On Holocaust martyrs' and heroes day

And finally, a third item for Holocaust memorial day

Please note: Today the United Nations, established at the end of that terrible war to ensure that the world became a better place, hosted as an honored guest a man who said these events never happened and yet who heads a regime that seems dedicated to repeating them in a slightly different form.

He was permitted to, in effect, call for genocide at a meeting that supposedly was dedicated to fighting hatred and discrimination. While many delegates walked out, many others cheered him. This meeting was named after the city of Durban, took place in the city of Geneva, but had overtones of the types of meetings once staged in Nuremberg.

It should be emphasized that many did fight back, then and now. I will be writing a lot about this partisan resistance in my book but a brief example. Yesterday I received a typed memoir written in 1996 by a partisan commander. His son sent me the original (in Russian) and no one has ever seen it before. Here is a brief excerpt:

“They [the Soviet partisan soldiers] said that Jews did not fight. In fact, their unit had the best discipline….During the attack on Myadel at the end of July 1942, five minutes after the signal to attack, the Jewish subunit was inside the town So the other units didn't even have to shoot because it had already taken the objective….We freed many Jews on that day [more than 120 prisoners who were about to be murdered] and killed many German soldiers and policemen. We burnt down their barracks and took their weapons and ammunition. I always said that a crowd without a leader is nothing. And our fight at Myadel proved it. After that several commanders asked me to give them some Jewish partisans to strengthen fighting spirit in their units.”Colonel Ivan Timchuk, Commander, People’s Avengers’ Brigade, May 10, 1946

Since I have paid proper tribute to my “eastern” ancestors on my father’s side who died during the Shoah, a few words about a few people from the “western” side of my mother.

Richard Lowenbein, a salesman, was born June 29, 1894, in Vienna. He escaped the Nazis and made it to France but was arrested by the French police and sent to Auschwitz on Transport Number 59 on September 2, 1943. His stepmother, Olga Janniz Lowenbein was born January 28, 1875 in Vienna of a family from Trumau Bohemia. [We share the same birthday.]. She was deported by the Nazis and their Austrian collaborators to Minsk where she died in the massacre there, November 28, 1941.

Maria Lowenbein Dub was born November 11, 1878 in Lednica, Austria-Hungary. She lived in House 213 in Turie (Turo) Czechoslovakia, where she ran a grocery store. Also living in the house were the families of her two sons. Jozef, a lumber dealer, born July 17, 1901 in Chlebnice, and her daughter-in-law Ilsa Meisel Dub, born on May 20, 1907 in the same town, and their daughter Erika Dub, born March 26, 1933 in Bytcica.

In another apartment lived Artur Dub, who worked in a lumber company, born February 8, 1900, and his wife Karolina Freund Dub, born July 13, 1909 in Roudnice nad Lebem. They had a son named Tomas Dub, born August 26, 1935 in Prague.

When the Slovak fascist government seized Jewish property, everything they owned was seized. Jozef was deported to Lublin Poland on March 27, 1942, and was murdered there. All but Karolina and Tomas were murdered in similar circumstances.

Here is a list of members of my grandmother’s extended family (Grosbein) murdered in Dolhinov, Belarus:

Shmuel, Henia Rivka, Leah, Etel, Pinia Leib, Moshe, Hirsch & family, Chaya, Shmuel, Chaim Yitzhak, Sarah Leah, Mendel, Rivka, Chaya, Freidel, Rishka, Devorah, Chaim Avraham, Zalman, Sheina, Beila, Avraham Yitzhak, Mendel & Bella, Yitzhak, Leah, Shmuel, Pinchas, Chana, Batya, Shoshanna, Isaac, Sarah, Israel & family, Beryl & family.

Here is a list of members of my grandfather’s extended family (Rubin) murdered in Dolhinov, Belarus (Rubin):

Masha, Yehudah, Shmuel, Sarah, Yaakov, Nehama, Raphael & children, Lipshe, Bat-sheva, Etka, Shelomo Nata, Yentel, Chaim, Chana, Sonia & family, Mordecai, Chaya, Eliyahu, Gittel, Israel, Gita, Yaakov Leib & family, Zvia, Pinchas & family, Raphael & family, Eliyahu & family (his wife Mira, Chaya Sarah, Shmuel, Gesia Leah, Yosef), Shachna & family, Batya, benzion & family, Bashe, Bonia, Binyamin, Michel, Golda, Michel, Eliyahu & family, Yosef & family, Chaim, Shimshon & family, Yaakov & family, Shachna.

May the memory of them and all the others live forever.