Shabbat Shalom Everyone

"How does one mourn for six million people who died? How many candles does one light? How many prayers does one recite? Do we know how to remember the victims, their solitude, their helplessness? They left us without a trace, and we are their trace."   - Elie Wiesel
 






Please Welcome Our Survivor, Paul Galan                                                     
PAUL GALAN is joining our delegation again this year and you will be enthralled with his story and how his family survived through a series of unusual circumstances and a great deal of good luck. He is a native of the former Czechoslovakia, immigrating to the United States as a teenager with his parents in 1951. After completing his High School education, he went on to the City College of New York where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Film and History. Paul spent his working career in New York's film industry as a Director of documentary television programs for ABC News and independent broadcast groups such as Westinghouse Broadcasting and Capital Cities Broadcasting. He also produced and directed hundreds of films for Fortune 500 corporations. His television work earned him two EMMY nominations, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award in Journalism and numerous other professional industry recognitions. On his retirement in 2006, he decided to put his skills as a communicator towards disseminating the memory and the legacy of the Holocaust by sharing his own story of survival during that dark period in history. He and his wife, Judy, reside in Suffern, New York. Their son Philip and his family live in Israel, while their daughter, Leslie and her family, reside in Tenafly, New Jersey.

 
 
EDUCATION FOR THIS WEEK:

Tattoos and Numbers: The System of Identifying Prisoners at Auschwitz
The numbered tattoos that have today become an identifying mark of Holocaust survivors, originated in Auschwitz.  Beginning in 1941, registration of inmates consisted of a tattoo, which was placed on the left breast of the prisoner; later, the tattoo location was moved to the inner forearm. It was not only Jews who were marked: all prisoners other than ethnic Germans and police prisoners were tattooed. These tattoos were just one of the ways in which the Nazis dehumanized their prisoners. Despite the perception that all Holocaust prisoners were given tattoos, it was only the prisoners of Auschwitz after 1941 that were branded this way.

 
What types of Resistance existed during the Holocaust?

Jewish Armed Resistance

  • Armed resistance in the ghettos and revolts in the camps
  • Fighting in Partisan Units (in the forests)
  • Sabotage of rail lines; in factories (arms of uniforms were sewn together, and by omitting parts when building machinery.)
  • Verbal confrontations
  • Passing as Aryans to help others
Jewish Cultural/ Educational Resistance
  • Schools in hiding
  • Secret publications
  • Diaries to document events
  • Self-help groups: soup kitchens, aid for the needy children
Jewish Religious Resistance
  • Practicing Judaism and faith in G-d
  • Fasting on Yom Kippur
  • Baking Matzah, writing a Haggadah and holding a Seder in the Ghetto
Psychological Strategies for Survival
  • Internal mechanisms: hope in the future, dreams, memory, humor, singing
Non-Jewish Resistance
  • Non-Jews hiding Jews in their homes
  • Non-Jews wearing the yellow Star of David badge (in Holland and Belgium)
  • Underground movements (religious and political)
  • Creation of false identity papers
  • Non-Jewish partisan groups
  • Churches smuggled children to safety or hid them in convents, monasteries or with families
  • Clergy who spoke against anti-Jewish decrees, hid Jews or smuggled them to safety; provided false baptismal certificates
  • Villages sheltering Jews or groups of children (Le Chambon-sur-Lignon)
  • Countries protecting their Jewish population (Denmark/Sweden, Bulgaria)

 
SUGGESTED WEBSITE

Facing History and Ourselves is a national educational and professional organization whose mission it is to engage students of diverse backgrounds to examine racism, prejudice, and anti-semitism to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry.  http://www.facing.org/








INTERESTING FACT:

Estee Lauder's son and President of Estee Lauder Corporation, Ronald S. Lauder, works tirelessly for the re-establishment of the Hungarian and Polish Jewish communities. For more than a decade, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation has committed to rebuilding Jewish life in that part of Europe where the destruction of the Holocaust was followed by the oppression of Communist rule.                
                                                                      
In 1987, Lauder founded and funded a system of Jewish kindergartens and schools, particularly in lands ravaged by the Holocaust. As expressed on the Lauder Foundation website, "With every Jewish child learning in our kindergartens and schools, with every Jewish teen exploring her identity in our summer camps and youth centers, with every Jewish young adult studying in our institutions of higher education, and with every one of those young Jews who then starts a Jewish family and has Jewish children, we are helping build new worlds - Jewish worlds."

Learn more about Israel:
 







The Flag of Israel - unfurled at the United Nations in 1949. The Magen David is a traditional symbol of Judaism. The star is made up of two triangles, one right-side up and the other upside down. One of them points upward toward all that is spiritual and holy. The other one points downward -- toward all that is earthly and secular. By leading a life of Torah and mitzvot, the Jew strives to bring together the worlds of spiritual and the earthly, the worlds of the holy and the secular. Legend tells us that King David of Israel adorned his shield with this six-pointed star, thus the star is named the Magen David. The blue stripes of the Zionist flag serve as a counterweight to the message of the Star of David. They give the flag the religious and ritual aspect totally absent from the latter. Whether the symbolic meaning of the blue stripes was perceived consciously or not, their origin in the tallit reminds onlookers of the Torah commandments. The Zionist flag uses the Star of David to express Jewish unity, which is in turn guided by the precepts of the Torah, as represented by the blue stripes and white background.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Shabbat with family and friends.

Best, 

Sherrie Stalarow, Director
BBYO March of the Living




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