Holocaust Memorial both melancholy and uplifting

Hank, Bob and Allan work on memorial at Etz Chaim

When God was handing out the handyman genes, I was still in the line for hair. Glance at my profile mug and you can see how well that worked out for me. I mention this now because I decided to take my bald noggin and defective handyman genes down to my neighborhood shul earlier this week to help pull together a new Holocaust Memorial Garden.

Fortunately, Hank N., master carpenter and handyman extraordinaire, is handling the heavy lifting for Etz Chaim’s Men’s Club, the group that has taken on the project of updating and retooling the memorial. It’s all part of an expansive renovation to expand and beautify the front entrance, foyer and office area of the synagogue.

The original memorial garden included some interesting and memorable items – cobblestones from the Warsaw Ghetto and railroad tracks that had once spilled into one of the death camps in Eastern Europe. These iconic bits will remain a featured part of the new garden, while most everything else has been demolished and whisked away.

Through the creative work of Allan S., Etz Chaim’s own personal landscape architect, I’m thinking the new garden is going to manage to be both melancholy and uplifting – recalling the past while honoring the Jews and others who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis.

The entire area has been scrubbed clean and warmed up with new landscaping. Concrete flooring has been replaced with pavers and the entire garden is set against a startling new fence, eerily echoing the harsh reality that defined the Holocaust. Nearby, an eternal light will keep watch, offering up a warm glow and reminder that the Six Million will never be forgotten.

With the help of Men’s Club officers and members – Barry, Johnny, Jeff and Joe – and the creative and speedy work of Allan and Hank, the new and updated Holocaust Memorial Garden will be finished by the High Holidays. It will be officially dedicated in November on the Anniversary of Kristallnacht.

One good reason to observe High Holidays

I received an e-mail solicitation yesterday and was just about to tap the delete button when I noticed it was from Yad Vashem, the world-class Holocaust Museum in Israel. They were asking for money and sharing a story. It’s a story worth repeating and remembering as many of us prepare to observe the Jewish High Holidays in coming days.

Naftali Stern visited Yad Vashem on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, in 1978. He had a gift, a few pieces of crinkled paper filled with Hebrew prayers. It was a precious gift, something he had created years earlier when the world had gone momentarily mad and a little light was needed to brighten the darkness.

In the spring of 1944, Naftali, his wife and four children were swallowed up by the Holocaust, arrested in their little village of Satu Mare in Romania and deported to Auschwitz. His family was murdered when they arrived at the Nazi death camp in Poland and Naftali was shipped off to a forced labor camp in Germany.

He was depressed and alone, each moment filled with memories of all that was lost. His world had become a nightmare – little food, no shelter, brutal guards and backbreaking work digging tunnels and trenches around German fortifications.

Surrounded by misery, a vague and distant memory took root in Naftali’s mind. The days were growing shorter and there was a slight chill in the air. Something stirred inside his heart and Naftali recalled that soon it would be Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Many would have easily pushed that thought aside, buried it along with their families, neighbors and villages.

Naftali clung to the thought; a very small light in a very gray world. He sold a bit of the food he received one day for a pencil, sold a bit more and managed to purchase some sacks that had once held cement. He ripped the sacks into small squares then slowly began to write the entire Rosh Hashana service.

Perhaps it was simply something that was meant to be. If not, why then did the thugs running the labor camp allow Naftali and other inmates to hold a short service? It was Naftali, of course, the chazzan in his little village shul, that led services that holiday season, his sweet voice chanting the words he had scrawled from memory.

For three decades – years after being liberated, starting a new family and immigrating to Israel – Naftali held onto his special mahzor, bringing it out on Rosh Hashana to both mourn and celebrate his life and faith. Three months after he donated the document to Yad Vashem, Naftali died.

It was okay. He knew that his special mahzor – time worn and frayed, created with love for a people and faith – would be protected. Now, three decades later, it remains on display at the museum.

Over the next several days, during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, as you struggle with the liturgy and ancient beliefs of Judaism – trying to make sense of the inexplicable – recall Naftali, his story and his final words.

“I pray,” he told Yad Vashem officials, “that each subsequent generation will stay true to their Jewish identity and be a link in a long chain.”

It seems to me, if nothing else, simply sitting in shul will honor Naftali’s prayer. That's a good thing. I'll worry about figuring out the more cosmic issues next year. L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu; May we all be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Yom HaShoah: 10 good reasons to never forget

It's Friday, time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts. Today I offer a few reasons why we need recall the horrors of the past.

It’s been over six decades since the monstrous work of the Nazis was fully revealed to the World. The bleak days of World War II are a fading memory for many, but the Jewish community continues to recall and honor the six million Jews lost in the Holocaust.

One special day, Yom HaShoah, has been set aside to honor the dead, the survivors, the martyrs and heroes. It will be observed here in the Land of Cotton on Sunday with several community-sponsored programs. Here are 10 reasons why you might want to attend one of the observances or, at the very least, spend a few moments in quiet reflection.

1. To honor the 6 million
2. To remember the 5 million non-Jewish victims
3. To mourn the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered
4. To recall the 5,000 Jewish communities wiped out across Eastern Europe
5. To offer thanks for the 304,500 Jews who managed to emigrate from Germany before it was too late to escape
6. To salute the citizens of Denmark who managed to ferry 7,800 Jews to safety In Sweden
7. To praise the 22,211 people and groups considered “Righteous among the Nations,” the term used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination
8. To take note of the 1,668 synagogues – virtually every shul in Germany – destroyed or damaged on Kristallnacht
9. To marvel at the grit and determination of the 250,000 Jews housed in Displaced Person camps across Europe following the war
10. To applaud the bravery of the 30,000 Jews who managed to join partisan groups across Eastern Europe to battle the invading Nazis

FROM THE ASHES

Several years ago I visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s world-class Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Moments after walking through the children’s memorial there, a profoundly moving experience that recalls the 1.5 million youngsters murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators, I stumbled onto a group of Israeli soldiers.

They had just exited the memorial also. Inexplicably, they were joking around, laughing and chatting. I found myself getting angry. But after a moment’s reflection, it seemed to me there was something redemptive about the scene and the young soldiers’ behavior.

In a fashion I still find difficult to articulate, the young Israelis seemed part of a chain, one additional link that includes the horror of the Holocaust and establishment of the State of Israel, ancient wars and prophesies, the patriarchs and cosmic promises.

Just a few decades earlier, the fabric of the Jewish community seemed in shreds, six million Jews slaughtered across Eastern Europe, millions more homeless and wandering about in search of a place to call home. All of that has changed and the laughing soldiers, it seemed to me, were the Jewish people’s victory and future, and I realized I felt comfort in their presence.

‘Hunting Eichmann’ gets us behind the scenes

It’s Friday, time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts. Today we revisit the Holocaust and one of the Nazis responsible for its horror.

Mention the Holocaust and several names come quickly to mind. Adolf Hitler was at the top of the Nazi killing machine, opening the door on pure evil and madness that led to the mass murder of six million Jews.

Right on his heels and at his beck and call was a bunch of infamous thugs, including Hermann Göring, Hitler’s designated successor, commander of the Luftwaffe and one of the early architect’s of the Holocaust; Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Reich Main Security Office that included the Gestapo) and another early architect of the Holocaust; Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and chief of the German Police; and Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, a bully and sadist who often was the final arbiter on who would live and who would die at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi death camps.

And then there was Adolf Eichmann, a very small fish in a very large and fetid pond. The SS-Obersturmbannführer was head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo, charged with the creation and implementation of the “Final Solution”.

While most of his bosses, all virulent anti-Semites, set the stage for the extermination of millions of Jews, it was Eichmann and his team of bureaucrats who figured out the logistics – rounding up of entire communities, creation of ghettos and camps, scheduling of transports and collection of contraband. Despite his claims that he was simply following orders, Eichmann was a mass murderer who lacked any sort of moral compass. It’s quite possible, mesmerized and nurtured by the power and decadence of Nazi Germany, that by war’s end he was a full-blown psychopath.

Eichmann relished his work and took delight as his intricate plans played out across Eastern Europe. Millions of Jews were ripped from their homes and villages, tossed into crowded ghettos and camps, the vast majority ultimately murdered and buried in mass graves or cremated and turned to ash.

Most of us, even those with only a casual knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust, know that Eichmann managed to escape from Europe after allied forces defeated Hitler and his Nazi war machine. He made his way to South America and managed to hide away for 15 years before Israeli agents kidnapped him near his home outside of Buenos Aires.

In a daring, some might argue heroic operation, Eichmann was then flown halfway around the world to Israel where he was held as a war criminal and tried for crimes against the Jewish people and humanity. He was found guilty and hanged.

Novels and biographies, documentaries, TV specials and dramas have been written and aired about Eichmann, his loathsome life and work, capture, trial and execution. I mention all this, a bit of windy preamble, to suggest it worth your time to check out a relatively new history on the topic, “Hunting Eichmann” by Neal Bascomb (Mariner Books, 388 pages).

Bascomb’s good work often reads like an intricate spy novel, filled with twists and turns that he managed to uncover after the release of groundbreaking new information. This lucky break – for Bascomb and his readers – is supported and fleshed out by hundreds of interviews and recently declassified documents.

The basic story hasn’t changed, but now readers have the opportunity to take a peek behind the facts. What we find offers up a troubling look into the crazed mind of Eichmann and, just as interesting, into the planning and execution of his capture by a feisty, still maturing intelligence agency – the Mossad.

The team of spies and their helpers were an eclectic blend of experienced agents and naïve, anxious volunteers. Bascomb reports it would take equal measures of chutzpah, steely resolve and expertise to accomplish their mission. They were also very lucky.

One agent, on his way to South America through Europe, forgot his alias when retrieving his passport from custom officials. Fortunately, he spotted the proper passport – he recognized its unique color – and simply pointed at it. Another agent, checking out Eichmann’s neighborhood, became distracted and drove his car into a ditch. Yet another group of agents were stopped by police as they drove near Eichmann’s home, but were not detained after telling the cops they were lost and looking for their hotel.

To their credit, however, the team managed to pay close attention to all the important details of the mission. Team members arranged and coordinated dozens of secret meetings, rented cars and safe houses, and successfully counterfeited passports, visas, identity cards and driver licenses. Their work was cosmically bland, painfully intense and emotionally draining.

For most of the Israelis, capturing Eichmann was not just another job. Their lives and that of their families were inextricably linked to the Holocaust. Tracking down one of the world’s most notorious Nazis was of profound significance to each of them personally and, as it would turn out, to the future of Israel.

Eichmann, meanwhile, comes across in Bascomb’s book as a failed megalomaniac, a toady bureaucrat who once held the power of life and death in his blood-soaked hands. During the war he lived in villas and mansions, had at least two mistresses and spent his evenings enjoying the spoils of victory.

Fifteen years after the thousand-year Reich was nothing more than a fading memory, Eichmann and his family were living in a wretched concrete shack in the middle of a desolate neighborhood with few amenities and no public utilities. If not completely shunned by the German expatriate community in Argentina, he was certainly ignored, perhaps pitied.

After years of looking over his shoulders and hiding from shadows, Eichmann was balding, bent and nearly broken. In a sense, Eichmann wasn’t so much executed by Israeli authorities as simply put out of his misery.

A footnote: After his execution on May 31, 1962 at a prison in Ramla, Israel, Eichmann was cremated in a specially designed furnace. His ashes were scattered at sea, beyond the territorial waters of Israel by an Israeli Navy Patrol boat, ensuring that no country would serve as his final resting place.

Taking a journey and honoring the dead

It’s Friday and time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Several years ago I visited Auschwitz during a trip to Eastern Europe with members of my Synagogue. Here’s what we saw.

It was hot and I was tired, emotionally drained after an afternoon of touring Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp about 40 miles west of Krakow in southern Poland.

As I stared out across a huge field where so many had suffered and died, I was momentarily startled by the blast of a shofar – the traditional ram's horn that is sounded during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services each year. I turned and saw the leader of our group, Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim in east Cobb County, holding the horn to his lips, blasting away at the pain and darkness of this place.

Thirty of us, all from the Land of Cotton, were traveling across Eastern Europe on a congregational trip sponsored by Etz Chaim that was equal parts vacation, heritage tour and traveling marathon. The plan was to visit five cities of note across the region – Warsaw and Krakow in Poland; Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria; and Prague in the Czech Republic. We would immerse ourselves briefly in the local culture and spend time wandering the cobblestone lanes and picturesque corners of these ancient and charming communities; but the focus would be on the past, the rich Jewish heritage that was once a vital piece of this part of the world.

It was understood that there was a dark, melancholy side to all of this, that the trip would carry a hefty load of emotional baggage. After all, the Jews of Eastern Europe, their culture and way of life were systematically destroyed by the malevolent power and madness of the Nazi war machine more than 60 years earlier.

The scope of the destruction is difficult to comprehend. It began slowly in the 1930s with a series of draconian measures aimed at isolating and demonizing the Jews of Germany, picked up speed with a government-sanctioned pogrom in 1938 that came to be known as Kristallnacht, and found its stride a few years later with the creation of a sprawling complex of concentration and forced-labor camps that quickly morphed into factories of death.

By the end of World War II, nearly 6 million Jews from across Europe had been rounded up and killed. In Poland, one of the leading centers of European Jewry before the war, nearly 3 million Jews were caught in the Holocaust, slaughtered by special commando units or in ghettos and concentration camps.

UNCOVERING THE PAST

Auschwitz – the German name given to the nearby village of Oswiecim after Poland was invaded and conquered in 1939 – was the largest death camp constructed by the Nazis. It remains one of the largest graveyards in the world. Nearly 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered here, their bodies and ashes dumped into mass graves.

Arriving at the camp is a surreal event. The past hovers uneasily on the edges of an expansive parking lot, hidden by tour buses, cars and tourists enjoying a quick lunch. Our group works its way through the crowd to the camp's welcome center and a bustling cafeteria, shaking off the four-hour journey from Warsaw. A buzz of languages – English and Polish, Hebrew, French and Slovak – spills about us like canned chatter from a gathering of the United Nations.

We dine on overcooked chicken schnitzel and so-so pizza, happily talking about our first days in Poland and the adventures that still await us farther south across the Slovak border in Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. But it's the past that captures our attention when we finally settle down inside a small auditorium to watch a film on the liberation of Auschwitz.

We begin our afternoon's journey into darkness, assaulted by images of the Holocaust – long lines of weary, brutalized people staring through barbed-wire fences; children rolling up their sleeves to reveal numbers tattooed on their arms; piles of clothes, spectacles and luggage; and piles of corpses decaying in open pits.

Back outside, the black-and-white images of the film spring to life in color as we walk toward the camp's entrance, the buildings, roads and landscape impeccably – some might say obscenely – manicured, still wrapped in barbed wire and ominous warnings of electrified fences.

THE BIG LIE

We read the same sign that welcomed the legions who died here, "Arbeit Macht Frei," work makes you free, the Nazi lie that this was a work camp and that hope still existed in a world at war. Our guide, Alicja Tarowska, points out the "b" in Arbeit and asks if we notice anything unusual. After a moment it becomes clear that the letter had been put in place upside down; a little annoyance, Tarowska says, offered up by an inmate to irritate his captors.

Auschwitz I, along with Birkenau, Monowitz and 39 subcamps, would eventually hold more than 100,000 prisoners – Jews, Russians and Poles, Gypsies, gays and others that the Third Reich considered "undesirables" – and become the graveyard for well over 10 times that number.

We shuffle along the crisscross grid of roads in the main camp with other groups of tourists, peering into barracks that house a series of horrors – the piles of hair, eyeglasses and luggage seen in the introductory film, now on display behind huge walls of glass, and torture chambers, including a claustrophobic "Standing Cell" where prisoners were forced to spend nights together, unable to move, hardly able to breathe.

I'm awake but caught in a nightmare, wandering through rooms where horrific medical experiments were conducted by Josef Mengele, the sadistic Nazi physician, and his colleagues; past a killing wall in a small courtyard where political prisoners, religious leaders and others were executed; then back into a barracks, the "Death Block," where some prisoners were held without food or water until they died of starvation.

It was here, I learn, that the Nazis first tested the toxic gas Zyklon-B, a pesticide initially used at Auschwitz to fumigate barracks and disinfect prisoners' clothes. The test proved hugely successful and offered the means for the Germans to put in place their master plan, the Final Solution, to wipe out the Jews of Europe. It was a plan that took form only a few miles away, at Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, a 10-minute bus ride from the main camp.

A PLACE OF DEATH

We arrive somewhat dazed, still filled with images of death from our first stop, not prepared for the brutal reality that awaits us. We stand in a parking lot, directly across from a low-lying brick structure that looks vaguely familiar. We walk toward the center of the building and see train tracks that run through a distant field, shimmering in the afternoon heat and fading in the distance.

Images flood my mind – a huge locomotive belching steam, its brakes squealing as tons of machinery grind to a halt; cattle cars filled with desperate, weary people; Nazis shouting orders and guard dogs snarling.

The scene is one of the lasting images from "Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg's award-winning film about the Holocaust, and the focus of numerous other theatrical films and documentaries, plays and novels, memoirs and nightmares. This is sacred ground, the uneasy resting place for a million souls. And it's huge.

The camp spills across hundreds of acres, divided by train tracks and subdivided by rusting fences. A few rows of wooden barracks remain, the debris of hundreds of others – each pinpointed by a crumbling chimney – stretches across a grass covered field, clumps of wildflowers jarringly framed by strands of barbed wire.

"Of course there was no grass here when the camp was operating," Tarowska says. "People were starving and they would eat it."

They were the lucky ones, not yet consumed by this killing factory. Most died shortly after arriving, ordered off the cattle cars that pulled into the heart of the camp and into lines where it was decided who would live and who would die. We stand on the spot where Mengele, infamously known as the Angel of Death, often made the daily selections, then follow a path leading to a pile of rubble, all that remains of Birkenau's killing machines.

As the war continued and the tide of battle turned in favor of the Allies, Nazi planners were gripped with a renewed urgency to rid the world of Jews. Transports increased and additional gas chambers and crematoriums – there eventually would be four facilities at this camp – were constructed.

Those selected – a brutal, capricious exercise that always included children, women with babies, the elderly and ill – were marched into underground changing rooms, ordered to strip, then locked into huge gas chambers that were disguised as showers. They were murdered and removed to nearby crematoriums. When all was up and running, 20,000 people could be pulled from cattle cars and turned to ash in a single day, a stunning figure that captures the cold efficiency and pure evil of this place.

Standing alongside the ruins of the crematoriums in the late afternoon, the sun dipping below a row of birch trees that tower over the back of the camp, our group huddles together for comfort and a short memorial service. We recite a few psalms and read a poem, light a memorial candle, and together say the mourners' kaddish, a special prayer for the dead.

I turn away, gazing across the tracks and the nearby fields surrounded by barbed wire, momentarily lost in thought about the past and the Holocaust. The wail of the shofar grabs my attention. The sound echoes and magnifies the ache in my heart and I see that others around me also are moved, a few wiping away tears of sadness and anger.

I shudder, recalling the words of a memorial plaque I walked past moments earlier and that I can still see off in the distance, resting below a tortured sculpture of a smokestack. "For ever let this place be a cry of despair . . . And a warning to humanity."

I whisper a silent amen.

Sometimes all it take is one courageous person

It's Friday, time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Today let's travel to Eastern Europe and recall the heroic deeds of a man who stood againsts the Nazis and single-handedly saved thousands of Jews from slaughter.

Budapest is a lovely city, filled with surprises. Turn a corner and you stumble onto the Danube, flowing leisurely beneath the Chain Bridge, one of the most impressive suspension bridges in the world. A moment later you catch site of the spires of Hungary's magnificent parliament building, a massive structure and notable landmark.

There are intimate pedestrian walkways and expansive, tree-lined boulevards, surrounded by shops and offices, apartments and mansions. And all of this is pulled together smartly, a sophisticated, eclectic blend of architectural styles — Classical, Romanesque, Gothic — that look and feel, well, European.

You're feeling oh-so worldly about now, toying with the idea of stepping into a nearby cafe for a cup of coffee. And then you see something odd, a huge monument (photo above) attached to the side of a building. A slight chill fills the air as you manage to make out the name written across its top — Raoul Wallenberg.

For people of a certain generation the name is familiar. For younger folks it means little. And that's a shame. Wallenberg was a genuine hero, his life the stuff of legend.

His name surfaced again earlier this year in news stories, this time focusing on the death of his mother and stepfather in the late 1970s. Apparently the couple committed suicide after years of worry about the fate of their son. Such articles are published every so often because Wallenberg’s story is always worth re-visiting.

It began quietly enough, a life of luxury in Sweden, school in the U.S., followed by odd jobs in South Africa and Palestine. In 1936, Wallenberg returned to Sweden and, with the help of family, found work in Stockholm with an export-import company owned by Kalman Lauer, a Hungarian Jew.

As the world moved toward war, Hungary aligned itself with Germany and Italy. In the late ’30s and early ’40s, the country enacted a series of anti-Jewish laws that set limits on the jobs Jews could hold, schools they could attend, where they could live and who they could marry.

It was clear that Lauer was no longer welcome in his homeland. Wallenberg, meanwhile, had become a trusted friend and confidante of his boss and was willing and able to help. He began handling the company's business in Hungary, often traveling to Budapest. Within a year he had become a joint owner of the firm and its international director.

In the spring of 1944, Jews across the country were rounded up and forced into ghettos. Only weeks later the first transports to Nazi death camps began. Even as Soviet troops neared the Hungarian border and freedom loomed precariously on the horizon, the trains continued to roll. By mid-summer, over half the Jews in Hungary — about 500,000 men, women and children — had been deported.

After years of indifference, world leaders were being pressured to deal with the slaughter of Jews across Eastern Europe. A rescue plan, encouraged and supported by both the U.S. President and British Prime Minister, was set in motion and Wallenberg was selected to lead the effort. He was a logical choice. He had spent time in Budapest, spoke the language and had contact with some of the country's top business and political leaders. Lauer would help him make contact with the Jewish community.

Wallenberg returned to Budapest in a semi-official role, attached to the Swedish Legation. His mission? Through bluster and wit, rescue as many Jews as possible. The stage was set.

Throughout the summer and fall of 1944, with the aid of a small army of Jewish agents, Wallenberg located and purchased "safe houses" in the city where Jews could evade capture. He created and issued "protective passports" for thousands of refugees and provided food and medicine to those in need.

When his documents were ignored and diplomacy failed, he used bribes and threats. When necessary, he followed transports and argued for the release of Jews he claimed were protected by his government. In one notable episode, Wallenberg hopped atop a train in Budapest, distributed dozens of passports, then demanded the release of refugees holding the bogus documents.

In January of 1945, with the Russians on the outskirts of Budapest, the Nazis decided to liquidate the Jewish ghetto in the city. Wallenberg confronted the SS officer in charge and threatened to have him hanged as a war criminal once the war ended if the order was carried out. The officer backed down and tens of thousands of Jews in the city survived the war.

The number of people Wallenberg saved in the final months of the war is staggering. Some historians credit him with rescuing over 100,000 Hungarians. His story, unfortunately, ends abruptly.

After Budapest was liberated in 1945, Wallenberg was arrested by Soviet troops — and disappeared. Soviet authorities reported several years later that he died in the late 1940s. But reports continued for decades that he was alive and still being held by the communists.

Wallenberg's heroic deeds and the mystery surrounding his arrest and imprisonment fueled books, movies and news stories for years. But over time, as the Cold War played out and the world moved on, the name of Raoul Wallenberg has become for many a hazy historical footnote.

That’s not to say he’s been forgotten.

These days you'll find Wallenberg remembered by international organizations and in textbooks, memorialized at Holocaust museums and parks. But there's a special connection between the man and Budapest, the city where he brought the gift of life to so many. So it only seems natural that there are schools and roads, plaques and monuments, expansive parks and intimate gardens here that honor his name and memory.

The monument in the heart of the city, next to the boulevard that bears his name, shows Wallenberg in hat and overcoat, holding a list in one hand while halting some phantom figure with his other. It’s here that he established many of the safe houses where Jews found refuge over 60 years ago. The houses are now shops and offices, but Wallenberg’s memory still lingers, a reminder that in difficult time’s one person can still make a difference.

Me, a general, and a memorable holiday party

It’s Friday, time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Since Christmas, that most un-Jewish of holidays, is tomorrow, I thought this an opportune time to share one of my most memorable holiday stories.

There’s some sort of weird synergy happening with Christmas falling on Shabbat this year. It has me thinking of another holiday season, long ago, when I was working for Uncle Sam and living in Germany. It wasn’t the Sabbath that added a touch of Judaism to Christmas then, but a bizarre link to the Holocaust.

I’ll explain. Some of you might recall the draft, a system once part of the American way of life. Universal conscription offered up warm bodies for military service, a useful program especially during World War II when darkness covered the planet. The draft continued providing soldiers, sailors and marines during the Korean War, then a dozen years later when the U.S. was busy battling Communism in Vietnam. I’ll leave any political posturing and discussions of right and wrong about our role in that little corner of the world for another day.

It was during this period, however, when our leaders were worried about dominoes falling across Southeast Asia, that a lottery system for the draft was created and I graduated from the Land of Cotton U just in time to become a private in the Army. The good news is I had learned how to type in high school and honed my talents in college. So it was all together a pleasant surprise after I managed to survive basic training that I ended up being handed a typewriter instead of an M-14.

More significantly – for both this posting and my life – I was shipped off to Germany instead of the jungles of Vietnam. I landed at a NATO base in Seckenheim, a small village between Heidelberg and Mannheim.

The little installation that became my home for the next 18 months or so was the headquarters of something called CENTAG – that’s army talk for Central Army Group. Back when the cold war was absolutely frigid, CENTAG was a happening place. If I actually detailed our mission, I’d then have to kill each of you. Suffice it to say I needed a “NATO Top Secret Atomic” clearance to sit in my office and do my work.

If you can recall the Nazi installation that was blown up by Lee Marvin and his band of misfits in “The Dirty Dozen” then you have an idea of what CENTAG looked like. The base had, in fact, been a Nazi Kaserne – barracks to you and me – during World War II. Rumor had it housing members of the Gestapo and the installation certainly had the look of such a place – cobblestone courtyard, sterile gray buildings and a pristine parade ground, all neatly surrounded by a high-brick fence topped with barbed wire.

The top general for USAEUR – military speak for United States Army Europe – was also the top dog at CENTAG. But his deputy was a German brigadier general – after all, this was a NATO base on German soil – and therein rests our story.

Hans Jurgen Vogler was straight out of central casting. He had leading man good looks – strong and confident, a shock of gray hair, sharp features and a tall, lean body. He was always immaculately dressed in a uniform that was perfectly pressed and creased, the chest of his slate-gray uniform filled with campaign ribbons and medals.

Although details about his war record were never officially discussed, it was rumored that he had fought for Germany on the eastern front during World War II, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians.

I was working as a glorified clerk-typist, but because I had a degree in Journalism and had worked for a newspaper before being drafted, I was often called into staff meetings to take minutes of the proceedings. So when our office, including NCOs and officers, held its annual Christmas party, I knew most of the players. It was an international group, top heavy with top brass from the U.S., Germany, England, Italy and Canada.

I was chatting with officers from England, Canada and Italy when Gen. Vogler joined out group. We had been discussing the sad state of affairs in Northern Ireland – it was 1972 – and the general seemed interested in our conversation. There was something about the violence in the region that captured his attention.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, “that people die over religion.”

Have you ever been in a group, started to tell a joke and just before delivering the punch line realized there was a good chance someone listening was going to be offended? That’s exactly where the general found himself. Time momentarily stood still as our little group stared at him in slack-jawed amazement.

It had been over 25 years since the end of World War II. Yet the horrors of the Holocaust still hung heavily in the air, a constant reminder of the murderous, sadistic behavior of Germany’s Nazi regime and its people who claimed they never really knew what was happening in all those death camps across Eastern Europe.

Gen. Vogler turned to me, the only Jew in the group and, quite possibly, the only Jew on the entire base. He started to speak, stopped, then managed to say these five words. “I acknowledge what we did.” It seemed he had more to say, but after a moment’s thought, pulled himself to attention, gave me one of those Germanic bows – knees stiff, arms at his sides, slightly bent at the waist – then whirled about and walked briskly from the room.

His words and actions might seem slight and light. But given the time and place – he was a general and I was an enlisted man; we were surrounded by his colleagues, all filled with good cheer and expensive booze – what more could he do or say?

At least for a moment the cosmic order of military life had been turned on its head – up was down and down was up. And how could it have been otherwise? I might have only been a little specialist in a room filled with colonels and generals, but on that day 39 years ago I was lifted high atop the moral high ground by six million souls that will never be forgotten.

THAT BE ME: After being drafted and making my way through basic training, I ended up working and playing (photo above) at a NATO installation near Heidelberg, Germany.

Vienna Holocaust sites odd and bizarre

It's Friday, time yet again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Today we visit Vienna and explore two unique memorials to the victims of Nazi madness during World War II.

A controversial monument, hidden among the grandiose pieces of Alfred Hrdlicka's Memorial Against War and Fascism in Vienna, continues to draw attention and debate. It can be found at the Albertinaplatz, just across from the Albertina Museum.

At first glance, the sculpture looks like a hunk of rock, covered with barbed wire. But after studying the piece for a moment, you'll be able to make out the form of a bearded man on his hands and knees, scrubbing the street with a brush.

It's meant as a remembrance of what happened to many Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their supporters after the Germans marched into Austria in 1938. The barbed wire was added after locals and tourists began using the sculpture as a bench.

Many people, including Simon Wiesenthal, the noted Nazi hunter who was headquartered in Vienna, found the piece offensive. Wiesenthal used his considerable clout to lobby for a more appropriate memorial and was eventually successful.

The new memorial is cold and stark, difficult to embrace. But British artist Rachel Whiteread's "Nameless Library" stops tourists cold when they stumble across it in Vienna's Judenplatz.

With its sharp edges and familiar, yet bizarre facade, the Holocaust Memorial (photo above), dedicated to the 65,000 Austrian Jews slaughtered by the Nazis, begs for a moment's study. It's meant to be a library, but one turned inside out, the concrete siding composed of blocks molded to look like books with their spines turned to the inside.

The aim, Whiteread told the Guardian newspaper a dozen years ago when the memorial was unveiled after years of controversy, is to "invert people's perception of the world and to reveal the unexpected." Mission accomplished.

Josefov: Lovely, historically rich and spooky!

It's Friday, time again for yet another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Today we visit Josefov — the aging, historically rich and important Jewish community of Prague.

You've been to Israel, visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, even spent a few days in Amsterdam and saw the tiny annex where Anne Frank once hid from Nazis. What now?

If you haven't visited Eastern Europe, you might as well reach deep into your savings and go ahead and take that special trip you've been thinking about for years. Once there, trust me, you'll want to visit Prague.

The city is old in a warm and quaint sort of way — tree-lined boulevards and cobblestone streets, intimate cafes and stately mansions. And yet, everything is also new and vibrant. Like much of Eastern Europe, Prague was engulfed by World War II in the 1940s and later was completely buried under the dusty gray cloak of Communism.

But in 1989, a series of demonstrations in Prague and across Czechoslovakia — The Velvet Revolution — led quickly to the overthrow of the government. Only a year later, much of the region was toying with democracy and capitalism, opening its borders to investors and tourists.

In recent years, Prague has become a jewel of a city once again, still filled with plenty of old-world charm, but also gussied up a bit with new-world panache.

At first glance the Jewish quarter here, Josefov, looks like much of the rest of the city — nicely aged and filled with tourists. A clock with Hebrew letters, however, atop the Town Hall in the heart of the district, offers a hint that you've stumbled onto something special.

Once the center of Jewish life in Europe, Josefov is today a museum, memorial and remembrance of ancient traditions and recent tragedies. And it's definitely worth a visit.

The district, a few square blocks squeezed tightly between the Vltava River and the city's Old Town Square, dates back to the 13th century when Jews were ordered to leave their homes and settle in the area. It now includes a town hall and ceremonial hall, a museum and six synagogues; a splendid, remarkable cemetery; and one aging, but resilient world-class legend. Two of the synagogues are especially noteworthy.

The Pinkas serves as a Holocaust memorial, its walls inscribed with the names of the 77,297 victims of the Nazis from Bohemia and Moravia. Tourists shuffle through the structure in silence, many taken with the artistic merits of the memorial, most horrified by the sheer numbers that fill the space.

The Old-New Synagogue, one of the oldest shuls in the world still in use, is adorned with intricate stonework, aging and ancient bits of judaica. It continues to hold Sabbath and holiday services. One of Prague's most notable personalities, the writer Franz Kafka, had his bar mitzvah here.

The synagogue is also linked to the legend of the golem, a supernatural being conjured up by Rabbi Judah Loew, the 16th century Talmudic scholar and Jewish mystic known as the Maharal. He created the monster to save the Jews of the quarter from anti-Semitic attacks. The legend suggests that the golem remains hidden away in the synagogue's attic, waiting to be awakened if the need ever rises again to protect the district's residents.

Loew is buried in the quarter's cemetery, one of the most visited and interesting spots in the area. He shares the cemetery with tens of thousands of others, generations literally stacked atop one another. For hundreds of years, between the 15th and 18th centuries, Jews had access to no other burial sites in the region.

Tombstones — some simple, others remarkably ornate, most covered with Hebrew names and text — rest uneasily in all sorts of positions. Many lean precariously, resting against one another; others have fallen and are covered by debris. Interestingly, the chaos comes together in a quietly poetic fashion. A sense of history and calm hovers lightly in the air.

It's a small miracle that the cemetery remains at all. It, the synagogues and other points of interest in Josefov, still exist because Hitler wanted to create a museum to a people and culture he planned to destroy.

While shuls and other buildings went untouched during the war, and ritual objects — sefer torahs, prayer books, kiddush cups and other types of judaica — were being shipped to Prague from across Europe, Jews in the city were being rounded up and sent to a nearby village.

Terezin, an hour's drive northwest of Prague, was initially turned into a ghetto, then quickly morphed into a concentration camp. The place is often remembered for the artists, writers and musicians who were sent there and, most infamously, as the "show" camp opened to the International Red Cross so they and the world could see how well the Jews were being treated.

In fact, the Nazis had orchestrated the visit, organizing bogus concerts and soccer matches and filling up shop windows with food and other goods the inmates of Terezin would never enjoy. Thousands of Jews died at the camp of malnutrition and exposure. Their bodies were cremated and the ashes later dumped into a nearby river. Thousands more were sent to die at Aushwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland near Krakow.

Of the 55,000 Jews who lived in Prague in the late 1930s, only about 5,000 remained alive when Russian forces liberated the city in 1945. There are even fewer Jews in Prague today, about 1,500, but the community has actually grown in recent years.

The Holocaust remains a melancholy presence in the area, drawing tourists — really pilgrims — to what is left of the once vibrant Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. But Josefov is also a vivid reminder of a distant past, when Jews lived and worked and prayed here.

Get quiet enough and you can almost spot their shadows, walking along the cobblestone streets, calling to one another in nearby stores, praying in the shuls. This was their home, after all, and their collective spirit remains part of this place.

BENT WITH AGE: The Jewish Cemetery in Josefov (photo above) is filled with tombstones, some simple, others remarkably ornate. A quiet sense of peace and order hovers lightly over the area, the final resting spot for thousands of Jews who once lived here.

YouTube video shocking, funny -- life affirming?

A friend recently sent me a link to a video on YouTube, one of those home-grown efforts that show a few folks dancing. The mega-video site is filled with a gazillion such mini-movies -- cats and dogs doing tricks, kids singing and teens dancing; clips from popular TV shows and concerts, Broadway hits and blockbuster films.

But this video (link below) was different -- strange, a little bizarre and a bit shocking. It features a family -- a Holocaust survivor, his daughter and two grandchildren. They apparently spent time traveling through Eastern Europe recently, visiting some of the most hellish sites every created by the Nazis.

And at each place -- Auschwitz, Dachau, the Jewish ghetto of Prague -- they dance about to Gloria Gaynor's funky pop hit, "I will Survive"! The photography is okay, the editing lame and unsophisticated, the choreography and dancing really -- and I mean REALLY -- bad.

Did I mention that they're essentially dancing on sacred ground. Yes, I think I did. And I guess that's the point and the issue that will rub some people the wrong way, while serving as an affirmation of life for others.

I fall into the latter group, the affirmation of life camp. After only a moment of shock, and a few more moments of getting over the Elaine-like moves of the dancers -- you know, Elaine on Seinfeld -- I started to understand the celebration that was taking place.

The survivor -- and I have no idea what hell he lived through and witnessed -- has managed to live a full life, decades I presume that have been filled with joy and happiness and, obviously, a life that has connected him with the kids in the video. So when they boogie out in front of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at the entrance of Auschwitz, it seems to me they are both thumbing their collective noses at the dark memories of the Nazi war machine, while celebrating the life of this special man.

I've been to several of the places in the video, heard first-hand accounts from survivors and walked through the killing fields of the region. I've felt anger over what happened in these places decades ago and hatred for the monsters who brought such darkness to the world.

But I've never smiled when thinking about the Holocaust, never quite so appreciated the amazing miracle of life that the survivor community embraces. This video -- silly and amateurish -- is filled with love. So take a moment and check out the video right here, have a little laugh, then say a small prayer for the six million who didn't make it.

ICONIC IMAGE: Infamous sign (photo above) outside of Auschwitz in Poland, the Nazi death camp where at least a million Jews were murdered, reads "Work Makes You Free".

Shoes poignant reminder of Holocaust victims

It's Friday, time again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). This week, let's remain in Budapest and visit a poignant memorial next to the Danube.

There's a bit of whimsy at play with this powerful memorial, a row of shoes along the Danube on the Pest side of the city.

The shoes can be found in the shadow of Hungary's impressive Parliament Building and, at first glance, seem a trifle, a bit of public art to amuse tourists and others on a stroll along the river's promenade. But the memorial's artist, award-winning sculptor Gyula Pauler, captures a dark moment in Hungary's history and makes a powerful statement with his simple design.

The story he builds around is heartbreaking. Through much of World War II, Jews in Hungary managed to hunker down and escape the wrath of the Nazi war machine. Eastern Europe was turned into a massive concentration camp and Jews from across the continent were being deported to death camps in Poland, Austria, Germany and other countries that had nurtured anti-Semitism for decades.

Inexplicably, the Jews of Hungary seemed safe. Life was tough, but not an automatic death sentence for them. In the fall of 1944, Russian troops had managed to battle their way into Hungary and peace seemed to be an idea that rested uneasily on the horizon. Sadly, in those closing days of the war, tens of thousands of Jews in the region were shipped off to the East -- Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka.

In Budapest, members of the Arrow Cross Party, the Nazis of Hungary, rounded up many of the remaining Jews and marched them to the Danube. They stripped them of their clothes and had them step out of their shoes on the embankment, where the men, women and children were shot and tossed into the river.

Sixty pairs of shoes, carefully sculpted by Pauler and arranged only feet from the Danube, dot the site where the Jews were murdered, and the melancholy memorial now serves as a silent prayer for the dead.

Weeping Willow honors those lost in Hungary

It's Friday and time again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts. Today we visit the lovely city of Budapest and a unique memorial in the Jewish quarter of the city.

Behind the imposing Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest, in a park named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during World War II, is an imaginative, poignant memorial to the 600,000 Hungarian Jews who didn't escape the Holocaust.

The "Silver Weeping Willow," designed by the Hungarian artist Imre Varga, is an eye-catching maze of metal, slivers of silver that reach for the sky, then bend and fall to earth.

Thousands of metal leaves, many engraved with the names of the murdered, cling to the branches of the sculpture, swaying gently with the wind, glittering in the afternoon sun. Above it all, an inscription in Hebrew raises the mournful question, "Whose agony is greater than mine?"

On the day I visited the memorial, part of a congregational trip through Eastern Europe with friends from the Land of Cotton, only a few tourists and locals were scattered about. I couldn't help but wonder how fleeting and capricious life can be at times, that in fact my life might be dramatically different if one man many decades earlier had not, along with his family, left his home in Hungary to find a better life in America.

Joseph Klein, known as Joe or Joey to most of his friends and family, was born and spent his early years in a small village outside of Budapest, but came of age in New York. Of course he would never have met and married his wife Roz if he had remained in Hungary, and their two daughters -- the lovely Miss Wendy and my sister-in-law Ann -- would not exist.

That little wrinkle in reality would have continued to ripple across time and today there would be no Cheryl, Arlene or Lauren -- our daughters. Their husbands would have never known the joy of meeting and marrying their beshert and the following generation would be lost as well.

The fact that Joe and his family skedaddled when they did meant they would escape the Holocaust and his descendants would come into being. But what about the hundreds, the thousands, the millions who remained part of Eastern Europe? The tragedy of the Six Million murdered by the Nazis is not just their deaths but the future generations that were lost.

So I weep at the Weeping Willow memorial not only for those lost, but for those never allowed to experience this thing we call life -- the joy and sorrow, exhilaration and pain that comes with living. There loss is our loss, just one additional tragedy of the Holocaust and just one more reason to "never forget".

Honoring the dead: The Weeping Willow Memorial (photo above), is in a small park behind the Dohany Shul in Budapest, a unique remembrance of the thousands of Hungarian Jews lost in the Holocaust.

Museum offers glimpse into world destroyed

It's Friday, so it must be time once again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). Today we take a look behind the scenes at a room filled with history from one of the darkest chapters of Judaism.

The Jewish Museum of Vienna, forced shut in 1938 by the Nazis and reopened in 1989, has several floors given over to temporary exhibits and traditional Jewish themes.

But hidden away on the top floor is a storage area, open to the public, which offers a poignant reminder of what was lost during the Holocaust.

Glass cases in the room are filled with ritual objects -- Torah scrolls, prayer shawls, kiddush cups -- and other bits of Judaica. The pieces, simply displayed with little commentary, are the remnants of the original museum -- items dating back decades to the late 19th century -- and objects salvaged from shuls and homes from across the region following the war.

There are thousands of items, most torn, burned or damaged from misuse and age. They provide mute and moving testimony to a vanished culture and a people lost.

PIECES OF HISTORY: Bits of Judaica (photo above), all that remain of Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe, on display in Jewish Museum of Vienna.

Jewish resistance fighters focus of Memorial

Editor's note: It's Friday, time yet again for another "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" (IJS&F) posting. Today we visit a memorial found in the heart of Warsaw, Poland.

Sculptor Nathan Rappaport captures both the horror of the Holocaust and the heroic efforts of resistance fighters in his larger-than-life monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The ghetto, the largest created by the Nazis, sprawled across a dozen blocks in the heart of Warsaw and held an estimated 450,000 Jews in the early 1940s.

As conditions grew untenable and it became clear the Nazis were intent on slaughtering everyone in the area, a small band of resistance fighters grouped together to battle their tormentors. The uprising was doomed from the start.

The insurgents had few weapons and little training. They also had nothing to lose and managed to hold out against the fierce onslaught of battle-hardened troops for several weeks before the entire ghetto was destroyed.

A bronze relief dominates the memorial, between Karmelicka and Zamenhofa streets in what was once the heart of the city, focusing on a defiant image of Mordecai Anielewicz, the leader of the ghetto's Jewish Fighting Organization.

The back of the monument is filled with a melancholy image of a group of Jews being marched to their deaths by their Nazi captors.

HEROIC REMEMBRANCE: Mordecai Anielewicz and other members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (photo above) are the focus of this massive monument in the heart of modern-day Warsaw.

Poignant memorial honors Jewish hero

Editor's note: One great thing about having your own blog is you can do whatever you want with it. So I declare each Friday on "This&That" to be "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" day (IJS&F). Our premier entry begins with details about a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw that I visited during a trip to Eastern Europe. Return next Friday -- and every Friday -- for more "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" focusing on Jewish ritual, Israel and the Holocaust.

When visiting the Okopowa Street Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, one of the first sites that will capture your attention is a memorial to Janusz Korczak.

Off to one side of the main walkway, the poignant sculpture features Korczak holding a child while other children follow behind. Where they're headed is the focus of the piece and the stuff of legend.

Korczak was a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician and child advocate. A Jewish orphanage he created and ran in the early years of the 20th Century was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto after the Germans occupied Poland in 1939.

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis ordered that the orphanage be closed and the 200 children living there be deported to Treblinka.

Korczak, beloved and respected for his children books and philanthropic efforts, received several offers to smuggle him out of the ghetto. He declined. Instead, Korczak remained with his children, telling them they were headed to the country on holiday.

He had them dress in their best clothes, then marched along with them to the Umschlagplatz, the staging area in Warsaw for Jews being transported to Treblinka. Legend suggests he was still marching with the youngsters when they entered the gas chambers at the camp and were murdered.

MEMORABLE MEMORIAL: This poignant statue (photo above), showing a Jewish orphan clinging to Janusz Korczak, is on the fringes of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.