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20 hours ago
Monday, 26 January 2009
SLAVE LABOUR UNDER THE THIRD REICH
German government pays for shocking Holocaust survivor testimonies to be published online
By Allan Hall
The videotaped testimony of Nazi slaves has been published online for historians and students to learn of their ordeal.
Six hundred forced labourers pressed into the service of the Third Reich’s war machine give their testimony in a multi-million pound project paid for by the German government.
They form a small part of the 12million enslaved by the Nazis to toil for the state while Germany’s male population fought in the armed services.
The Nazis were different from other slave-owning societies, like the ancient Romans or the plantation owners of the deep south in America, in that their slaves were not valued commodities but units to be abused, starved and often worked to death.
The 341 men and 249 women featured in the videos tell of working in concentration camps or munitions plants under gruelling conditions for little or no pay, miserable living conditions and exposure to hunger and disease.
'Their suffering should not be forgotten,' said Guenther Saathoff, the head of the Remembrance, Responsibility And Future foundation managing the £4.1billion fund.
Some 1.66million people from nearly 100 countries received compensation from a German government fund between 2001 and 2007.
Saathoff said the online video project was launched because the former forced labourers were seeking more than reparations.
'The victims did not want only money that was owed to them - they also wanted to tell about things that no one wanted to hear about for decades,' he said.
In one account, a Hungarian Jew called Henry Friedman in his 80s who has lived in Atlanta, Georgia, since the war's end said he was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
Friedmann told of being beaten and how he was forced to work at a huge arms factory in Budapest in 1944, before he was assigned to transports for German troops fighting the Russians in the countryside.
'We were taken by the Germans to an outpost, and we were given orders that every day we would assemble at 3am and would climb the mountain and would be over there from between three till five, six the next morning,' he said.
'At that time, in the mountains, it was maybe 40 below zero. No clothing, not the right clothing. When we finished supplying the hot food, we brought down on stretchers the wounded or dead Germans to the base of the mountains. That would be our job.'
He said Jews suffered particularly brutal treatment among the workers.
'In case someone gets hurt, don't even ask for any kind of bandage or anything because you're a Jew - you're not entitled to - which meant that if you're lost or hurt, you have to freeze to death or bleed to death,' he said.
The documentary project began in 2005.
Survivors ranging in age from 65 to 98 were recorded on video primarily in Eastern Europe but also in the United States, Israel and South Africa.
A third of them, mostly Jews or Roma, were forced to work in concentration camps in particularly degrading and frequently life-threatening conditions.
A former slave labourer, Felix Kolmer, said the online archive would make increasingly rare personal accounts of the Nazi programme available to researchers, teachers and students.
'Victims will finally get the public recognition and attention for which they have often waited in vain over the last decades,' said Kolmer, who is also vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust survivors group.
The project can be viewed at: www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de
taken from : Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1126971/German-government-pays-shocking-Holocaust-survivor-testimonies-published-online.html)
MORE ON RACHEL IMENU
Posted by Mordechai Friedfertig
Did Rachel Imenu really reveal herself in the war or not? In other words, who is obligated to prove it – the one who claims that she did appear or the one who claims that she did not appear? The simple answer is based upon the halachic principle: "Ha-motzi me-chavero alav ha-ra'ayah - The burden of proof rests upon the one who demands the money," i.e. the burden of proof rests upon one who makes a claim which veers from the usual. The usual is that Rachel Imenu does not appear in war. Rachel Imenu was not in our first war when Yehoshua bin Nun waged war against Amalek. She was not in the war of Moshe Rabbenu against Sichon and Og. She was not in the war of Yehoshua bin Nun to conquer the Land of Israel. She was not in any of the wars of the Judges. She was not in the wars of King Shaul and of King David. She was not in the wars of any of the Kings of Israel. She was not in the war of the Hasmoneans. She was not in the war of Bar Kochba. She was not in the War of Independence, the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War. She was not in any war. The presumption is that she does not go out to war. Now, there are those claiming that she was there. It is possible, but it must be proven. How? We need to hear from the soldier who claimed that it happened. We need to question him before a Beit Din according to the Halachah: Do you really see her? Maybe it was an Arab woman? Maybe it was a Jewish woman captured by the Arabs and she was reminded that she was a Jew? Maybe you imagined it? As long as it has not been investigated, it has not been proven. Up until now, I have not heard anything.
I was therefore happy when a friend told me what he saw with his own eyes. During the war, a bunch of reservists were sitting around a fire on a freezing-cold night with warm jackets which they brought from home. A few regular soldiers arrived and they were frozen to the bone. The reservists did not hesitate to take off their jackets which were almost more precious to them than their weapons and gave them to the other soldiers. This is Rachel Imenu! Rachel Imenu gave up Yaakov - who was the most precious thing to her – for her sister. I am not saying that a jacket and a spouse are comparable, but this act at its source comes from Rachel Imenu.
In David's lament for Yonatan, he says: "Your love was more wonderful to me than the love of women" (Shmuel 2 1:26). The Targum (the Aramaic translation) says: "the love of two women." A Chasidic Rebbe once asked: Who are these two women? His answer: Rachel and Leah. David was saying: "Yonatan, your love for me in which you were willing to forego the kingship flows from the love of two women - when Rachel was willing to forego for Leah." Giving up a jacket is obviously not like giving up the kingship, but it is still flows from Rachel Imenu.
And Rashi explains at the beginning of Parashat Va-Yechi (Bereshit 48:7): Why wasn't Rachel buried in the Cave of Machpelah or even in Beit Lechem, but by the side of the road? So that when we were on our way to Exile she would be an aid for her children, as it says: "A voice is heard in Ramah. Rachel cries for her children…there is a reward for your actions and your children will return to their border" (Yirmiyahu 31:14-16). But couldn't she be an aid from Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah – it is only a little farther away?! I heard one Rav explain that for the sake of her children Rachel gave up being buried in Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah. We see that Rachel Imenu was willing to forego and we must do the same. The Exile was on account of "Sinat Chinam – Baseless Hatred" and the Redemption will be on account of "Ahavat Chinam – Baseless Love." In this way, Rachel is an aid for her children. She teaches us "Ahavat Chinam – Baseless Love." Every soldier who entered the Gaza Strip did so with self-sacrifice to save other Jews. This is not a jacket, a spouse, the kingship or a spot in Ma'arat Ha-Machpelah, it is risking one's life. Therefore, Rachel was there. She was with every soldier who entered with self-sacrifice for the sake of his brothers. It truly was Rachel!
For more on this issue see:
Past Post by Rav Aviner:
www.ravaviner.com/2009/01/rachel-imenu-our-foremother-rachel-in.html
Ha-Rav Mordechai Eliyahu:
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3659308,00.html
Ha-Rav Ovadiah Yosef:
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3661283,00.html
taken from : Torat HaRav Aviner (http://www.ravaviner.com/)
WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T UPSET THE MUSLIMS
It seems lately as if all our laws can be reduced to one single law, "Whatever You Do, Don't Upset the Muslims."9/11 proved that defending ourselves against terrorism takes a backseat to Muslim sensitivities. The cartoon controversy proved that for the West, Freedom of Speech takes a backseat to offending Muslims, whether by censorship or by self-censorship. The Citibank bailout proved that we will spend 25 billion dollars to bail out a company whose two biggest shareholders are a Saudi Prince and the UAE government-- the same folks who financed Al Queda.
Sure we could have shown some backbone. Sure we could have done the right thing in all 3 cases, but it was more important not to upset the Muslims.
For Europe that attitude is almost understandable. Having filled European country after country with Algerians, Moroccans, Pakistanis and Turks, emptying the rest of the ugly bag of Muslims and Mohammeds across countries where people once reasonably expected to be able to walk through their own neighborhoods without coming across a Mosque preaching "Death to the Infidels" in screeching accents, you have two choices, drive them out or tiptoe softly past them.
The sound you hear next is hundreds of millions of people in Europe tiptoeing very softly to avoid annoying Mohammed who's busy beating his wife while listening to taped lectures from his favorite Imam on how to beat your wife right, the Quranic way. Except the wife he's beating is actually that woman that artists like Delacroix used to draw to represent the values of liberty and the soul of the republic. It's a metaphor that Muslim rappers themselves are eager to articulate, particularly in France, symbolized by a woman and despised for it by the cockroaches infesting France's banlieues.
Europe imported its Muslims and then tried to integrate them to become one big happy family. Now Europe has accepted that it won't be wearing the pants in this marriage, and Mohammed is bringing in a horde of relatives to take over the formerly gracious manor, filling it from top to bottom with squalor, violence and hate. Drug dealing on the front porch, a car theft ring in the garage, prostitution out back, rape in the basement, burglary in the living room and a mosque in the attic reminding them all to go to prayers. That is the real face of the New Britain, the New France and the New Europe.
While Europeans occasionally dare to speak about a Muslim problem, they won't for long. If you let the cockroach problem in your house get bad enough, you stop having a cockroach problem, and the cockroaches start having a people problem. Soon enough Europe won't have a Muslim problem, Muslims will have a European problem... and if anyone wonders how they will take care of it, a short look at the way Sudan, Indonesia, not to mention most of the Middle East have taken care of their Christian problem should answer that question. Men may have qualms about killing cockroaches, but cockroaches have no qualms about killing men.
America however which still has a Muslim problem, instead of Muslims having an American problem, has imported this international case of Stockholm Syndrome. No Muslims had to riot to insure that the Danish cartoons would never appear in the American press, unless censored in a way usually reserved for obscene images. The press did it themselves, bowing their heads to Mecca and following that supreme law which has now displaced court and constitution, Thou Shalt Not Offend the Muslim.
Stockholm Syndrome or A Bad Case of the Dhimmis, means that anyone who offends a Muslim is at fault. Take a Muslim off a plane when he acts suspiciously, and it's the fault of the airlines for not wanting their planes to be run into New York landmarks. Draw a cartoon a Muslim doesn't like, and it's a clear case of provocation. Hang an Israeli flag in your window while a bloodthirsty mob of Turks bays for Jewish blood in Berlin, and the police will come in and take it out. Because it isn't the Muslim mob that's at fault. You are.If mobs of white men and women gathered in major American cities holding up posters and chanting "Kill All Jews" and "Go Back to the Ovens", there would be nationwide outrage and condemnation. But when Muslims do it, the press has nothing to say about it, except that Israel fighting terrorists inside its own borders and working to rescue its own soldiers held hostage, is to blame.
Before All Else, Thou Shalt Not Offend the Muslim. Even when he's trying to kill you. Especially when he's trying to kill you.
It isn't just in Berlin, or Paris. It's in New York City too.
"I went back to my apartment where I met my boyfriend who had also just returned from the second Pro Israel rally on 39th Street & 7th Avenue. We walked outside the building and across a major midtown avenue on the West Side to buy some groceries. He was still carrying the Israeli flag and we were both wearing baseball caps with the American flag and USA on the brims. A large number of Muslims were milling around since it seems that their rally had reached its end point and was dispersing. Six Muslim men were being photographed with posters with the words, "Praise Hamas and Hezbollah, Reopen the Ovens" and were taking photos of themselves and their posters. Seeing us with the Israel flag, they began screaming, “You’re assholes, Kill the Jews, We are going to kill you, This is OUR country," etc."
That's the West Side, not Oslo or London or a suburb in France. But it's not just New York City. It's also Charlotte, North Carolina.
"On Sunday, January 11, 2008 a portion of my daughter's youth group from church attended a Christian concert festival called "Winter Jam" at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was expected to be a great time and it was once they entered the building. Unfortunately the group of ten to twelve year old children paid for their moment of fellowship and worship with every step they took towards the entrance."
When the youth group tried to enter the event, they were surrounded by a group of "Palestinian" protesters against Israel. The protesters surrounded the American children, screamed profanity and called them horrible names such as "baby murderers," while waving signs of what was portrayed as "mangled" children from "Palestine." In order to enter, the children had to be surrounding by adult chaperons and pushed through.
Instead of the police department honoring my request, I was left on the phone and bounced from one employee to another. I eventually landed on the phone with a police representative who called himself "Dante" and refused to give a last name. In lieu of filing a report, "Dante" talked to me like a two year old and declared that the protesters where "well within their rights" and that it was "their freedom" to do these things. I was eventually bounced on to another person by "Dante" before my telephone finally went dead."
And it's Ft Lauderdale, and all across America. The latest round of fighting in Gaza has given Muslims a chance to show off their hate, and to test how far they will be allowed to go. So far the message they've been given is "Clear Sailing".
Our advantage over Europe is that we have more time to prepare. But time is a finite quantity. In spirit and in their pocketbooks, America's leaders have already bowed their heads to Mecca. As Europe has demonstrated, the rest quickly becomes a legal formality.Watch the immigration floodgates open, as the Democrats work to solve the Red State problem by importing the Third World into formerly conservative states. Wait a few years until Obama nominates Noah Feldman, the architect of the Iraqi constitution, and America's biggest promoter of Sharia law, to the United States Supreme Court, to replace his mentor Justice David Souter. The worst is yet to come, and it's happening because we refuse to be offensive, we fear to shout the truth and stand up to the political thugs who have seized control of our culture and are leading us and our civilization in a Death March toward the sea.
Free people do not fear giving offense, because freedom of speech is one of the core freedoms that any open society values. It is slaves who learn to fear giving offense, who carefully watch their masters, learning what they can say and what they cannot. When free people learn to fear their words, they learn to be slaves.
Whatever you do, don't just upset the Muslims... make them mad as hell.
taken from : Sultan Knish (http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2009/01/whatever-you-do-dont-upset-muslims.html)
REVEALING AN EVIL STATE OF MIND
One evening during the fighting a young man from Sderot came up to Jerusalem and gave a talk at a public forum. He told about the debilitating effects of living under fire for eight years. How suppliers of his grocery store preferred not to make deliveries so the locals needed to go to the large supermarket outside town because they were better stocked. How he did his best to fire no-one after an employee who could have been his father burst into tears when informed there wasn't enough income to keep him on the books. How families broke apart under the never-ending strain. How his twins aged five, who have never known a life free of sirens panicked when on a trip to the quiet north they heard a distant ambulance and didn't have their safe protected corner to escape to.
It made his audience embarrassed for having lived their lives disregarding all this.
Gideon Levy published another screed on Friday. You don't have to go read it; it's the usual jumble of inaccuracies, facts strung together in the opposite chronology from reality, lots of ideology and hatred... the usual. But he did have a revealing slip, one that his editors in the Hebrew paper version promoted from the text to the caption under the picture. Describing the Hudna period of semi-calm since last summer, he tells
The fact that the residents of the south experienced a period of calm, almost without Qassam rockets, was blurred....Yes, there were Qassams and mortar shells - few, unnecessary, barren - which should have been forgiven with wisdom.
Perhaps the single most important thing about the operation we just waged is that we finally roused ourselves form our cruel lethargy and made it clear that there's no such thing as an acceptable level of violence against some of us that the rest can overlook and pretend not to see. We're responsible for all of us.
taken from : Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations (http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/)
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