Tag: <span>Holocaust</span>

The Nazi’s Granddaughter – Silvia Foti

The Nazi's Granddaughter (March 2022) I read this book in anticipation of interviewing the author Silvia Foti for the show Inside Scoop on Fairfax Public Access which broadcast on Monday, March 21st. This interview was prompted by a virtual event hosted by the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia, on May 5, 2022. One of the founders of the Virginia Holocaust Museum is a Litvak-American survivor, Jay Ipson. The fact that 95% of Lithuanian Jews were exterminated during the Nazi Occupation makes descendants of survivors few and far between.

Joining author Silvia Foti for this event is Grant Gochin, who is descended from Lithuanian-Latvian Jews who escaped the Holocaust but whose family members did not. Grant Gochin has spent more than 25 years researching what happened to the Jews of Lithuania. He uncovered the fact that Jonas Noreikas was responsible for the murder of Jews in Lithuania years before his granddaughter Silvia figured that out.

This book is so well written and so accessible to those of us who are not historians or academics. We travel on this journey of discovery along with the author as she tries to piece together what she always believed about her grandfather against mounting evidence about who he was, what he espoused, and what he did. He was hailed as a national hero for his resistance to the occupation of Russian Communists in Lithuania, but not held accountable for his role in the wholesale murder of nearly the entire population of Lithuanian Jews.

I love the fact that the chapters of the book are punctuated by official responses from the Genocide and Research Centre in Lithuania to a lawsuit brought by Grant Goshin against the Lithuanian government regarding their recognition of Jonas Noreikas as a national hero. He continues to pursue that case through the international judicial system.

It was very moving to hear from both Silvia and Grant about how they connected. It took courage for the granddaughter of a Nazi collaborator to reach out to the grandson of Holocaust survivors and expect him to take her call. He did take that call and what has ensued is both a collaboration seeking truth and justice as well as a genuine friendship. They have a unique story to tell and it’s not finished.

I highly recommend this book. History becomes the provenance of those who control the narrative. We have experienced that here in Virginia and it’s true around the world. As William Faulkner observed, “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” And we can see how that is unfolding as Vladimir Putin attempts to twist the narrative of his invasion of Ukraine even as it is unfolding.

We must bear witness to the truth of history. This book shines a light on facts that have been buried too long. Silvia Foti has crafted a fascinating book that allows us to walk alongside her on a journey into her past and toward the beacon of truth for the Jews of Lithuania.

by Catherine Read

Violins of Hope – Richmond Exhibit 2021

(July 2021) Dr. James A. Grymes, a professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, has brought forth such a well researched and well told story of violins that survived the Holocaust, even when many of their owners did not. It is fascinating and horrifying, an emotional retelling of what happened to violinists – famous and not – during a period in history where Jews were savagely exterminated all over Europe. In some instances, these violins saved their owner’s life and that of their families.

I read this book in preparation for interviewing Dr. Grymes for a show I host called Inside Scoop. The upcoming collaborative exhibition called Violins of Hope is taking place in Richmond, Virginia, from August 4th to October 24th. The violins in this exhibit were played by Jewish musicians in camps and ghettos during the Holocaust and ended up in the hands of Amnon Weinstein of Tel Aviv, a second generation craftsman who repairs violins. The stories of the instruments, their owners and how they came to be in Amnon Weinstein’s shop makes for riveting reading.

There is so much I was not aware of regarding the role that music played during the Holocaust. There were camp orchestras at many concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, where work details left in the morning to the music of the orchestra and returned in the evening greeted by the same music. Providing music for soldiers spared the lives of some musicians who were given extra food or lighter work assignments. Dr. Grymes has focused his book on telling detailed stories of musicians from Germany to Romania, the Ukraine to Norway. There is a great deal of significant history woven into the telling of these very personal accounts. I learned so much.

Bronislaw Huberman, Ernst Glaser and his wife Kari, the boy partisan Motele Schlein, Feivel Wininger and his baby daughter Helen. Their lives mattered and Dr. Grymes has sought out their stories as a way of preserving their memories the way their musical instruments have been lovingly preserved.

Amnon Weinstein lost over 400 members of his family. His parents refused to speak about the loss of their parents, siblings and extended family during the Holocaust. Yet Amnon, who learned violin repair from his father Moshe [who was taught by violin maker Yaakov Zimmerman] finds hope in restoring and sharing these violins. He observed that while Nazis did not survive beyond WWII, these violins have. “These instruments are a testimony from another world.”

Although Nazis did not survive beyond the defeat of Germany, fascism lives on all over the world and is on the rise. For the 15th consecutive year, there has been a decline in global freedom. Teaching history – fully and truthfully – is important in helping each new generation understand we are not immune to the basest, darkest and cruelest instincts of human beings. Evil is never truly eliminated, it is kept at bay, and only the greatest vigilance prevents another Holocaust in a different iteration from happening again.

I highly recommend reading this book and then making plans to visit the Violins of Hope in Richmond Aug. 4th thru Oct. 24th at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, The Virginia Museum of History & Culture and the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia. There will also be a series of concerts in collaboration with the Richmond Symphony Orchestra where these violins will again bring comfort and joy to those fortunate enough to hear them. More information can be found at www.ViolinsofHopeRVA.com

by Catherine Read

In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi – Exploring Gender Identity

(Feb. 2017) This book is so many things. At its most basic, In the Darkroom is an exploration of identity. It’s also an intimate account of a daughter’s reconnection to her parent after decades of estrangement. That reconnection came in the form of an email from her father Steven Faludi that was signed, “Love from your parent, Stefánie.” The email announced that at the age of 76, her father had undergone sex reassignment surgery in Thailand and was now a woman.

I have more than a passing understanding of the multifaceted aspects of gender identity. And yet . . . Susan Faludi takes the question of identity to a whole new level and shows the many layers and overlapping aspects of how we see ourselves. Gender is only one of those facets that creates our sense of self. And she explores how gender can also be conflated with other aspects of identity, like Jewishness.

Faludi is a researcher, writer and journalist and a well known feminist too. Yet, I was not familiar with any of her other books or articles before reading this one. She gives a thoroughly researched account of the science and psychology around the work of early “sexologists.” In 1919 in Berlin, [Magnus] Hirschfeld established the world’s first institute to study sexuality, which issued one of the earliest scientific reports on transsexual surgery.

Yet Hirschfeld espoused an ethic directly at odds with the dualism that would come to prevail in the United States later in the century. “The number of actual and imaginable sexual varieties is almost unending,” Hirschfeld wrote in 1910. “In each person there is a different mixture of manly and womanly substances, and as we cannot find two leaves alike on a tree, then it is highly unlikely that we will find two humans whose manly and womanly characteristics equally match in kind and number.”

And there we have it in 1910 – the concept that gender is on a spectrum and is not just a binary.

There is also a fascinating chapter on how feminism and feminists have dealt with the question of transgender women. That has been quite an evolution and she pulls from many published works to show just how varied and passionate the views are among transwomen themselves.

This book also provides a fascinating history of Hungary. While that was most unexpected, I enjoyed learning the history of this country through the story of her father’s life and his family’s history there. It is the most personal of journeys through a country’s long and fraught existence and it comes to life through the impact it had on individuals whose stories emerge through Susan’s relentless pursuit of surviving family members.Read More