RARE RECORDINGS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS RECOVERED AFTER DECADES

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BY JPOST.COM STAFF

 

 JUNE 19, 2017 16:27

 

"It’s a bit like hearing the voice of a ghost. Here are voices that have been silent for 70 years."

1 minute read.

 

Long-silenced songs of Holocaust survivors are rediscovered

Long-silenced songs of Holocaust survivors are rediscovered

A long-missing reel of Holocaust survivors recorded singing after World War II were recently rediscovered at the University of Akron in Ohio, PBS reported last week.

The songs were part of a collection of testimonies recorded over 70 years ago by Chicago-based psychologist David Boder following the liberation of Nazi camps in Europe. The mysterious wire recordings were delivered to the American university in 1967, and remained unheard for decades.

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"Scholars were telling us that there was a missing reel. There was a reel of songs that were sung to Boder by Holocaust survivors in a camp in France after the war," Akron Professor David Baker told PBS affiliate WVIZ 'ideastream' in Cleveland. "We had a box of reels, and scholars would ask from time to time, do you know what’s on those? And we had to say, no, we don’t."

Therefore, media specialist Jon Endres and his colleague James Newhall spent three year building a mid-century-style playback machine from spare parts that would transmit the audio stored on the spools of thin silver wire.

By reproducing the outdated audio technology, the Akron scholars were able to emit a set of hauntingly somber Yiddish songs sung by Jews who had survived the harrowing ordeals of the Holocaust.

The songs were understood to have been recorded around 1946 at a displaced persons camp some 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Paris.

Baker, the director of Akron's Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, said two of the uncovered songs were sung by a woman named Guta Frank, who had survived several ghettos in Poland and forced-labor work.

One song, translated to "Our village is burning," was adapted by the composer's daughter to inspire Jews in the Krakow ghetto to rebel against the Nazis, Frank discusses in introducing the song in the recording.

"It’s a bit like hearing the voice of a ghost. Here are voices that have been silent for 70 years," Baker said. "And, all of a sudden, they’re singing. And they’re singing to us."

 

TAGS:
 
• Holocaust
 
• Jewish
 
• Nazi
 
• Wwii

SCHOOL PROJECT TO REMEMBER HOLOCAUST VICTIMS SURPASSES GOAL OF 11 MILLION STAMPS

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BY PENNY SCHWART/ JTA

 

 OCTOBER 3, 2017 15:28

 

The 'Holocaust Stamp Project' is a strong testament to the power of commemoration as carried out by the future generation.

2 minute read.

 

a holocaust survivor wears a yellow Star of David on his jacket during a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. (photo credit:REUTERS)

A 9-year-old school project to commemorate Holocaust victims surpassed its unlikely goal to collect 11 million stamps – representing the lives of 6 million Jews and 5 million other victims of intolerance who perished.

On Friday, the eve of Yom Kippur, a community volunteer for the Holocaust Stamp Project at the Foxborough Regional Charter School delivered some 7,000 canceled stamps to the K-12 charter school, bringing the total of stamps collected to 11,011,979, according to Jamie Droste, the school’s student life adviser who oversees community service learning for the high school.

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By chance, the goal-setting delivery was made on a day that a reporting team from the NBC Boston affiliate was at the school, located in a suburb south of Boston, to report about the project.

The project began nine years ago in the fifth-grade classroom of Charlotte Sheer as an outgrowth of her students reading “Number the Stars,” the award-winning work of historical fiction by Lois Lowry set during the Holocaust. By collecting 11 million stamps, one stamp at a time, Sheer envisioned the project as a way to make tangible the incomprehensible magnitude of the genocide.

From its modest beginnings of collecting a few thousand stamps, the Holocaust Stamp Project has transformed into an all-volunteer community service component for the school’s high school students. It has also attracted volunteers from the community who help with the time consuming process of counting and sorting the stamps.

Through the project, students learn about the importance of acceptance, tolerance and respect for diversity, according to Sheer and Droste, who has directed the project since Sheer’s retirement about five years ago.

Over the years, as word of the project spread, with media reports locally and in Israel and Germany, stamps have arrived from 47 states and 22 countries including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel and Ireland. Some are sent a few at a time, including from Holocaust survivors or their family members, and others, including some rare stamps, have been donated by collectors in batches of thousands at a time.

As part of the project, students have transformed thousands of the stamps into 11 meticulously crafted colorful collages whose intricate designs reflect a Holocaust-related theme. The goal is to complete 18 collages, Droste told JTA. The collages have been displayed for the community during Holocaust Remembrance programs.

The nearly 1,300 students at the school come from diverse cultures and backgrounds, with many from immigrant families whose lives are far removed from the events of the Holocaust, according to Droste. Some are from countries that have experienced war or economic hardships, she noted.

“The multicultural diversity makes the school strong,” she said. Only a few of the school’s students are Jewish.

In today’s political climate, students are aware of the hate in the world, Droste observed.

“This is one lesson that reaches all of them. We need to focus on peace and what is good and never forget the lives of those who were taken because of intolerance,” she said.

The project was recognized during the Yom Hashoah commemoration last spring with an award by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

Droste said she is hoping that the collages and collection will find a permanent home at an institution or organization where they can be on display.

 

TAGS:
 
• Holocaust
 
• Holocaust survivors
 
• Holocaust memorial day
 
• World war ii

 

RETIRED FBI AGENT OPENS NEW INVESTIGATION INTO ANNE FRANK'S BETRAYAL

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   Behind the pages of the world's most famous diary

BY BECKY BROTHMAN

 

 OCTOBER 3, 2017 10:52

 

"There is no statute of limitation on the truth.”

3 minute read.

 

Anne Frank in 1940, while at 6. Montessorischool, Niersstraat 41-43, Amsterdam. (photo credit:PUBLIC DOMAIN)

It has been 73 years since Anne Frank and her family were betrayed, but one retired FBI agent won't give up on the case just yet.

Vince Pankoke launched a new cold case investigation, along with over a dozen other forensic experts and historians, to solve the unanswered question of who betrayed Anne Frank's hiding place, The Guardian reported.

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Pankoke conceded that the investigation was more of a fact-finding mission and would not lead to arrests or criminal charges.

“We are not trying to point fingers or prosecute...,"  he told the British daily. "There is no statute of limitation on the truth.”

The investigation is being assisted by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, which has given Pankoke's team access to its archives.

Researchers will use modern investigative techniques and software to analyze data and develop new leads. The team has already reconstructed the scene on the day of the Franks' arrest.

The team will utilize the expertise of historians as well as many facets of law enforcement, including behavioral analysis and criminal profiling. Roger Depue, former unit chief of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit, will analyze historical witness statements.

The investigation will be filmed throughout its various stages. Pankoke was initially enlisted to review the cold case by Thijs Bayens, a Dutch filmmaker, and Pieter Van Twisk, a Dutch journalist.

Pankoke spent a large part of his time at the FBI tracking Colombian drug traffickers and was awarded a medal by the Colombian government for his investigations into the North Valley Cartel. He also infiltrated the financial activities of Wall Street criminals as an undercover agent.

Anne and her family went into hiding in the attic of her father Otto's company Opteka on June 12, 1942. From June 14, 1942 to August 1, 1944, Anne Frank would document life inside the attic in her diary, which she addressed to "Kitty," ultimately becoming one of the most complete first-hand accounts of a Holocaust victim.

Anne Frank House (photo credit: Michael Kooren/Reuters)

The original occupants of the attic were Anne, her older sister Margot, and their parents Otto and Edith. Three members of the van Pels family -- Hermann, Auguste, and their son Peter -- and Fritz Pfeffer, a German-born dentist, moved into the attic later in 1942.

On August 4, 1944, a group of police and security officers led by SS-Hauptscharführer Karl Silberbauer entered the attic and arrested all the occupants. Of the seven occupants of the attic, only Otto survived.

After the war ended, Otto devoted much of his life to the publication of his daughter's diary. He also urged an investigation into his family's betrayal.

Otto believed that his family was betrayed by Wilhelm van Maaren, one of Opteka's workers. However, there was no conclusive evidence against van Maaren and he was completely exonerated after a second police investigation was launched in 1963.

Throughout the decades, many theories have come up regarding the Franks' betrayal. Nearly thirty suspects have been named during previous investigations, with motives ranging from financial blackmail to blind allegiance to Nazism.

One of the most notable suspects is Ans van Dijk, a Dutch-Jewish woman who was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (Nazi intelligence agency) and collaborated with the SD in exchange for her freedom. Van Dijk posed as a resistance member, offering to find Jews false papers and hiding places. She turned in at least 145 people with estimates as high as 700. She converted to Catholicism the night before she was executed for treason in 1948.

However compelling the theories, the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies stated in 2003 that there was no conclusive evidence against the four most important suspects on the list.

Another theory in 2016 posited that the arrest could have been less betrayal and more coincidence. The Anne Frank House itself published the findings of a two-year study which suggested that the raiding party may have been looking for something else when they happened to find the attic's occupants.

Vince Pankoke and his investigative team will follow the leads to get to the bottom of this decades-long mystery. Pankoke hopes to crack the cold case by August 4, 2019, 75 years to the day of Anne Frank's betrayal and arrest.