New Film: "Stories of the Selfhelp Home"

In the late 1930s, following the ferocious anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht, a determined group of young German Jews left behind everything that was dear and familiar and immigrated to Chicago. Here, these refugees set out to create a supportive community for themselves and others fleeing Nazi persecution, eventually establishing the Selfhelp Home for the oldest among them.

REFUGE is a one-hour documentary that reaches back more than seventy years to give a voice to its last generation of victims of Nazi persecution and tell the story of this singular community that has provided a safe haven to more than one thousand Central European Jewish refugees and survivors. REFUGE weaves together historical narrative, archival footage and deeply personal testimony to explore the lives of six Chicagoans against the context of the Nazi cataclysm and how a small group of them came together to care for their own. The film illuminates the lost world of Central European Jewry prior to World War II--middle class, educated, cultured--and the remarkable courage, resilience and character of its final generation at Selfhelp.

In their own words, these refugees and survivors, now in their late eighties and above, speak vividly of loss of family and of place, of separations, and of decisions that meant the difference between life and death. They describe the myriad paths to survival: fleeing to the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, hiding in the French countryside, being taken in by English families as part of the Kindertransport, and as slave laborers in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. And of those, who perished—husbands, parents, siblings, children. Yet, theirs are also stories of renewal, of finding love and creating new families, and of starting again in a new land.

The film moves back and forth between these stories and examines how the trajectories of their lives came together at the end at Selfhelp. And it reaches into the near future, when the last eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, those who have animated Selfhelp and given it its unique mission and meaning, will be gone. 
 

You can view the film preview here.

You can visit the Museum's other thirty-two film clips by visiting its Screening Room.

"We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust", from the Museum's "Yiddish Vinkl" Bookstore

"Ellen Cassedy set off into the Jewish heartland of Lithuania to study Yiddish and connect with her Jewish forebears. Then her uncle, a Holocaust survivor, pulled a worn slip of paper from his pocket. “Read this,” he said.

When she did, she learned something she had never suspected, and what had begun as a personal quest expanded into a larger exploration of memory and moral dilemmas in a nation scarred by genocide. Cassedy’s deeply felt account offers important insights – and hope."

This new book by author Ellen Cassedy is the seventh book featured in the Museum of Family History's "Yiddish Vinkl" Bookstore. Though, like the Museum, the Bookstore is virtual, i.e. it exists solely on the Internet, it tries to spread the word to others of books that it feels worthwhile.
By clicking here, you may see its book cover, watch a YouTube video about the book, and read an excerpt from the book.

Ellen gave a talk recently to those in attendance at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island and gave an interesting talk about her new book.

The Museum hopes you will visit its Yiddish Vinkl Bookstore, and also encourages you to read about the other books featured.

Please note that the Museum (or this blog) have no financial interest in any of these books.


Regards,
Steve Lasky
Founder and Director
Museum of Family History

Postal Evidence of the Holocaust: Postcards from Auschwitz

From the Museum's "Never Forget: Visions of the Nazi Camps" online exhibition and the Spungen Family Foundation's Postal Collection:

Compared to later conditions, treatment of prisoners during the first year was relatively humane. A printed announcement from the camp commandant on the back of this December 16, 1940, formular post card stated, "Each prisoner may have a packet weighing one kilogram sent to him by relatives for Christmas, but not as a packet with money order. Permitted: bread, Christmas pastries, winter sausage, tobacco products, toilet articles. Forbidden: enclosures of money, canned jelly, stamps, photographs, letters, and flammable materials such as lighters, matches, etc. For delivery the packet should have the most correct address, including the birthdate and prisoner number. The packet must be sent in the period from December 10, 1940, to January 5, 1941. All incoming packages that do not conform to camp regulations will be confiscated for the benefit of prisoners who receive no packet from home."

Below are partial descriptions of more postal artifacts from Auschwitz on display at the virtual Museum of Family History. All can be found by visiting the exhibition and clicking on the Auschwitz-Birkenau link.

--A February 28, 1942, formular envelope mailed by prisoner number 205 (first transport) to Tarnów. Boxed red censor mark on the back.

--An unmailed post card published by the Auschwitz Museum after World War II shows the camp crematorium in 1943, location of an unsuccessful prisoners' revolt in 1943.

--Enclosed inside this March 11, 1944, prisoner's formular lettersheet was a printed notice to the recipient...

--Despite the ban on Easter parcels for prisoners in 1944, one inmate received this colorful hand-painted Easter card from a relative after it had passed the camp sensor.

--November 23, 1944, insured railway express receipt for a 10-kilogram parcel of food and clothing shipped from Beatrix Wiesner at Prague to prisoner Richard Wiesner at Auschwitz.

--This October 13, 1942, telegram from the Auschwitz camp commandant to Lublin states: "Your husband died today in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Details from the commander of the security police and the SD in the Lublin district."

--On this August 2, 1943, message-and-reply postal card from Zichenau, Franz Zawacki queried the Auschwitz administration about the fate of prisoner Egon Konstanty Zawacki.

--Very few letters or cards addressed to Auschwitz prisoners have survived, for obvious reasons, so the March 27, 1943, postal card from a mother in Warsaw to her daughter at Birkenau is exceptional. The postage fee official mail parcel waybill from the printing facility of the Auschwitz central administration to the Flossenbürg concentration camp administration probably accompanied a shipment of formular stationery for prisoners.

--A March 27, 1943, air mail letter and an April 24, 1943, special delivery letter from a French forced laborer at the Auschwitz West Buchenholz labor camp operated by I.G. Farben to his parents in Meaux, France. Both were censored at Frankfurt.

--The message on this May 31, 1944, prisoner's post card from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to Kolozsvar, Hungary (today Cluj, Romania)….

--This page and the two that follow document the tragedy of Arnold Singer, a German Jew of Luckau whose brother, Walter Singer, had escaped to Sweden and was trying to help Arnold leave Germany and join him.

More such postal artifacts can be found not only within this exhibition for dozens of camps, but also within the two other new exhibitions, "Persecution and Flight: the Nazi Campaign Against the Jews" and "The Jewish Ghetto." Please make a thorough visit to these three Museum exhibitions at your convenience.

"Jacob's Courage," a novel by Charles S. Weinblatt

The Museum of Family History presents to you the first in a series of books that might be of interest to you. After presentation of the book cover and a synopsis, a link will be provided to the full-length version of the book, usually courtesy of the author unless the book is out of copyright.

The first book in the Museum's "Read-a-Book" Collection is Charles S. Weinblatt's fictional novel entitled "Jacob's Courage: A Holocaust Love Story." Also included within this presentation is a short video book trailer that you might like to see.

You may read below the first part of the synopsis, or click here to read the book.

How would you feel if, at age seventeen, the government removed you from school, evicted you from your home, looted your bank account and took all of your family's possessions? How would you feel if ruthless police prevented your parents from working and then deported you and your loved ones to a prison camp run by brutal taskmasters? How would you feel if you suddenly lost contact with everyone that you know and love? How would you feel if you were sent to the most frightening place in history, and then forced to perform unspeakable acts of horror in order to remain alive?

Jacob's Courage is a tender coming of age love story of two young adults living in Salzburg at the time when the Nazi war machine enters Austria. This historical novel explores the dazzling beauty of passionate love and enduring bravery in a lurid world where the innocent are brutally murdered. From desperate despair, to unforgettable moments of chaste beauty, Jacob’s Courage examines a constellation of emotions during a time of incomprehensible brutality.

The Holocaust in Riga, Latvia

Tomek Wisniewski, a Bialystok native, has created a short film of less than three minutes entitled "The Holocaust in Riga." The film is composed of actual film clips of Riga taken during the Occupation, including film of the burning of the Great Riga Synagogue.

You can find the link to this film among the listing of sixty Wisniewski film clips at the Museum (listed alphabetically by town) by clicking here.

I don't imagine that most of you have seen this film, so it is worth seeing through this window back to these sad and destructive times.

New "Walk in My Shoes: Collected Memories of the Holocaust" Entry for Kaunas, Lithuania

Ed (Ephraim) Gruzin was born in 1927 in Kaunas (Kovno), and is a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto and Kaufering concentration camp number one near Landsberg, Germany. He has written a biography of his life and has graciously given permission to the Museum to make his story available to all museum "visitors."

You can read his story, as well as see some of his family pictures, by clicking here.

This is the Museum's first WIMS entry for Lithuania. More such stories are welcome, no matter from what country the Survivor comes from.

"The Jewish Ghetto," coming in 2010

The Museum of Family History is currently working on an exhibition due out in 2010 entitled "The Jewish Ghetto." It will predominantly be about the ghettos created during the Second World War into which Jewish citizens were forceably relocated. The exhibition will include photographs, first and third person accounts, newspaper articles, audio clips and more.

It is requested of you, the Museum blog reader, to participate in this exhibition by sending the Museum, primarily via email at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com, material you might have that can be used in this exhibition, having to do with these ghettos. If you have any questions about what material might be useful, etc., please contact the Museum at the aforementioned email address.

This is a "people's museum," so to speak, so your participation is greatly encouraged.

"Not Now, Not Ever" - Jadzia's Story of Survival

You will most likely be interested in reading the story of Jean Klein/Frank (Jadzia), who is a Holocaust survivor; or rather she was, as she passed away in Malibu, California in June of 2009.

She was born in Kalisz, Poland, and during the war traveled to, and lived in, Belchatow, Lodz, Warsaw and finally Czestochowa. I just finished reading and getting her complete book (only seventy-six pages) online. It is a sad story as most of these stories of survival are, yet it is also an intimate and moving account of her life and her survival.

Much of the account takes place in Czestochowa, so this should be interesting for you to read, at minimum those of you who had family there during World War II.

The link to this is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wims-klein-jean.htm.