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.
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.
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
On 11.9.2016 the following article was published in the newspaper KATHIMERINI with the title "It's 1943 and I give you my child" by Iota Myrtsiotis regarding the rescue story of David Barzilai.
Winter of 1943. The Jewish population of Thessaloniki experiences inhuman restrictions by the Nazi troops. A few days before the mass displacement, several parents "hand over" their newborn children to the "Agios Stylianos" nursery to protect them. The separation was unbearable. Many mothers could not stand it. They came back and took them with them forever. Some infants remained. Among them is David Barzilai. He was born on March 4, 43, ten days before the first train left for the death camps.
What happened to the declared "exhibited" newborn from Thessaloniki who survived the Holocaust? How many other Jewish parents tried to save their babies in this way? What was the later life like for these children? The questions were stuck in the mind of Aigli Bruskus, a social anthropologist, when she was studying the archives of the nursery "Agios Stylianos" for her book
"Because of your judgment I give you my child" (ed. En Tomo SYMEPE). The issue of hidden babies in the nursery opened a new chapter.
The answers came later with persistent research in three official archives, and the evidence of one case was to overturn much: to erase a name from the long list of Thessalonian Jewish victims of the Holocaust, to clear truths and lies from the "fabricated" records, to allow for the survivor to rewrite his autobiography, shed new light on the complex and conflicting roles played by various people in order to save lives during the Occupation – dosilogs, police, registrars, management and nursery staff who had the courage to hide infants Jews under Merten's nose.
The following was posted on the website of the Ministry of Education news about the event, which took place on 1η July 2016, at the Ministry, for the students who participated in this year's educational visit to Auschwitz. See here the video from the speech of the Minister of Education Mr. Nikos Fili.
In today's event at the ministry, the Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs Nikos Filis, in the presence of the General Secretary of Religious Affairs Giorgos Kalatzis, spoke to a group of students from general and vocational high schools in Athens, Patras and Larissa who visited the Auschwitz crematoria, after participating in a video production competition about the holocaust. This program started three years ago with 20 students and now the participants have reached 81.
Nikos Filis emphasized that if the public schools of Hitler's Germany had operated more democratically, tragedies and the Holocaust would have been avoided and that the Jews of Europe paid for pre-existing racist stereotypes.
More: THE STUDENTS ON THE HOLOCAUST AND RACISM – EVENT AT THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION