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Israel Hosts First Miss Holocaust Pageant

This item is a bit strange, and created a bit of controversy...



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Last week I found the story of one Holocaust survivor who "stuck" it to Hitler by living every day to the fullest, including skydiving at age 85.

Yesterday, I heard another story of someone who stuck it to Hitler, in his own way. Holocaust survivor Binyomin Wertzberger told his story on Kol B'Rama radio.

Wertzberger was a young boy, assigned to work detail shlepping heavy rail ties with his bony hands. When it was meal-time, he joined all the other hungry boys to go get some food and satisfy some of that hunger.

While lining up for his food, the Nazi officer looked at him with disgust and said, "You dream to go to your Jerusalem? Maybe your ashes will get there via the chimneys of the concentration camp."

Eventually, Wertzberger succeeding in surviving the horrors and made his way to Eretz Yisrael, where he got a job in maintenance of the Kotel. Wertzberger said, "I never looked at the watch. Every minute I wanted to give what I could. Every time I cleaned the stones of the Kotel, from where the Shechina never left, I felt that I was getting revenge on that Nazi officer. This is the most Jewish vengeance that there is." (source: Kikar)

Another way to stick it to Hitler.

Some people after the Holocaust felt, and still feel, that they needed to really "live" and "show" Hitler, really stick it to him. Different people "lived" and "showed" Hitler in different ways, each in his or her own style.

One went and jumped out of an airplane. At 85 years old. Gary Lenzner lives his life to the fullest, every day, just to show Hitler.

Lenzner is a Holocaust survivor, having survived the first few years as a German Jew in hiding he was eventually caught and then had to survive Auschwitz and Buchenwald. And now he spends his time showing "that idiot" that he (Hitler) is dead while he (Lenzner) continues to live.

From the Orange Country Register:

Most birthdays for Gary Lenzner consist of a dinner celebration with his extended family – on solid ground. So for his 85th, he decided to aim higher, much higher.
On Sunday morning, the spry Mission Viejo resident jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet in the air, free-falling for about 40 seconds before landing safely by parachute on Nichol's Field in Jamul, east of San Diego.
For Lenzner, a Holocaust survivor who escaped a World War II concentration camp, the experience was more than an adrenaline rush – it was a way to prove Adolf Hitler couldn't put out his flame.
"I'd like to prove the son of a (expletive) didn't succeed," Lenzner said as he suited up with his grandson, Bryan Wasserman, who jumped with him. "Not only didn't he succeed, I had two children, eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren, and now I'm jumping out of an airplane."
Lenzner's skydiving dream has been nearly a decade in the making, and was carefully planned to prevent certain family members from finding out in advance – those who would, as Lenzner put it, have "gone crazy" had they known of his daredevil plan.
"I'm here with Papa," Wasserman, 26, of Costa Mesa, told his mother by phone from the airfield moments after the duo touched down. "We went skydiving."
"No way," replied Rhonda Wasserman, who is Lenzner's daughter and one of the worriers of the family. "You and Papa?"
"Papa went," a grinning Bryan Wasserman replied, "and he did a back flip."
•••
Lenzner, who turned 85 on July 23, is an observant, talkative character with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of humor. He refers to Hitler as "the idiot" or "the S.O.B.," and when asked why he wants to skydive at 85, he replies with a gleam in his eye, "You only live once. Once you're dead, you're dead."
He says he's healthy, keeps active and bowls twice a week through a local senior bowling league. His average is 160.
Wasserman considers Lenzner to be his best friend. He's always been able to talk to his grandfather about everything, and grew up just a few blocks away from him in Mission Viejo.
"I just have a special bond with him," said Wasserman, one of Lenzner's eight grandchildren. "He keeps things very secret."
So when the duo went parasailing during a family trip to Cabo San Lucas about eight years ago, it was only natural Lenzner would turn to his grandson and confide a secret of his own – he wanted to go skydiving.
But Wasserman didn't get the chance to act immediately on that dream. Shortly after the vacation, Lenzner's wife of 58 years, Caroline, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and Lenzner became her primary caretaker. She passed away in 2008.
About six weeks ago, Wasserman was reminded of his grandfather's dream when he saw an offer on the coupon website Groupon for a discounted $125-per-person skydive through the Skydive San Diego company in Jamul. After confirming his grandfather still wanted to take the plunge, he purchased two tickets. It was the first time for both of them.
"If it were me, my heart would be going bah-boom, bah-boom," said Lenzner's girlfriend, Susan Nelson, 75, of Mission Viejo, as she looked upward at the tiny specks floating down from the sky.
Skydive San Diego's operations director, Blake Robinson, said Lenzner is one of the oldest people he's ever seen jump. (A 92-year-old is the oldest he can remember.) Although about 15 percent of all customers are in their 60s and 70s, less than 1 percent are older than 80, Robinson said.
"Once you hit 80, they drop off – literally," Robinson said.
•••
Lenzner escaped from Nazi internment – and certain death – essentially by sheer luck.
The native German Jew was a teenager living with his grandparents in Berlin when they received notice in 1943 that they were to be forcibly relocated to another city. Lenzner, who describes himself as "a typical rebellious teenager," told his grandparents he would not be going with them, despite their pleas. (He later learned his grandfather committed suicide on the day he was to be forcibly relocated; his grandmother was sent to a concentration camp and never heard from again.)
After shedding his identification papers, Lenzner ventured into the city, becoming a transient youth who was forced to hide his Jewish heritage.
He slept in department stores, in doorways and hallways of apartment buildings. When necessary, he begged to stay with his mother, who had remarried a Christian Protestant. But she was fearful of being caught providing shelter to a Jew, and would often toss him out, he said.
While in line at a movie theater in 1943, a group of teens who lived in his old neighborhood recognized him and began chasing him, screaming that he was a Jew.
"I ran right into the arms of a policeman," he said.
Lenzner said he was taken to a police substation, where he was left alone near an open window and managed to escape. But by then, he was already on the police's radar, he said.
About three months later, he was caught in a pedestrian checkpoint, imprisoned, and whisked away by the Nazi's secret police force – the Gestapo – to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, where he spent more than two years working as a laborer, helping to build a Nazi chemical factory and doing supplies inventory.
From there, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp and sent to harvest crops on a nearby farm. In 1945, as he was being marched back to Buchenwald on a chilly April day, he realized he needed to make a run for it.
"During this march, as people fell down, they were shot – it became a death march," he said.
He veered off the trail as it passed through a wooded area, and began running, eventually making his way to a farmhouse, where a sympathetic woman offered him shelter. Within weeks, American tanks were rolling through the area.
A great aunt in Detroit, Mich., offered to help him immigrate to the United States, he said. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, served a four-year term, and met and married his wife, Caroline, in Detroit. He spent the rest of his professional life installing and repairing laundry machines in Michigan and later Oklahoma. Thirty-one years ago, he retired to Mission Viejo.
•••
After everything that the Holocaust survivor has been through, a 10,000-foot plunge was hardly much of a feat for Lenzner.
He was calm and collected as he boarded his plane, joking to the four family members who were with him: "If I get any more calm, I'll fall asleep."
When he met his tandem skydiving instructor, Josh Higgins, he introduced himself by saying: "I'm 85 years old, and I'm a Holocaust survivor."
And how was the experience?
"I enjoyed it very much," Lenzner said. "There was a fleeting moment when I got a little bit dizzy, mainly when I started going sideways. If I stay healthy, maybe I'll do it at 90."

The city of Haifa decided in 1998 to establish a park that would be named after the memory of those saved from the Holocaust by Yisrael Kastner. They have now begun work on constructing the park and have placed announcements in the area to that effect.

Dr. Rudolph Kastner

Many are now protesting the naming of the park in memory of Kastner. Dr. Rudolf Kastner, the subject of the book Perfidy by Ben Hecht, was accused of having been a Nazi collaborator. Kastner saved many refugees by getting them out of Hungary on what became known as the Kastner train, paying much monay, gold and diamonds to the Nazis. At the same time, 12,000 Hungarians a day were being taken out of Hungary for "resettlement". The accusation was the Kastner knew "resettlement" was the gas chambers, but played along and did not warn anybody or help them (besides for the 1685 Jews he saved), and in essence had traded tens of thousands of Jewish lives for a small number he wished to save.

Kastner At Trial
The Israeli government sued a writer on kastner's behalf after he called Kastner a Nazi collaborater. At trial the court rejected the defamation claim, speaking very harshly about what kastner had done. Kastner had to resign his government position and the Cabinet disbanded as a result. The Supreme Court later overturned the decision (similar to Demjanjuk). but not before Kastner was assassinated in 1957. The book "Perfidy" which was written about the Kastner scandal, was denounced by the Israeli government and was banned from being sold in Israel until recently.

[RG: I changed some details of the trial info, as what I originally wrote from memory had been inaccurate]

Many people remain unconvinced of his innocence, despite the Supreme Court overturning the lower court's decision, and consider it inappropriate to name the park after Kastner. (source: Mynet)

What Is Worse?
I don't know what is worse - naming the park after such a controversial figure (though really it is being named after the survivors, and not after Kastner himself, though his name is part of the memorial), or the fact that it took 13 years to implement the municipal decision to build the park!

On a recent trip to Europe, a family of three generations (a Holocaust survivor, his daughter and his grandchildren) dance to Gloria Gaynor's pop song - 'I Will Survive' at concentration camps and memorials throughout Europe.

This clip was first edited with the help of my friend Pisithpong Siraphisit who runs Compeung Art Village, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This dance is a tribute to the tenacity of the human spirit and a celebration of life.

Despite the systematic brutality and cruelty endured, we have still survived.

(Kol Isha (recorded singer) and Mixed (family) Dancing alert..)




I really wanted to post this video before Tisha B'Av. I think the message relayed in the video is very appropriate for Tisha B'Av. If not for the fact that the music and dancing was very strong in the video, and not just in the background, I would have posted it (though then the video would not have been quite as appropriate in its message - it is the performance that makes it a powerful message).

The video has sparked a debate about whether or not it is appropriate to be dancing in front of what were concentration camps.

My opinion on this is that for anybody but a survivor to do this would have been irreverant, disrespectful and inappropriate. Because it is a survivor and his immediate family, that makes it not just appropriate, but even a powerful message to the Nazis and to anti-semites.

The survivor in the video is sending a message to Hitler and his cronies, and those today who support them and would like to follow in their footsteps, that we have survived, we continue to live and we will dance on your grave. You wanted to destroy us, but we live life to the fullest.

Yeah, it is kind of an inappropriate title.

Today, the members of government showed, once again, how classy they truly are.

There has been an ongoing crisis with the holocaust survivors. They want funding and the government has been offering pathetic solutions (no comment on that issue right now..). Recently PM Olmert came up with a new solution which would allow him to double the stipend per survivor.

The catch is that to do so he had to cut out half of the survivors from the funding. He is doing so (proposing it at least) by splitting survivors into different categories. Those who actually were in concentration camps and survived, and those who survived outside of camps.

According to Olmert's proposal, only survivors of actual camps would be eligible for the funding, while general survivors would not be.

MK Opher Pines-Paz said regarding that proposal, that had Anne Frank survived, she would not qualify for funding as a survivor under Olmert's proposal.

He was clearly trying to shock the system by suggesting that Olmert is not calling the second category survivors, as they did not spend their time in concentration camps.

In response to Pines-Paz's shocking statement, PM Olmert accused Pines-Paz of bestial behavior.

In response to that, Pines-Paz said Olmert is the beast.

Wow. What an argument. They sound like my children.