Next Program: May 8, 2024
movies
This 4 part television program first shown in April 1978 introduced us to the lives of Jewish family living in Berlin in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Although the plots around the characters are fictitious and many instances improbable, this miniseries introduced the Holocaust to a mass audience. The historical events in the program did take place, and it helped to get the public talking about the Holocaust. Later that same year, President Jimmy Carter established the President's Commission on the Holocaust, which culminated in the creation of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 1993.
These are the diary entries of Adam Czerniakow was made head of the 24 member Judenrat (Jewish Council), responsible for implementing Nazi orders in the new Jewish Ghetto. On October 4, 1939, a few days after Warsaw’s surrender to the German Nazi Army, Czerniaków wrote in a diary until his death from suicide in 1942. Czerniakow was supportive of the Jewish community in the Ghetto, but faced internal conflict when he and the Jewish Council had to provide lists of people in the Ghetto for resettlement. The Council was aware that they were selecting people to be sent to their deaths at Treblinka, a German Nazi death camp, northeast of Warsaw. This book is fascinating because it tells about the daily lives of Jewish people living in the Warsaw Ghetto and what they faced from their Nazi captures.
This is the unique story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds. After the German Nazi Army invaded Warsaw, Poland, they destroyed the zoo with bombs and guns. Led by the criminal zoologist Lutz Heck, they carted off the best animals for their own collections in Germany. Dr. Zabinski would smuggle Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto and take them to the Zoo where they would be hidden. The diaries of Antonina Zabinski helped in the research for this book. The Zookeeper’s Wife was a best-seller in 2007 and will soon be made into a major motion picture.
In his WW II position as legal adviser to the German high command, Count von Moltke daringly fought for the lives of Soviet POWs, prevented the killing of hostages and helped many Jews escape Germany. He was also a key organizer of the secret Kreisau Circle, a German underground group dedicated to planning the new German state that would arise after the expected fall of Hitler. These letters to his wife, Freya (plus one to a British friend discussing the German Resistance in general terms) constitute a day-by-day account of the count's official work at military headquarters in Berlin, mixed with comments on his visits to various European capitals, expressions of affection toward his family, and the deepening of his Christian faith. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 for his secret activities after there was an attempt to murder Adolf Hitler, von Moltke’s continuing letters to his wife were smuggled out by the prison chaplain. He was tried for high treason and hanged in 1945 by a German Nazi judge.
books
This book was originally published in Polish, but was later translated in English. The book includes a forward by Jan Karski, who alerted President Franklin Roosevelt to the Nazi death camps killing Jewish people in Poland. It focuses on the 200 Catholic institutions where nuns protected Jewish children, and the issues that rescuers and the parents of the Jewish child faced. With a tremendous amount of research, Kurek shows the reader the religious conflicts that arose from Jewish children being rescued. She also demonstrates the amount of distrust between the Catholic and Jewish communities in Poland during that period of time.
The book covers the career of the first American Ambassador to Nazi Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his 24-year-old daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. Ambassador Dodd was initially sympathetic to Germany's new Nazi government and believed reports of brutality and Anti-Semitism to be exaggerated. However, the Dodd family quickly became disillusioned after brutality was shown towards Jews and the press was censored. Martha Dodd had affairs with members of the German Nazi government. One German official tried to get her to become romantically involved with Adolf Hitler. However, Martha turned against the Nazi government after her friends were being picked up by the German police. She later became a Soviet spy while living in the American Embassy with her family. This book is non-fiction, but it reads like a novel since it is difficult to believe all of the events that occur with the Ambassador and his family..
This is the first book that looks at German Nazi policy on the Gypsies (Roma and Sinti). Guenter Lewy uses many German and Austrian records to demonstrate all aspects of German Nazi policy on the Gypsies. Lewy shows that the Nazi government did not have a standard policy on the Gypsies. It was inconsistent since some Gypsies were allowed to stay in Germany because they led lives acceptable to the regime. Initially, the Nazi regime murdered thousands of Gypsies (Roma) since they were treated as a threat to the racial purity laws. Although there was no plan to eliminate all Gypsies like the Jews, many were sent to Auschwitz. Both in 1943 and 1944, thousands of Gypsies were gassed in Auschwitz, probably in order to make room for the arrival of Hungarian Jews. Lewy estimates that up to ninety percent of the Gypsies sent to concentration camps perished due to starvation, disease, murder, and overwork.
This is a short autobiographical book written by a Jewish Holocaust survivor from the time of her birth in 1934 until she arrived in the United States in 1946. It discusses Auerbacher’s experiences in the small German town where she was born, what her family endured during Kristallnacht “Night of Broken Glass,” and the trauma she faced after being sent to Teresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. This book is still read by children in the United States and in Europe. It provides a basic understanding about why the Holocaust took place.
documentaries
This 9 ½ hour French film began production in 1974 and took 11 years to complete. It interviews Holocaust survivors, witnesses, and ex-Nazis (without their knowledge by audio). There is no archival footage used throughout the documentary. It focuses on the Warsaw Ghetto and the death camps of Chelmno, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. People in 14 countries were interviewed, and this film demonstrated that Anti-Semitism still existed in some countries.
