985, Brazilian police in São Paulo dug up the grave of a man named "Wolfgang Gerhard." Forensic and later genetic evidence conclusively proved that the remains actually belonged to Josef Mengele, who had apparently died in a swimming accident.

Who was this man and how did he burn his name into the darkest nightmare of modern history?

Josef Mengele's Privileged Youth

Josef Mengele lacks a terrible backstory to which one can point a finger when attempting to explain his vile acts. In fact, Mengele was a popular and witty rich kid whose father ran a successful business in Germany at a time when the national economy was cratering.

Everybody at school seemed to like him and he got excellent grades. Upon graduating, it seemed natural that he would go on to university and that he would succeed at anything he put his mind to.

Mengele earned his first doctorate in anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935. He did his post-doctoral work at Frankfurt under Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who was a fully indoctrinated Nazi eugenicist. National Socialism always held that individuals were the product of their heredity, and von Verschuer was one of the Nazi-aligned scientists whose work seemed to legitimize that assertion.

Von Verschuer's work revolved around hereditary influences on congenital defects such as cleft palate. Mengele was an enthusiastic assistant to von Verschuer, and he left the lab in 1938 with both a glowing recommendation and a second doctorate in medicine. For his dissertation topic, Mengele wrote about racial influences on the formation of the lower jaw.

Honorable Military Service On The Eastern Front

Josef Mengele had joined the Nazi Party in 1937, at the age of 26, while working under his mentor in Frankfurt. In 1938, he joined the SS and a reserve unit of the Wehrmacht. His unit was called up in 1940, and he seems to have served willingly, even volunteering for the Waffen-SS medical service.

Between the fall of France and the invasion of the Soviet Union, Mengele practiced eugenics in Poland by evaluating Polish nationals for potential "Germanization," or race-based citizenship in the Reich.

In 1941, his unit was deployed to Ukraine in a combat role. Josef Mengele - the rich, popular kid and outstanding student - distinguished himself again at the front for bravery bordering on heroics. He was decorated several times, once for dragging wounded men out of a burning tank, and repeatedly commended for his dedication to service.

In January 1943, a German army surrendered at Stalingrad. That summer, another German army was eviscerated at Kursk. Between the two battles, during the meatgrinder offensive at Rostov, Mengele was severely wounded and rendered unfit for further action.

He was shipped back home to Germany, where he again connected with his old mentor von Verschuer and received a wound badge, a promotion to captain, and the assignment of a lifetime: In May 1943, Mengele reported for duty to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Josef Mengele At Auschwitz

Mengele got to Auschwitz during a transitional period. The camp had long been the site of forced labor and POW internment, but the winter of 1942-43 had seen the camp ramp up its killing machine, centered on the Birkenau sub-camp, where Mengele was assigned as a medical officer.

With the uprisings and shutdown in the Treblinka and Sobibor camps, and with the increased tempo of the killing program across the East, Auschwitz was about to get very busy, and Mengele was going to be in the thick of it.

Accounts given later by both survivors and guards describe Josef Mengele as an enthusiastic member of the staff who volunteered for extra duty, managed operations that were technically above his pay grade, and seemed to be almost everywhere at once.

Josef Mengele was absolutely in his element in Auschwitz; his uniform was always pressed and neat, and he always seemed to have a faint smile on his face.

Every doctor in his part of the camp was required to take a turn as the selection officer - dividing incoming shipments between those who were to work and those who were to be immediately gassed - and many found the work depressing. Josef Mengele adored it and he was always willing to take other doctors' shifts on the arrival ramp.

In the normal course of his work, he managed an infirmary where the sick were executed, assisted other German doctors with their work, supervised inmate medical staff, and conducted his own research among the thousands of inmates he personally selected for the human experiment program he also started and managed.

The experiments he devised were ghoulish beyond belief. Motivated and energized by the seemingly bottomless pool of condemned human beings placed at his disposal, Mengele continued the work he had started at Frankfurt by studying the influence of heredity on various physical traits.

Identical twins are useful for this kind of genetics research because they, of course, have identical genes. Any differences between them, therefore, must be the result of environmental factors. This makes sets of twins perfect for isolating genetic factors by comparing and contrasting their bodies and behavior.

Mengele assembled hundreds of pairs of twins and sometimes spent hours measuring various parts of their bodies and taking careful notes. He often injected one twin with mysterious substances and monitored the illness that ensued. He applied painful clamps to children's limbs to induce gangrene, injected dye into their eyes - which were then shipped back to a pathology lab in Germany - and gave them spinal taps.

When the test subject died, the child's twin would be immediately killed with an injection of chloroform to the heart and both would be dissected for comparison. On one occasion, Josef Mengele killed 14 pairs of twins this way and spent a sleepless night performing autopsies on his victims.

Josef Mengele's Volatile Temperament

For all of his methodical work habits, Mengele could be impulsive. During one selection - between work and death - on the arrival platform, a middle-aged woman who had been selected for work refused to be separated from her 14-year-old daughter, who had been assigned death.

A guard who tried to pry them apart got a nasty scratch on the face and had to fall back. Mengele stepped in to resolve the matter by shooting both the girl and her mother, and then he cut short the selection and sent everybody to the gas chamber.

On another occasion, the Birkenau doctors argued over whether a boy they had all grown fond of had tuberculosis. Mengele left the room and came back an hour or two later, apologizing for the argument and admitting he had been wrong. During his absence, he had shot the boy and dissected him for signs of the disease, which he hadn't found.

In 1944, Mengele's zest and enthusiasm for his work earned him a management position at the camp. In this capacity, he was responsible for public health measures at the camp in addition to his own research at Birkenau. Again, his impulsive streak surfaced when he made decisions for the tens of thousands of inmates.

When Typhus broke out among the women's barracks, for example, Mengele solved the problem in his characteristic way: he ordered one block of 600 women gassed and their barracks fumigated, then he moved the next block of women over and fumigated their barracks. This was repeated for each women's block until the last one was clean and ready for a new shipment of workers. He did it again a few months later during a scarlet fever outbreak.

Through it all, Mengele's research continued. In the pointless effort to prove crackpot Nazi race theories, Mengele stitched pairs of twins together at the back, gouged out the eyes of people with different-colored irises, and vivisected children who knew him as kindly old "Uncle Papi."

When a form of gangrene called noma broke out in the Gypsy camp, Mengele's absurd focus on race led him to investigate the genetic causes he was sure were behind the epidemic. To study this, he sawed off the heads of infected prisoners and sent the preserved samples to Germany for study.

After the glut of Hungarian prisoners were mostly killed off during the summer of 1944, the transports of new prisoners slowed down and eventually stopped. Operations at the camp were wound down through the fall and into the winter.

In January 1945, the camp complex at Auschwitz was mostly dismantled and the starving prisoners force-marched to - of all places - Dresden (which was about to be bombed mercilessly by the Allies). Dr. Josef Mengele packed up his research notes and specimens, dropped them off with a trusted friend, and headed west to avoid capture by the Red Army.

Escape To Brazil And Evasion Of Justice

Dr. Josef Mengele managed to avoid the victorious Allies until June, when he was picked up by an American patrol. He was traveling under his own name at the time, but the wanted criminal list hadn't been efficiently distributed and the Americans let him go. Mengele spent some time working as a farmhand before deciding to skip out of the country in 1949.

Using a variety of aliases, and sometimes his own name again, Mengele managed to avoid capture for decades. It helps that almost nobody was looking for him and that the governments of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay were all highly sympathetic to the escaping Nazis who sought refuge there.

Even in exile, and with the world to lose if he got caught, Mengele couldn't behave himself. In the 1950s, he opened an unlicensed medical practice in Buenos Aires, where he specialized in performing illegal abortions.

This actually got him arrested when one of his patients died, but according to one witness, a friend of his showed up in court with a bulging envelope full of cash for the judge, who subsequently dismissed the case.

In 1959, Mengele traveled to Paraguay to treat the former Secretary to the Fuhrer, Martin Bormann, who had been sentenced to death in absentia at Nuremberg and who was now dying of stomach cancer. In 1956, the West German government issued identity papers for Josef Mengele under his own name and allowed his family to leave the country unobserved to visit him in South America.

Israeli efforts to capture him were diverted, first by the chance to capture SS lieutenant colonel Adolf Eichmann, then by the looming threat of war with Egypt, which drew the Mossad's attention away from fugitive Nazis.

Finally, one day in 1979, the 68-year-old Dr. Josef Mengele went out for a swim in the Atlantic Ocean. He suffered a sudden stroke in the water and drowned. After his death, friends and family gradually admitted that they had known all along where he had been hiding and that they had sheltered him from justice all his life.

In March 2016, a Brazilian court awarded control over Mengele's exhumed remains to the University of São Paulo. According to a statement from the doctor in the case, the remains will be used by student doctors for medical research.
After learning about Josef Mengele and his terrifying human experiments, read about the Ilse Koch, the "Bitch of Buchenwald" and meet the men who helped Hitler rise to power.

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The Sickening Experiments Of Dr. Josef Mengele, The Nazi "Angel Of Death"

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Ask a person to name the worst crime in living memory and the Holocaust will probably be what they come up with. Ask them to name the worst crime scene of the Holocaust and Auschwitz is the natural answer.

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I believe Art is so overwhelmed by the success of the book because he has no one to share the success with now that his father has died. Art has his wife, but as stated earlier in the book, she's not even Jewish and just converted to make Vladek happy. Vladek is the only one who could truly understand the significance of the book and now he's not even here to see it. I feel like Art also feels guilty for sharing something so personal with the world and how everyone wants to comercialize it now by wanting to turn the story into movies and TV shows. There's been controversy with the releases of several movies in the past couple of years, the latest one being "Till", because people are afraid the movie studios are profiting off trauma, perhaps Art feels the same and feels like he's indirectly profiting off his parents' trauma.

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Art's relationship to his family is something that is shown to come up often in his daily life. In the first book, we saw that Art was close to his mother and blames himself for her suicide, something he even wrote a graphic novel about. Art is shown in the first book to not have as great of a relationship with his father as he had his mother, but through the process of writing the book they grew closer and Art began to understand and appreciate Vladek more. Both parents went through horrors Art could never imagine at the concentration camps and Art is fortunate enough to have never experienced that, although he admits as a child he would have nightmares about the SS soldiers and imagine what it must have been like to be there.

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I agree somewhat with Angel on why I think the author titled the second volume "And Here my Troubles Began". The author, Art, is beginning to face troubles coping with the death of his father and the sudden success of the first volume of Maus and the stress and loneliness that comes with both, meanwhile in the story we're starting to see more into Vladek's time at the concentration camp and how things are starting to get worse around him.

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https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/multimedia.asp

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Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination center created by the Nazis. It has become the symbol of the Holocaust and of willful radical evil in our time.

The album you will see presented here is known as the Auschwitz Album and it is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In the photos we see the men, women and children step out of the overcrowded train, traumatized and fearful after their horrendous journey. They have no clue that they have just been delivered to a death factory and that few of them will survive.

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Multimedia | The Auschwitz Album | Yad Vashem

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Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination center created by the Nazis. It has become the symbol of the Holocaust and of willful radical evil in our time. The album you will see presented here is known as the Auschwitz Album and it is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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The U.S. and the Holocaust
Holocaust survivor Eva Geiringer reflects on life in Auschwitz. In 1944, Americans first learned details of the camp when three escapees meticulously documented what they'd seen. When the War Refugee Board received the report from Switzerland, they made the firsthand testimony public, and it became headline news. But Americans still couldn't grasp the scale and scope of the crime.

Aired: 09/21/22

Rating: TV-MA

From:

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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The U.S. and the Holocaust | Life in Auschwitz | Episode 3 | PBS

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The U.S. and the Holocaust Holocaust survivor Eva Geiringer reflects on life in Auschwitz. In 1944, Americans first learned details of the camp when three escapees meticulously documented what they'd seen. When the War Refugee Board received the report from Switzerland, they made the firsthand testimony public, and it became headline news.

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Vladek is told by a priest his identification tattoo is lucky using a mystic practice called numerology or gematria. This site explains some of the most sacred numbers in this practice.

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The practice of gematria, or the spiritual interpretation of numbers, is one technique for understanding sacred texts.

The following numbers are considered symbolic and/or sacred in Judaism:

One

One indicates unity, divinity, and wholeness, as exemplified by God.

Three

Three signifies completeness and stability, as represented by the three Patriarchs and the three pilgrimage festivals -Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot (I Kings 17:21; Daniel 6:10).

3+1

This is a number cluster that signals the fulfillment of God's plans (Amos 1; Daniel 7:25).

Four

Four is a recurrent number in both exoteric and esoteric Jewish traditions. The Passover Seder is particularly structured around fours: the Four Questions, the Four Sons, and four cups of wine. There are four cardinal directions and there are four Matriarchs. Four is also a common factor in esoteric interpretations: four angels surround the Throne of Glory, there are four kingdoms of the eschaton, and the famous four Sages who enter Paradise.

Five

There are five books of Moses and five divisions to the Psalms. Magical/mystical texts are also sometimes separated into divisions of five. Five is the number of protection, as symbolized in the hamsa, the talismanic hand.

Seven

Seven is one of the greatest power numbers in Judaism, representing Creation, good fortune, and blessing. A Hebrew word for luck, gad, equals seven in gematria. Another Hebrew word for luck, mazal, equals 77.

The Bible is replete with things grouped in sevens. Besides the Creation and the exalted status of the Sabbath, the seventh day, there are seven laws of Noah and seven Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Several Jewish holidays are seven days long, and priestly ordination takes seven days. The Land of Israel was allowed to lie fallow one year in seven. The menorah in the Temple has seven branches. The prophet Zechariah describes a strange celestial stone with seven eyes (Chapter 4).

This emphasis on seven continues post-biblically with seven wedding blessings, seven circuits performed about a groom, and seven days of mourning after the death of a close relative.

Events, prayers,and esoteric observances that involve multiples of seven are also common. Entities both natural (gold) and supernatural (angels) are often grouped by sevens (I Enoch 20; II Enoch 19). Seven is a factor in many occult elements and events.

The first verse of the Torah consists of seven words and seven is the recurrent number in Pharaoh's divinatory dreams in Genesis. The walls of Jericho fall after the Israelites encircle it seven times. In the Zohar, the seven lower sefirot are those aspects of God that are present in asiyah, our world of action. Seven is also the preferred number in spells, magic squares, amulets, and the like (Genesis 7:2; I Kings 18:43; Deuteronomy 16:9; Pesahim 54a; Sotah 10b).

Eight

Eight is the number of completion. The Tabernacle was dedicated in an eight-day ceremony. Male children are circumcised on the eighth day (Genesis 17). Hanukkah is an eight-day holiday.

Ten

Ten is a symbol of good luck and power: there are 10 commandments. God requires 10 righteous individuals in Sodom to avert divine punishment, and 10 men constitute a traditional minyan, a spiritual community (Genesis 18, 24:10;Exodus 26:1; Daniel 7:7-24).

Twelve

Twelve represents totality, wholeness, and the completion of God's purpose. There are 12 tribes of Israel (10 of which must be restored), 12 months in the year, and 12 houses of the zodiac (Genesis 27:20, 25:16; Exodus 24:4, 25:27; Ezekiel 43:16;Yoma 75b, 77b; Taanit 25a; Hullin 95).

Eighteen

Eighteen is the value of the Hebrew letters chet and yod, which together spell the word chai, life. For this reason, 18 is considered the luckiest number. God is mentioned 18 times in both Psalm 29 and the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-21), giving these verses special protective power.

Twenty-four

The number 24 symbolizes abundance. At its prime, Jerusalem once had 24 dream interpreters you could consult, 24 main thoroughfares with 24 side streets leading to 24 alleys each containing 24 houses (Lamentations Rabbah I).

Thirty-two

According to Sefer Yetzirah, 32 is the number of the "wonderful ways of wisdom," the number of organizing principles that underlie the universe. These are the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet plus the decimal numbers that form the basis for the sefirotic tree.

Forty

Forty appears many times in the Bible, usually designating a time of radical transition or transformation. Among the most famous examples are these: It rained for 40 days and 40 nights during the Flood (Genesis 7). Exodus records that Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai with God. Forty is the number of years the Israelites were required to wander in the wilderness until they were allowed to enter Canaan. Corporeal punishment in the Torah involved 40 lashes. Elijah fasted for 40 days prior to receiving his revelation on Mount Horeb. Multiples of 40 are also common: 40,000 men rallied to Barak in the book of Judges.

The Talmud also reports wondrous phenomena occurring in units of 40. It also appears in mystical texts, usually as an element of purification. Thus the Book of the Great Name advises its readers to abstain from sleeping in one's own bed for 40 days and nights after using the book, mimicking the time Moses spent away from camp while he received the Ten Commandments (Genesis 7; Exodus 24; I Samuel 17:16; I Kings 19:8; Gittin 39b, 40a; Sotah 34a).

Seventy

This number symbolizes the world. There are 70 nations in the world, 70 languages, and 70 princely angels. The Greek translation of the Bible, the first to make it available to the gentile, was done by 70 Jewish scholars, who, though working separately, produced 70 identical translations.

Odds and Evens

Finally, it is important to note that odd numbers are considered lucky; even numbers (especially pairs) are considered bad luck.

Reprinted with permission from the The Encyclopedia of Jewish Magic, Myth, and Mysticism (LlewellynWorldwide).

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Judaism and Numbers | My Jewish Learning

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The practice of gematria, or the spiritual interpretation of numbers, is one technique for understanding sacred texts. The following numbers are considered symbolic and/or sacred in Judaism: One indicates unity, divinity, and wholeness, as exemplified by God. Three signifies completeness and stability, as represented by the three Patriarchs and the three pilgrimage festivals -Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot (I Kings 17:21; Daniel 6:10).

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Why did the author name his second volume And Here My Troubles Began? Thoughts?

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Reflect on the author's relationship to his family. How does Artie's family trauma show up in his life, thoughts, and actions?

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The link below gives a short critical analysis of Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, and I think the reviewer makes an interesting point. She writes, “Maus II is also Art’s attempt to work through his mother’s suicide and father’s death in 1986. He reveals his being overwhelmed with Maus’ success and his depression at not being able to match up to his father; he also explores Vladek’s survivor’s guilt over Auschwitz.”

Art may have had various reasons for originally writing Maus, but I think the process of writing forced him to deal with other difficult topics (i.e., his newly surfacing troubles). While the Maus story, on the surface, is largely what Vladek went through during the Holocaust, the mere retelling of those experiences forces Art to deal not only with the horrors his father endured, but also his personal “fallout:” his mother’s suicide, how he feels he doesn’t meet his father’s expectations or measure up to him as a man, and how his success from Maus I is bittersweet. Art would likely have eventually dealt with his mother’s suicide on some level, but without writing Maus, Art would likely not have had the conversations he had with his father that resulted in him getting to know his father better, and he absolutely would not have had to deal with the perceived downside of his success from Maus I.

https://momreadsteen.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/maus-ii-and-here-my-troubles-began-by-art-spiegelman-1991-pantheon-isbn-0-679-72977-1/#:~:text=Most%20of%20the%20story%2C%20related,never%20to%20be%20seen%20again.

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i understand why artie is having much more complex emotions than before. it is becoming more and more "real" the more he speaks to his father, writes about it, and shares it to the world. not that it wasn't real before, but artie never saw it or went through it. now, he is learning more about the true tragedy and pain that happened to his own family, and his guilt grows more and more because he feels guilty for not having to live a hard life like them. he feels guilty for having an "easy" life compared to them. i could imagine that he would feel anxiety following the success of the book maybe because he feels like people will view him as a bad person, like he is only spending time with his dad to get info from him and profit off of it. which, yeah, that is kind of what he's doing. but yeah, i think i would feel really sad and guilty and anxious if i published a book about my father's deepest traumas and it became successful, and that is still not even nearly as serious as writing about the Holocaust.

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i think artie's trauma comes up during his nightmares, where he dreams about having to choose a parent to save, or dreams about being taken away, or even when he thinks about gas coming out in the shower. artie seems to feel extremely guilty, the more he learns about his family's past, since he is the only one who didn't have to go through it. i think as artie ages, he may become more and more like his dad, being extremely judgmental and critical and very careful about saving money.

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the purpose of will are so someone can pass their possessions and remaining wealth down to the people that remain in their family. i think that vladek won't put mala in his will because he simply doesn't see her as a part of his family. i do understand why he could be so stingy with his money, after losing everything during the Holocaust, but i bet that if anja was still around, he would have her in the will. i think it is really mostly about the fact that mala seems to just be a replacement for anja, rather than his family and wife that he wants to provide for and help. either he has a twisted perspective on the entire situation due to trauma, or he just doesn't feel like mala deserves his money.

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truly, i don't blame tosha. i understand why she did this, and i honestly feel like she made the right move. it was either she committed murder-suicide and took all of them out, or she could've been gassed and the children could've been beaten against a wall until they died. i think it was merciful of her, since i think she was just trying to do what was best for the children and herself. she clearly didn't just want to harm them and kill them, it would just be better if they all passed together, at home, rather than get split up and be terrified and KNOW that they were about to die. at least they weren't expecting it when tosha did it.

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Why use comics, why use mice to depict Jews, how Maus’ success has “haunted” him, etc.

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Why use comics, why use mice to depict Jews, how Maus’ success has “haunted” him, etc.

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I found a short article on NPR that included another interview with Art Spiegelman. The article is very short and includes just snippets of the longer 30-minute interview that you can also hear on the site. The purpose of the interview was, in part, to discuss Art’s newest book ‘Meta Maus’: The Story Behind Spiegelman’s Classic. He describes this new book as “a book about the book.” Apparently, in this latest book, Art reflects on Maus: its success, how it affected him, etc. and answers some of the common questions he has received since Maus’ publication. If you want to know more behind-the-scenes type of information on the writing of Maus, you may want to check into that book. Art also discusses in some detail the process and approach of using comics to tell his stories, so you may want to also check into that book if you’re interested in the medium of comics.

At one point, Art said he was originally insulted to have a received a Young Adult Best Book award because he viewed the award as recognition that he had simplified and/or reduced the subject matter to a more immature audience—which, of course, is not what he had intended. Afterwards, he came to accept it more as a testament that he could bring such a heavy message to a much larger audience than would have otherwise read Maus. He said, “I suppose one of the ways that Maus has been able to stay alive is the fact that people are able to just enter in and read without looking under the hood, let’s say. Meta Maus is a way of letting people look under the hood if they want to or find out more about the history and the family that intersect with the medium in this story.”

Apparently, Maus was received with such immense literary success that when Art wrote anything else afterwards, people  would say, "that's nice, but it's not Maus." His subsequent work never seemed to be allowed to stand on its own, but rather was held to the yardstick of Maus.

The link to that interview is here:

https://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/141085597/spiegelmans-metamaus-the-secrets-behind-maus

Finally, on a Maus Wikipedia page, I find this information about the word maus: “The German word Maus is cognate to the English word "mouse",[117] and also reminiscent of the German verb mauscheln, which means "to speak like a Jew"[118] and refers to the way Jews from Eastern Europe spoke German[119]—a word etymologically related not to Maus but, distantly, to Moses.[

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Reflect on Artie's confusion, guilt, anxiety and depression following the publication (and worldwide success) of Maus I.

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Artie was constantly surrounded by people who wanted an interview about his book or to try and sell merchandise that was related to the book. Some interviewers wanted to know what animals specific Jews would be drawn as, while others thought there were too many books and stories about the holocaust. This caused him to become depressed and to have second thoughts about continuing the book.

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Artie dreams of choosing his mother to save if he could only save one parent from dying in the gas chambers when he was a child. He also has a small inferiority complex towards his dead older brother due to how idealized he was by his parents and was constantly used as a comparison against him. He also had nightmares about his class getting taken away by Natzi soldiers and having Zyklon-B coming out of the showers. Overall, he felt guilty about how he had an easier life growing up than his parents and brother did.

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I believe that the author names the second book "And Here My Troubles Began" as a way to identify where the serious problems with his relationship with his father started, and where his father began his nearly fatal troubles being in the concentration camp.

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I agree with other students' observations. While, of course, this must have been a terribly difficult decision for Tosha, I'm sure she viewed it as an act of love. While some Jews did escape the camps, most did not, and Tosha had no reason to believe that she and the children would be among the lucky ones. Ending their lives on her terms was perhaps the most empowering and loving act that she could have performed under her circumstances--not only the incredible stress of her situation, but also the toll that stress takes on one's ability to think rationally. I'm not saying hers was not a rational decision (I'm sure she did not arrive at it easily); I am just saying that incredible stress often prevents us from seeing any kind of hope in difficult situations--and hers, as well as all the Jews'--was exceptionally difficult.

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Another reason for using mice to depict Jews

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Another reason for using mice to depict Jews

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I think Maci and Angel found some great information on the use of animals in Maus. One thing I found in my own research that I didn't see in their posts (although I could have just overlooked it) was that Nazi propaganda materials depicted Jews as vermin--something that needed to be exterminated.

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He begins to feel guilty that he did not experience auschwitz like his father and he felt like he was building himself up on the bodies of those who did not survive the camps.

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Artie's family trauma starts to show up in his life when he begins to have nightmares about being taken away by SS soldiers or when he would imagine gas coming out of his shower head rather than water.

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Martin Niemoller's "First They Came For..."

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Martin Niemoller's "First They Came For..."

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The Quote

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.—Martin Niemöller

Martin Niemoller was a prominent Lutheran pastor and originally a Nazi sympathizer who later became disillusioned with Hitler's interference in the church. The link below gives you a little more information about him, including the fact that he spent the last eight years of Nazi rule in Nazi prisons and concentration camps.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists

The link below goes to a short write-up on how the poem can be used to discuss apathy in general and "a warning about the ease with which such an event could occur again, if we of the present allow ourselves to become ignorant of the lessons of the past."
https://www.paih.org/first-they-came-the-poem-of-protest

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First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.

-Martin Niemöller

This quote is attributed to the prominent German pastor Martin Niemöller. It is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a poem.

After World War II, Niemöller openly spoke about his own early complicity in Nazism and his eventual change of heart. His powerful words about guilt and responsibility still resonate today.

Niemöller's Quote at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The quote "First they came for..." has been part of the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since its opening in 1993. Initially, Niemöller's words were part of a text panel. Today, they are prominently featured on a wall as the final words of the exhibition. They serve as an indictment of passivity and indifference during the Holocaust.

Origins of the Quote

This Martin Niemöller quote originated after the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. After the war, Niemöller was well-known for his opposition to the Nazi regime and as a former victim of Nazi persecution. In 1946, he traveled on a lecture tour in the western zones of Allied-occupied Germany. In his lectures, Niemöller publicly confessed his own inaction and indifference to the fate of many of the Nazis' victims. He used phrases such as "I did not speak out..." or "we preferred to keep quiet." He explained that in the first years of the Nazi regime he had remained silent as the Nazis persecuted other Germans, especially members of leftist political movements with whom he disagreed.

Niemöller considered his fellow Germans as the primary audience for his confession. In his lectures, he lamented that individual Germans failed to accept responsibility for Nazism, German atrocities in German-occupied countries, and the Holocaust. According to him, individual Germans were passing the blame onto their neighbors, superiors, or accept personal responsibility for Nazi organizations like the Gestapo. Through his confession, he wanted to show Germans how to complicity in the Nazi regime.

Why are there multiple versions of Niemöller's quote?

There are multiple versions of the quote "First they came for...." Some versions include a different list of victims. This is because Niemöller often presented his lectures impromptu and changed the list of victims from lecture to lecture. At different times and in different combinations, Niemöller listed: communists, socialists, trade unionists, Jews, people with mental and physical disabilities, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Some printed versions of the quote include Protestants and Catholics in the list of victims. 1 Given the history of the Nazi regime and Niemöller's personal experiences, it was highly unlikely that he included either group in his confession of complicity. In his post-war lectures, Niemöller specifically focused on groups that the Nazis targeted prior to his arrest in 1937, and for whom he could have advocated in the 1930s, but did not.

Regardless of his exact words, Niemöller's message remained consistent: he declared that through silence, indifference, and inaction, Germans had been complicit in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people. He felt that it was particularly egregious that he and other German Protestant church leaders, whom he believed had positions of moral authority, chose to remain silent.

Today, the quote has entered public discourse and popular culture. It is variously referred to as a poem, a confession, or an aphorism. The quote is also frequently adapted and rewritten as a political tool, often in ways that are not in keeping with Niemöller's original intentions.

Who was Martin Niemöller?

Martin Niemöller was born the son of a Lutheran pastor in the German Empire on January 1 4, 1892. At age 21 he started his career in the Imperial German Navy as an officer. During World War I (1914-1918), Niemöller served as an officer on a U-Boat (a submarine). For his role in sinking Allied ships he earned the high honor, the Iron Cross First Class, in 1917.

Niemöller was a fervent nationalist and anti-communist. He was devastated by Germany's defeat in World War I and the collapse of the German Empire. He also strongly opposed the new postwar German government called the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Unwilling to serve the new government, Niemöller resigned from the Navy in 1919.

In 1920, Niemöller began seminary training at the University of Münster. He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1924. During the 1920s and early 1930s, he participated in right-wing and antisemitic political parties and organizations.

How did Niemöller react to the Nazi regime?

In keeping with his right-wing, antisemitic outlook, Niemöller enthusiastically welcomed the Nazi regime in 1933. He voted for the Nazi Party in March of that year.

Niemöller's enthusiasm for the new government led by The German Christians portrayed Jesus as an Adolf Hitler quickly waned, however, when the Nazi regime began to interfere in church policy. In 1933, Hitler threw his support behind a radical faction within the Protestant churches known as the Aryan and denied that he was Jewish. They rejected the authority of the Old Testament and sought to alter parts of the New Testament. Their goal was to remove what they called "Jewish elements" from Christianity. This included prohibiting pastors with Jewish ancestry from Deutsche Christen (in English, the German Christians). serving in the Protestant church. Niemöller led the opposition to the German Christians and Hitler's church policy.

Niemöller's attitude toward the Nazi regime further transformed in January 1934 after a meeting with Adolf Hitler. Niemöller and other prominent Protestant church leaders met Hitler to discuss the relationship between church and state. At this meeting, it became clear that the Gestapo (the Secret State Police) had tapped Niemöller's phone. The Pastors Emergency League ( Pfarrernotbund), which Niemöller had helped found in 1933, was also under close state surveillance. Hitler's hostility made it clear to Niemöller that the Protestant Church and the Nazi state could not be reconciled unless Protestants were willing to compromise their faith. Niemöller was not willing to do this.

As a result, Niemöller became an outspoken critic of Nazi church policy. On July 1, 1937, the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned him as a political prisoner for the next eight years. A number of international religious leaders made calls for his release. However, Niemöller was not freed until May 1945, when the Allies defeated Nazi Germany and liberated him and other concentration camp prisoners.

An Enduring yet Controversial Legacy

After the end of World War II, Niemöller's prominence as an opposition figure gave him international stature. He was often at the center of controversy for his outspoken views. For example, he opposed the postwar denazification policies of the Allied powers. He believed these policies caused more harm than good. He also refused to side unequivocally with the United States in the Cold War. As a result, some of his critics called him a communist.

Despite these controversies, Niemöller is remembered as one of the more prominent Germans to publicly acknowledge his moral failures committed during the Nazi era, as well as the moral failures of his nation and church. And he continued to speak publicly about the relationship between inaction and Germans' responsibility for the persecution and murder of Jews in the Holocaust.

Last Edited: Apr 11, 2023

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the Socialists..."

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Learn about the origins and legacy of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous postwar words, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out..."

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How do you cope with the trauma you didn't experience? | Leah Warshawski | TEDxTwinFalls

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New research suggests that experiencing intense psychological trauma may have a genetic impact on a person's future children.

A study examining the DNA of Holocaust survivors and their children found similar variations from the norm in both generations for the gene associated with depression and anxiety disorders. The findings imply that children of individuals who experience profound stress in life may be more likely to develop stress or anxiety disorders themselves.

The pattern - known as an epigenetic change because it affects the chemical marker for the gene rather than the gene itself - suggests that profound stress in the older generation translated into an adaptation that passed on to the next, said Dr. Rachel Yehuda, director of Mount Sinai's Traumatic Stress Studies Division and leader of the study.

Scientists have long known that parents pass genetic traits down to their children, but Yehuda's research suggests that life experiences can also produce chemical effects in DNA. Similar research has been done into the effects of famine on later generations, as well as stress levels in the children of women who survived the September 11th attacks.

Although the study involved just 32 Holocaust survivors and their offspring, Yehuda said the findings provide proof of concept that could lead to more research into exactly how the changes occur.

The findings may provide an explanation for why people like Karen Sonneberg struggle with anxiety and stress disorders despite having never experienced trauma themselves. Sonneberg's Jewish parents both suffered under Nazi oppression in Germany at a young age. She said many of her friends with similar backgrounds experienced similar struggles with anxiety.

"There were definitely challenges that quote-unquote 'American' kids didn't seem to have experienced," Sonneberg said.

Warm up questions

1. What was the Holocaust?

2. Were future generations affected by what happened?

3. How does experiencing trauma affect a person's life?

Critical thinking questions

1. Why might it be helpful to know how children will be affected by the trauma their parents experienced?

2. By identifying factors that can contribute to PTSD and anxiety disorders, how might doctors better treat people who suffer from these disorders?

3. What kinds of events going on in the world right now could be producing similar effects in future generations?

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Can trauma be passed to next generation through DNA? - PBS NewsHour Classroom

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New research suggests that experiencing intense psychological trauma may have a genetic impact on a person's future children. A study examining the DNA of Holocaust survivors and their children found similar variations from the norm in both generations for the gene associated with depression and anxiety disorders.

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The purpose of wills is to be able to divide a person's possessions to their friends and family however they see fit and fair. I feel like he is reluctant to let go of his money because he does not see her as family and maybe he is afraid to let go of the money because he sees it as power and control. I do not think it is fair, if he does not see her as family and cannot trust her then he should end things and let them both move on.

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I found this interview with Art on npr.org. You can read the transcript or listen to the audio. I found it very interesting.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/11/1080095967/maus-author-art-spiegelman-shares-the-story-being-his-pulitzer-winning-work

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DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Last month, a Tennessee school district banned the book "Maus," the 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman. We thought we'd listen back to Terry's 1987 interview with Spiegelman in which he talks about drawing and writing that book.

In "Maus," Spiegelman draws the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. He said he found the mouse metaphor appropriate to Hitler's rhetoric of extermination and his references to Jews as vermin. The book tells the story of how his Jewish parents survived the Holocaust in Poland. The comic is like a documentary about the making of the book. It shows Spiegelman in his father's house in Queens, N.Y. He coaxes his father to remember the war years and let him record his stories on tape. He has a difficult relationship with his father, and he hopes these conversations will bring them closer. The book has moving flashback sequences as his father describes passing as a Gentile, hiding out in bunkers, and facing death in a concentration camp. Here's Art Spiegelman talking to Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ART SPIEGELMAN: People are usually very upset when they first hear that I've done a comic strip about the Holocaust. Like, just too - it's an oxymoron somewhere in there, and people just don't want to hear any more after that.

But it seems to me that comics are, on the one hand, a very direct medium. They come across very viscerally. And on the other hand, they're a very, very abstract medium. You have to do a lot more work to decode a comic strip than you do in understanding a film or even reading a book.

TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: When did you first become aware that your parents were survivors?

SPIEGELMAN: Well, I can't remember not knowing it, but on the other hand, I can't remember it ever being a significant fact. It was just one more thing that I knew about my parents. So that when I was a little kid, my mother had a tattooed number, and every once in a while, friends of mine would ask, Mrs. Spiegelman, why do you have a number tattooed on your - well, not tattooed. Why do you have a number on your arm? And she would say it was a phone number she didn't want to forget or something like that. So it was built into the fabric of our life without it being a specifically pointed one. And on the other hand, a lot of their friends and therefore their friends' children were also involved in the same background. So it wasn't that anomalous.

GROSS: But before you sat down and actually said to your father, tell me the story of how you survived, had he actually told you anecdotes about his survival during the war?

SPIEGELMAN: Oh, yeah, but the same way that some other person my age's parents might have told them about life in the Depression, you know? Oh, it was really hard back then. And the anecdote would just glimmer in and out between talking about taking out the garbage or doing homework.

GROSS: I got the impression that you were frequently taught grim lessons about life based on your parents' experiences during the Holocaust.

SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, that was something I didn't know until I left home. It's true. What would happen is these stories, which really haunted me, I didn't know were haunting me because they were what I was breathing. And it was only when I got some other perspective when I went away to college and was surrounded by people who didn't have those ghosts hovering over them that I realized there was something unusual about growing up with parents who survived a form of hell.

GROSS: Did you have Nazi dreams when you were growing up?

SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, I - see, one thing - I guess one thing that haunted me when I was growing up was this one blown-up photograph. It was a photograph that was originally just maybe two inches by two inches, but it was a large portrait photograph of what would have been my brother if he had survived the war. So I remember having dreams about him, although I never met him or knew much about him beyond a couple of anecdotes and that photograph. And although I don't remember all of them, I remember one fantasy that was recurrent was being in school and then the principal, instead of just telling everybody good morning on the PA system, would tell all the Jewish students to go out to the school yard, you know, that kind of thing.

GROSS: You didn't have dreams where you were chased by Nazis.

SPIEGELMAN: I think I've probably had many, you know. Any older kid that I was having trouble with would immediately have a swastika on his arm, you know.

GROSS: When you approached your father and sat him down and said, you know, tell me chronologically all the details you can remember from the war and from surviving the Nazis, was it hard for him to talk about it?

SPIEGELMAN: Not especially, although when I was growing up, my mother was more voluble than my father on the subject. And yet when I came back as an adult, he was rather giving of it. It wasn't a problem. And in fact, he didn't even seem to be aware of the fact that I was taping or anything till the very end. Getting it chronologically was impossible. Getting the conversation from him came in tidbits that were mosaic that had to be reassembled and worked out later. And sometimes, I felt like I was playing a pinball machine and trying to avoid those penalty holes because I'd ask a question and it would fall right back into an anecdote I had before. And there's no way to get out of the anecdote till I went through the entire 20-minute sequence, you know?

But the way I got it from him was after I did that comic strip in '71, I went back - and so I'm - actually even before I'd finished the comic strip, while I was two-thirds through. And I showed it to him, and I told him I wanted to tape him then. For the entire three- or four-hour session, which was when I got the bold outlines of what's now the book, he seemed totally oblivious to the tape recorder. We were just sitting on the terrace and talking. And then at the very end, he grabbed the microphone from me and says, and so, ladies and gentlemen, this is how it was and I want - you should know so nothing, God forbid, like this - so many millions were killed and that should never happen again - it was a statement for posterity, but I wasn't - he took me by surprise.

GROSS: One of the things that really struck me in "Maus" was that every time he'd finish telling you this story about narrowly surviving some horrible thing, whether it's at a prisoner of war camp or being hidden away in a bunker in somebody's cellar who was protecting him or, you know, trying to pass for gentile, he'd come out of the story and he'd say something really petty, you know, like, criticize you for smoking or what you were wearing or something. Can you tell the coat story?

SPIEGELMAN: Oh, the coat story. After my father finished telling me the story one day, I just went to get my coat to leave, and I couldn't find it. So I was kind of walking around asking my stepmother if she had seen it, and she hadn't. And my father said, yeah, he knew exactly where it was. He had thrown it out. And at first, I don't believe him, and I asked him to give it back, and he says it's too late. He said, when you were sitting first down to dinner, I threw it outside. By now, the garbage men took it away. Such an old, shabby coat, it's a shame my son should wear such a coat. But I like it. I have for you a warmer one. I got myself at Alexander's a new jacket, and I can give to you my old one. It's still like new. Here, just try on it. Try it on a minute. Oh, great, a Naugahyde windbreaker, and it's too big. It looks on you like a million dollars. Look, Dad, you can't do this to me. I'm over 30 years old. I choose my own clothes. After you wear it a little, you'll see how good it looks. Come. I'll walk you downstairs. And then I went downstairs and kind of looked in the garbage can, and it was just buried under muck and I couldn't believe it. But I walked home in a Naugahyde oversized jacket that I didn't like. But it was typical of what my father would do to try to arrange my life to his liking.

GROSS: I kept thinking that just at the moment when you would be feeling tenderness towards your father and realizing the hell that he had survived, that he'd do something really manipulative like that, like throwing out the coat that you really love so he could give you his Naugahyde parka or something. And, I mean, how would you reconcile that? I mean, what you're supposed to do - like, the way it's supposed to be is that you find out your father's life story, all the hostilities of the past are erased, tenderness takes over, you embrace each other, you understand each other, and you reconcile.

SPIEGELMAN: It actually leads to a larger issue for me, which has to do with sentiment in literature and especially in this kind of literature. It's actually one of the banes of so-called Holocaust literature that when you're reading it, you hear violins in the background, you know, and, like soft, mournful chorus sobbing. And, well, I've met some survivors who work toward that, and I've met other survivors who just are much spunkier than that in a way. And what it is is, I guess, this - the subject matter makes such a large claim on your sympathies to begin with that I don't think it's necessary to, like, underline it and push it any further than that. In fact, it kind of seems trivializing and cheap to do it that way. And my life with my father wasn't tender. My life with my father was, well, probably as ambivalent as everybody's life is with their parents, ultimately, if they dig deep and look at what it is that was going on between them. And I just wanted to make an accurate portrait of that relationship.

GROSS: Your father also always complains about money, that his second wife just wants his money, she wants to rewrite his will, everybody's out to get him. And you write in "Maus" at one point - you write, it's something that worries me about the book I'm doing. In some ways, he's just like the racist caricature of the miserly Jew. Did you ever think, oh, well, maybe I should try to present him in a more positive light.

SPIEGELMAN: Oh, of course. I just would never do it. But of course, I'd think it - not even just portray him but in general, try to tailor the story to my own ideological bent or interests. And I just - it's just too dishonest. I mean, one of the things that was important to me in "Maus" was to make it all true. And that truth wouldn't be served by retouching the portraits. And on the other hand, I found that by working with the things that are actual, the book becomes far more potent so that my father isn't a caricature of a miserly, old Jew. He's a miserly, old Jew. But he's not a caricature of a miserly, old Jew. He happens to be Jewish. There are avaricious people of many different ethnic persuasions that I've met.

And I find that working with everything that seems a problem to me when I'm first approaching it, once it's been kind of looked at from the 15 different angles necessary and assimilated into the story, it becomes a strength of what I'm working on rather than a liability. I find this a lot richer than if I had a far more exemplary father because if I did, then I'd have a book, maybe, whose ultimate moral would be - and if you lead a virtuous, exemplary life, then you, too, can survive the Holocaust. And that's not the point. The point is that everyone should have survived the Holocaust. There should never have been a Holocaust. And that kind of assumption of some kind of supernatural picking of who would survive and who wouldn't wasn't based on ethics. And it wasn't based on goodness, nor was it based on being especially evil, which is, I guess, the flip side of the way one might try to perceive somebody who comes through a situation of extremis.

GROSS: You almost describe yourself as a prisoner in your home in some of your work. Did you ever feel like, oh, it's trivial to feel that you are living as a prisoner or that life is hell when you're not living through the war? This isn't really the Holocaust, you know?

SPIEGELMAN: Yeah.

GROSS: You're living a middle-class life, you know? Is it - (laughter) are you, you know, overexaggerating or, you know, indulging yourself to feel that way?

SPIEGELMAN: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

SPIEGELMAN: But actually, more than that, I've gotten interested in psychological literature about children of survivors. And one common denominator that cropped up a number of times was children who ended up in mental hospitals or in jails. And I was in the former. And what it is is referred to in the psychological literature as an anniversary reaction. It tends to happen not always, but very often - it didn't for me. According to the literature, at approximately the same age the parents were when they got caught up in the concentration camps, the children would end up in the mental hospitals or jails. And I think that I've found a safer way of dealing with all this stuff by drawing a book. And that - you know, one of the things is you can't live through what your parents lived through. And yet, you've been given this mandate to be happy because you didn't have to. And yet, you're not all that happy. And then there's all kinds of ambivalences that come up from that, including a certain kind of very perverse envy of your parents having lived through something that proved that they could - were strong enough to live.

So it's - I don't think it's a total accident that I ended up really starting work on this very long project at the age of 30, which is about the age my father was when he went into the camps, because in order to draw "Maus," it's necessary for me to reenact every single gesture, as well as every single location, present in these flashbacks. The "Maus" cartoonist has to do that with his "Maus" parents. And the result is the parts of my story - of my father's story that are just on tape or on transcripts, I have a very kind of - I have an overall idea. And eventually, I can fish it out of my head. But the parts that are in the book are now in neat, little boxes, you know? I know what happened by having assimilated it that fully. And that's part of my reason for this project, in fact. And in order to do it, like I said, it's necessary for me to do a certain amount of research - photographic research, looking up drawings of survivors, a lot of readings - in order to get a sense of what it was, in order to put it in some kind of visual order for others to look at. I went back to Poland. I went to Auschwitz to look around, tried to find my parents' hometown - all part of the same kind of trying to understand and understand from the bones out what happened. And I'll say, it's still - not totally understandable. But it's my attempt.

BIANCULLI: Art Spiegelman speaking to Terry Gross in 1987. His graphic novel, "Maus," was published the year before, won the Pulitzer Prize and is now more than 35 years old. Yet very recently, it was banned by a school district in Tennessee. After a break, film critic Justin Chang reviews "Kimi," the new movie by Steven Soderbergh. It begins streaming today on HBO Max. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF RARE EARTH SONG, "HEY BIG BROTHER")

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'Maus' author Art Spiegelman shares the story behind his Pulitzer-winning work

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DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. Last month, a Tennessee school district banned the book "Maus," the 1986 Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman. We thought we'd listen back to Terry's 1987 interview with Spiegelman in which he talks about drawing and writing that book.

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We talked in class about why Art may have written Maus. Here's a link to a very short write-up about that.

https://www.colorado.edu/honorsjournal/2018/11/07/maus-art-spiegleman-graphic-novel-shows-power-memoir

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Skip to Content

Maus is a graphic novel. Maus is a comic. Maus is a historical documentation. Maus is a memoir. An unprecedented genre, Art Spiegelman created Maus to record his father's experience in the Holocaust, and in doing so, recorded his experience being the son of a survivor, and his experience writing about the experience of being the son of a survivor (what a demanding task!). Maus is an extraordinary example of creative nonfiction. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize.

The layered storytelling of this novel creates interesting discussion. It is a story of Art's father's experience in the Holocaust, of Art's relationship with his father during the time of creating the book, and also the story of the book's creation process. The past and the present mesh in a way that highlights the difficult experience of a survivor and his/her family. What does it mean to survive a trauma? Does one have to experience the trauma first-hand to be a survivor? The comic panels share a unique story that reveal the power of images, images that speak when sometimes words cannot.

The metaphor of the novel represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, French as frogs, and Americans as dogs. The present moment has humans wearing these animal masks, while the past depicts the animals as themselves.

It is a heart-wrenching story of love, loss, survival, family, empathy, and identity. The complexity of the story is reflected in the layered, multi-dimensional writing. Its play with memory and language reveal the power of memoir, the creativity in creative nonfiction.

Source:
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-MAUS-Art-Spiegelman/dp/0141014083

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Maus by Art Spiegleman: A Graphic Novel That Shows the Power of Memoir

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Skip to Content Maus is a graphic novel. Maus is a comic. Maus is a historical documentation. Maus is a memoir. An unprecedented genre, Art Spiegelman created Maus to record his father's experience in the Holocaust, and in doing so, recorded his experience being the son of a survivor, and his experience writing about the experience of being the son of a survivor (what a demanding task!).

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Before someone dies, they make a will which states who in their family will get their money and possessions and how it will be divided after they die. What is in a will is usually given to spouses and children and before anyone else, so the fact that Vladek doesn't want to include his own wife in his will is very surprising. I believe he doesn't want to include her in the will because he doesn't view her as his wife. Sure, they're married, but only on paper. In his heart, Anja is still his wife and Mala will never be able to come close to her. Vladek doesn't love Mala or trust her, which is unfair to Mala but I can understand why he wouldn't. Vladek has had a hard life and with his past, I don't find it surprising he has a hard time trusting people and welcoming and opening up to new people.

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I believe Tosha's decision to kill herself and the children was a brave one and must have been very hard for her. Of course, she didn't want the kids or herself to die, but they were going to unfortunately die one way or the other. She saved the children from being scared and confused at an unfamiliar and hostile place being murdered by strange, angry men they didn't know and instead decided they would all go together as a family without pain or fear. I assume the children didn't know what was happening, so they had nothing to be scared about versus knowing what was to come. While their ending wasn't a happy one, it could have been a lot worse and I admire Tosha for being brave enough to do something so hard.

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I believe Tosha's decision to kill herself and the children was the lesser of the two evils because she saved the children and herself from being tortured and starved for months and just ended it relatively peacefully.

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This is a link to a website that shows different photographs of shoes from Auschwitz.

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Auschwitz shoes Stock Photos, Royalty Free Auschwitz shoes Images | Depositphotos

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⬇ Download stock pictures of Auschwitz shoes on Depositphotos ✔ Photo stock for commercial use - millions of high-quality, royalty-free photos & images

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The purpose of a will is to divide a person's possessions and possible wealth to members of their family. This allows the remaining family to be able to continue prospering in their lives and to be able to live easier.

Vladek refuses to add Mala to the will due to the fact that Mala is not viewed as family to Vladek. Mala was married to Vladek for the sake of comfort, normalcy, and as a distraction. Comfort for being with someone who has similar life experiences to yourself. Normalcy for the sake to routine of being married, and going through a continuous cycle of day to day routines. The distraction is being distracted from the emptiness of losing a loved one and of being lonely. Mala and Vladek continuously argue, which allows Vladek to focus on Mala and not on Anja, her suicide, and the emptiness it left behind. In a sense Mala is more of a possession than a person or a wife to Vladek, she is necessary for Vladek to continue his life, but not important enough to register as family and put more effort into the relationship.

The choice of Vladek not putting Mala in the will is selfish for the fact of how he views her, and cruel for how he uses her for his benefit.

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I believe Tosha's decision to kill herself and the children was a last resort with the limited options she had. The choices were be brutally killed by German soldiers or die together with one another in the "safety" of their home. While I do think that not informing the children was selfish in the sense of preforming a group suicide with un-informed participants, it was the only choice they had in order to stay together with family.

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https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/object/obj046/

A Nazi-Germany propaganda board game.

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Juden Raus! board game - The Wiener Holocaust Library

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Using crude antisemitic stereotypes and imagery, the game's themes reflect racial hatred, forced deportations, and confiscation of Jewish property. The board shows a walled town, through which players move to round up Jews and deposit them outside the city walls, where a slogan reads "Auf nach Palästina!"

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Opening Hours:

Sunday to Thursday: ‬09:00-17:00

Fridays and Holiday eves: ‬09:00-14:00

Yad Vashem is closed on Saturdays and all Jewish Holidays.

Entrance to the Holocaust History Museum is not permitted for children under the age of 10. Babies in strollers or carriers will not be permitted to enter.

For more Visiting Information click here

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"I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence… that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole… for which it was worth surviving"Primo Levi describes his rescuer, Lorenzo Perrone (If This Is A Man)Attitudes towards the Jews during the Holocaust mostly ranged from indifference to hostility.

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AMCHA - what does it mean?

AMCHA, The code word that helped survivors identify fellow Jews in war-ravaged Europe, short for AMCHA YISRAEL, meaning the people of Israel, now stands for another kind of support system. Established in 1987 by a group of Holocaust survivors and devoted mental health professionals, AMCHA set out to create a framework for mutual aid, memory processing and grief resolution. Now, more than three decades later, AMCHA provides a full range of psychological and social support services to Holocaust survivors and their families. AMCHA continues to be a home and safe place for them to unburden their hearts and share their stories with others.
AMCHA- what do we do?
Amcha is the largest provider of mental health and social support services for Holocaust survivors in Israel, currently reaching close to 20,000 individuals. We offer the following main services: Mental Health Care, Psychosocial Rehabilitation Clubs, Community Outreach, Social Casework, Professional Interventions for Homebound Survivors, Home Visits by Volunteer trained and supervised by Amcha staff, Inter-generational Programming and Holocaust Documentation.

Amcha has earned a reputation in Israel and around the world for its professionalism, competence, and integrity. It has opened its doors to survivor communities all around Israel and has established state-of-the-art services. Our activities take place in fifteen centers throughout Israel, located from Nahariya in the north through Beer Sheba and Sderot in the south and in the homes of aging survivors with limited mobility. In 2017, over 350,000 professional activity hours took place throughout Amcha, including over 63,000 home visits by professionals serving the most vulnerable, homebound survivors who were unable to come to our centers for treatment. In addition to the over 600 devoted staff members - including clinical psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists and other therapists, 1,000 volunteers are involved in our work, augmenting our care. Along with the expertise of its professional staff, the dedication of its volunteers is endless.
AMCHA- why now?
Many of the nearly 200,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel today were children during WW2- children who suffered sudden loss, abandonment, hunger, and persecution. After the war, they made every effort to rebuild their shattered lives, but not all succeeded. Many continue to struggle with their traumatic pasts.

Interestingly, while initial projections pointed to the expected decrease in the demand for our services, over the past years, the number of survivors turning to us continues to grow. In 2005 we served 8,500 individuals; in 2010 we served 13,450 individuals and now we are serving 20,000 individuals. This is explained by the fact that as the survivors' age and face additional challenges and losses, such as losing a spouse or losing physical or mental capacities, their needs' grow and their support network becomes more limited. These new challenges and losses are layered on challenges and losses from the Holocaust, including unresolved grief and other traumatic experiences. Security threats in Israel, as well as international terror attacks have also had devastating effects as they can easily trigger the survivor's wartime memories.

As the survivors face the last chapters of life, we make every effort to ensure their wellbeing, with dignity and respect, enable them to benefit from a rich program of activities they were denied in their youth, offer sincere recognition of their suffering, provide meaningful opportunities to share their legacy with younger generations and support their families.

Unfortunately, there is a very limited window of opportunity to reach out to survivors and provide them with much needed care and support. The average age of estimated 200,000 survivors living in Israel today is 86. While the child-survivors are in the 70s, there are many others in our care in their 90s,and even beyond 100, therefore we must act now!

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AMCHA - what does it mean? AMCHA, The code word that helped survivors identify fellow Jews in war-ravaged Europe, short for AMCHA YISRAEL, meaning the people of Israel, now stands for another kind of support system.