I have received another interesting email. Dear Mr. [sic] Rabbi Ilene Harkavy Haigh, Dear Mrs. Heidi Fishman,Last week our town has been visited by our native born Mrs. Nina Weil-Pelc again. Since 1968 she's been living in Zurick, Switzerland. We were pleased about her wanting to see her birthplace again and being in a good … Continue reading From Švihov to Vermont
My mother tells how Heinz Lichtenstern, her father, escaped a transport to Auschwitz in 1944. Notified that he, along with all men aged 16 to 55 then in Theresienstadt, would be leaving soon, he had said his tearful goodbyes to his family. At the transport, before boarding, Heinz once again showed the family’s Paraguayan passport. … Continue reading Searching for Stories
We live in a time of labels and hyperbole and I don’t like it. Too many groups are being defined by labels that are then used to stereotype and marginalize. This tendency has been brought to my attention with two particular groups since my trip to Switzerland. The groups in question are the Poles and … Continue reading An Unnecessary Divide
One of the mysteries of my family’s Holocaust survival is their passport from Paraguay. According to my mother, that passport saved her father from a transport to Auschwitz. We have a copy of the document along with a letter of notarization stating that it is real. The mystery here isn’t that the passport exists, but … Continue reading Feeling the Bern*
Our guide, Jiri, picked us up at our hotel. After a few minutes of introductions and small talk we climbed into his minivan and headed to Terezín. The drive there from Prague was about 45 minutes, and I used the time to explain to Jiri that my mother and her family were prisoners in Theresienstadt … Continue reading On the Way to Terezín
January 17, 2014 we gathered at the church in Tilburg again. Coffee, tea and cookies were available along with the usual friendly atmosphere that the Dutch seem to delight in. Once everyone had gathered, about 50 people, we all put on our coats and wandered over to Bobby and Tineke's old house. I noticed that … Continue reading Laying the Stumbling Stones
Friday night my husband and I went to Boston to see Joanna Caplan's premier performance of Total Verrückt! at the Charlestown Working Theater. This is a one-woman show that was conceived, created and performed by Joanna. It portrays the "totally crazy" circumstances of the German-Jewish former stars of the Weimar Republic that found themselves in … Continue reading Total Verrückt! Encore
