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On 20.11.2016, on the occasion of the death of Leonard Cohen, the following article by Christos Tsanakas entitled "The song had its own story about Auschwitz" was published in the "Kathimerini" newspaper.
It is not a myth that the common belief that at least some of the great works of art, those that give us timeless high aesthetic emotion and a wealth of positive emotions, that sharpen our imagination and stimulate our will to live, are born in the most adverse conditions of pain and anguish , are inspired by tragic events and nightmarish experiences, often recommending their creators' spiritual victory against a deeply devastating personal or collective loss. Nevertheless, despite the generally accepted causal connection of beauty and ugliness in art, it surprised everyone that one of the late Leonard Cohen's most soulful and heartfelt songs, the alluring "Dance me to the end of love," which due to its romantic atmosphere it was considered one of the leading love songs of the 20th century, it ultimately referred to the horror and brutality of Auschwitz. The real subject of the song is indeed the loss of loved ones who froze to death in the gas chambers, torture chambers or industrial construction sites of Nazi ethnic cleansing, and by extension the temporary loss of faith in the power of love as a salutary solution to humanity's problems, as a result of absolute shock of the melting of millions of innocent victims in the blast furnaces of the extermination camps. However, what is not widely known is the fact that the reason for the creation of the song in question is even more specific. It directly refers to an iconic personality of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, a highly tragic figure, the prisoner who was branded on his hand with the "heavenly telephone number" (as the prisoners called it among themselves, making a black humor of solidarity) 121000097.
More: LEONARD COHEN'S CREATION REFERRED TO THE GREEK-JEWISH JACOB STROOMSA
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In Memoriam... In the early hours of March 25, 1944, approximately 1850 Jews from Yanni were arrested and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Among them was the young Esther Gani (then Gabai) with her husband Jacob. Jews from many European countries were deported to this camp in Poland. Among them was Esther who was tortured physically and psychologically, lost members of her family and never saw her husband again, events that marked her and which she never mentioned again.
In Auschwitz, as in other Nazi concentration camps and ghettos, Jews were also sent who wanted to save with their painting the dramatic, tragic conditions of their living in the prison in order to make them known to the rest of the world. The Gani Foundation's 2017 Calendar is illustrated with works by prisoners.
View HERE shocking photos of works by Jewish prisoners.
More: RELEASE THE 2017 JOSEPH & ESTHER GANI FOUNDATION CALENDAR
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An interesting video, about Holocaust of Jews in North Africa, uploaded by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on its You Tube channel. While references to the Holocaust are usually focused on Europe, this video recalls a lesser-known and forgotten page of history: The persecution and suffering of the Jews of Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco during World War II. See here the video.
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By Stavros Zoumboulakis, Kathimerini 6.11.2016:
The Evian Conference took place on July 6-16, 1938 and had as its theme the reception and hospitality of the Jewish refugees who were forced to leave Nazi Germany and Austria, the Annexation (Anschluss) of which, on March 12, 1938, caused new refugee exit. The initiative for the convocation belongs to Roosevelt, as America, which granted 27.000 visas a year to European Jews, wanted to share with other countries the reception of refugees. Thirty-two countries and thirty-four non-governmental organizations, most of them Jewish, will take part.
The conference failed. All he decided was to set up a commission for refugees. No country agreed to accept the Jewish refugees, with various arguments: the economic crisis, unemployment, causing riots with the locals (Great Britain, for example, refuses to settle Jews in Palestine, which is then under a British Mandate, because doing so would annoy the Arabs and cause conflicts). All prefaces in sin. The countries participating in the conference condemn Nazi Germany, but none agrees to protect its victims. The sequel is known. After the failure of the conference the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, organ of the Nazi party of Germany, solemnly wrote: "No one wants them" (Saul Friedländer, "Nazi Germany and the Jews", Polis, 2013, p. 282). Alas, he was telling the truth: no one wanted Jews in their home. Everyone suggested solutions for somewhere else. The Evian Conference is a disgrace. Fear of violence prevailed and the logic that everyone should protect their home. In the end, he didn't keep it either, as it turned out after a year.
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On 21.8.2016, the following article with the title was published in TO BIMA newspaper THEY LIVED HISTORY IN KALABRYTA AND AUSCHWITZ of Thanasis Karabatsos in which high school students, after visits to the detention centers of Komandatur, the Shooting Range of Kaisariani, Block 15 in Haidari, Kalavryta, Auschwitz, as well as discussions with Holocaust survivors, talk about their experiences.
High school students retrieved experiences and memories from World War II, connected them with today and talk to "Vima" about fears and hopes
"None of us could have predicted the magnitude of human suffering during World War II until it happened," noted the eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm in the autobiography book "Exciting Years". And if he was shocked by what he experienced in the war, about 40 anxious students from the 5th Lyceum of Nea Smyrni, who tried to trace the memories and experiences of people of that time, were at least surprised by the terrifying ability of man to exterminate, with the ideologies that they nurtured and accompanied the atrocities and threaten the present, their everyday life, with attacks against the "different".
Over 60 million dead, military personnel and mostly civilians, and about 200.000 dead in two days exactly 71 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 1 million perished in the crematoria. "Besides the number of dead, the organized way it was done is shocking. They had thought everything out on a very scary level to make it more effective." points out the Natalia Golfinopoulou who is preparing for the XNUMXrd Lyceum. "They were also making a profit. From the hair, as we were told in Auschwitz, they made carpets, clothes... With human hair! What disgusts me, not the Germans but the human race, is what we are capable of doing." adds her classmate Nefeli Malandraki.
A conversation with six high school kids in the heart of summer, so rich in ideas, emotions and alive, unfortunately cannot all fit in the limited spaces of a publication. The end of the school year found them with the video they made on the subject of the Holocaust, the Jews of Greece and its topicality - it concerned schools from Attica, Larissa and Achaia - being among the five awarded by the Ministry of Education.
More: THE HOLOCAUST THROUGH THE EXPERIENCES OF HIGH SCHOOL CHILDREN