One Family's Story: Surviving the Holocaust.

[Japan---Exposures]

One Family's Story: Surviving the Holocaust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=DE&v=eBkAVnWi6FE

Jill Enfield's (photographer and master printer www.jillenfield.com) daughter, Sally, made a video about family history - escape from Nazi Germany with the help of the Leica Camera family.

[robur]

Beautiful. And a bunch of amazing photos.
Thanks for the link.

[peterm1]

So many stories like this still untold. One more reason why Spielberg's Shoah Foundation is so important. My father was raised in Hungary and was lucky enough to be able to hide his Jewish ancestry during WW2 but he had so many stories of close shaves to tell me before he died a few years ago.

[shadowfox]

Jill's book on Alternative printing process is one of my go-to book for reference.
Thanks for sharing this.

[direwolf101]

Wow, thanks for sharing!

[joseph_galilee]

Leica photographer Dr. Erich Salomon, his wife and son Dirk were exterminated at Auschwitz in July 1944.

Unfortunately there are also Holocaust deniers who hurt the less well-informed conscience.
The Internet is full of sites deniers, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
The past does not repeat itself but the conditions and the signs are there.
Even in this forum there are people that when I write something, do not respond to questions I pose and pretend that I do not exist.
Here this is a practical example of what I'm saying.
During the celebrations of Shohà people all seem supportive, but in practical life when you know you see a jew or a symbol as my avatar, that represents me, my faith and my people, then triggered the anti-Semitism, the pure, irrational, resentful unjustified, fed by hundreds of years of Christian anti-Judaism that has always identified in our people the deicide people.
This has to be said without hiding the head in the sand.

שלום

[charjohncarter]

Some of us older members, like me, remember a scattering of Jewish kids that would just show up in our class rooms after the war. Mostly, at that time, we didn't know what had happened to the Jews of Europe. It wasn't until later that I realized what my friend Peter W. and his parents went through. This story brings Peter back to me. Great link.

[joseph_galilee]

I add some information about the human merit of Ernst Leitz II.

The pictures show Glen Lewy and Abrahamson H. Foxman
leaders of the Anti-Defamation League, hand over the award of Merit Ernst Leitz II, to his niece Cornelia Kuhn-Leitz.


שלום

[joseph_galilee]

Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith.

In the last several years the humanitarian acts of Ernst Leitz II and the Leica refugees come to light, thanks to the detective work of a London-based rabbi. Frank Dabba Smith, rabbi of the Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue in northwest London. Rabbi Smith, a Leica enthusiast, reconstructed the stories of refugees through photographs, documents and letters of thanks, from survivors and their families.

On his book the rav Smith talk about the merit of Ernst Leitz II.

Due to Rabbi Smith's painstaking a posthumous award for Leitz, who died in 1956, in recognition of the efforts that risked his life and those of his family was made by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The award was presented to Leitz's granddaughter, Cornelia Kuhn-Leitz. The ADF credits Leitz with saving hundreds of lives - counting both the workers and their families - and has compared him to Schindler, believed to have saved more than 1,200 Polish Jews from death by employing them in his enamel factory in Cracow.

"Under considerable risk and in defiance of Nazi policy, Ernst Leitz II took valiant steps to transport his Jewish employees and others out of harm's way," said Abraham Foxman, director of ADL. "If only there had been more Oskar Schindlers, more Ernst Leitzs, then less Jews would have perished."

Leitz's simple ethos, Rabbi Frank Smith told Die Welt in an interview, was "that of old Jewish fathers - do a lot, speak little." He spoke not at all to his family or friends about what he had done. "He didn't want to distinguish himself from the other citizens of Wetzlar," said Mr Smith. "It wasn't in his nature to talk of his own good deeds and he thought he was only doing what any decent person would have done in his position."

His son, Günther Leitz, tried to write an article about the refugees. But Leitz wanted nothing to do with it. Günther later said: "He did what he did because he felt responsible for his workers, their families, for our neighbors in Wetzlar."

Courtesy "Voices Education Project".


שלום

[charjohncarter]

Good story Joseph, thanks.