Saturday, April 28, 2012

FATHER PATRICK DESBOIS HUNTS FOR THE KILLING FIELDS : HOLOCAUSTS BY BULLETS

THIS IS THE PRIEST I MENTIONED HEARING SPEAK RECENTLY, who heads up an organization that is searching for the killing fields. First I'm linking to an article from Sacred Heart University which mentions also the University’s Center for Christian - Jewish Understanding.

"He and his team have investigated more than 850 execution sites and mass graves in Ukraine and Belarus, and he expects their investigations will take them next into Poland and Russia. The generation of eye-witnesses is fast disappearing with most now in their 80s and above, and he recognizes that in only a few years, they will all be gone, giving renewed urgency to his task." ... Desbois said he regularly speaks with elderly people who are sharing their childhood recollections for the first time in their lives; they are anxious, at long last, to contribute to the record and let the world know what they witnessed. Children were forced to participate in preparing their neighbors for immediate death. Sometimes they would be obliged to scrape off remnants of body parts from trees so that the next round of victims would remain unaware of their impending fate. The youngsters would gather up clothes, help dig enormous graves, even collect gold teeth. Once the hundreds of men, women and children in a town had been shot to death, the children would return to their dead neighbors’ homes and take anything of value to be sold at public auction. Men’s clothes would end up in one classroom, women’s in another, household furnishings in a third."



The team that works with Father Desbois comes from various religious and not religious backgrounds and beliefs. If you or a family member know of the location of the graves, please contact his organization : http://www.yahadinunum.org/ YAHAD In UNUM.

At the talk I attended there were three holocaust survivors who spoke up and said they knew where the killing field was in their village.

Monday, April 23, 2012

BOOK EXCERPT: REZSO KASZTNER : THE DARING RESCUE OF HUNGARIAN JEWS by LADISLAUS LOB

REZSO KASZTNER
The Daring Rescue of Hungarian Jews : A Survivor's Account
by Ladislaus Lob C 2008
Pimlico is the Publisher

pages 269-270


"The charge that Kasztner made up the Bergen-Belsen group entirely of his relatives and his Zionist cronies from Kolozsvar also stands on shaky ground. Given the appalling task of selecting a few hundred from hundreds of thousands, no selection could have been "right."

(My note : his relatives were a count of ten, while other relatives were left behind and exported or murdered in Auschwitz.)

"The dominance of Ziolnists from Kolozsvar is hardly surprising, since Kolozsvar was Hungary's second largest city with the largest and most active Zionist community, and the whole rescue enterprise was founded on Palestine immigration certificates...

"My father and I were only two of many non-Zionists, and the point is strongly made by Peretz Revesz, a former leading member of the youth movement who carried out many dangerous rescue missions of his own in Slovakia and Hungary with Kasztner's help."

page 279

"One of the most impressive witnesses was Israel Szabo. He explained that "the ordinary Hungarian in the street knew about Auschwitz" but "mass flight" was impossible, and believing that the Hungarian Jews could have "organized any resistance" would have been a "fatal error." They had been methodically worn down by the "expropriation of their wealth, the loss of their place of work, ... the closure inside their homes, in the ghetto under inhuman conditions."


This process had left them drained of all confidence and energy.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

WORLD WAR II : HOLOCAUST REMEMBERANCE DAYS

This week, linked to this year's Passover, people in the United States, especially those who live near large Jewish communities, are remembering the Holocaust of World War II era, which occurred on European soil, in countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Russia, Germany, Belarus, Estonia... with various events produced by Jewish organizations for Holocaust remembrance. There are also remembrances staged by various religious and not religious organizations with the focus on peace; the idea is that we as citizens of the world should not forget or put up with Holocausts / ethnic cleansings anywhere in the world.

To me there is a difference between a soldier / an army who fights other soldiers/ armies and what has and is happening to civilians. Don't get me wrong. I'm for a strong defense of the United States and too realistic to think we can go without a military presence. At the same time there are atrocities committed on innocent people every day on this earth and that is wrong. I don't have all the answers or much power to do anything about it, just on a personal level to try and understand people of cultures different than mine, and decide if I like someone or not by my experience with them rather than prejudging them.

Although the United States did not experience the holocaust as personally as did the people of Europe, many survivors fled here, or got here through Israel or through organizations overseeing the resettlement of those who fled Europe after the war was over. To this day the International Red Cross provides services to help locate people who were or are separated by war.

I will soon be telling you all about an organization I learned about my going outside my own culture to attend a presentation by a French Catholic priest as a Jewish temple.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

HUNGARIAN AMERICAN CLUB OF NEW MEXICO


"We enjoy sharing Hungarian food, music, our history, poetry and enjoy meeting people with similar backgrounds and interests. We welcome any and all new members into our large extended family. "

Update August 2022 http://www.hacnm.net/

Sunday, April 15, 2012

THE GLASS WALL : A FILM NOIR FILM FROM 1953

THE GLASS WALL film is one of four on a DVD put out by Columbia Pictures, on a DVD called Bad Girls of Film Noir Volume 1. All four films were original Columbia Pictures films from the early 1950's, and in black and white. The legend goes that it was "B" films in that period that actually gave actresses the "juiciest" roles.





It was unexpected that THE GLASS WALL would have a Holocaust and Hungarian refuge thematic. The basic story is of a man who stows away on a ship from the old world where he was in concentration camps from the age of 14 and, caught, he can't make it through immigration. Desperate to not be send back, his wish is to find the trumpet player whose life he saved, so that the musician can testify for him. Meanwhile, he befriends a woman in trouble - a woman who can't pay her rent. The trumpet player sees his picture on the front page of a local newspaper and wants to help him but the refugee is fleeing - all the way to the United Nations building - a modern building that is symbolic in design of a glass wall. The trumpeters girlfriend turns out to be a Hungarian exotic dancer who lives with her mother who is making goulash... and says "We're all honkies..."

Considering that some of the earliest Hollywood people, directors, studio moguls, photographers, cinematographers, etc. were of Eastern European including Hungarian descent, I thought about the stereotypes of Hungarians and their representation in movies. I believe the writers on this were Maxwell Shane and Ivan Tors.



C 2012 Magyar American BlogSpot



Friday, April 6, 2012

EASTER BUNNY AND EGGS : SPRING FERTILITY!


No doubt a very pagan view of the spring holiday, bunnies and eggs, symbols of fertility.

Monday, April 2, 2012

1940 UNITED STATES CENSUS ON LINE TODAY! LINK TO DIGITALIZED IMAGES HERE!

This is so exciting to those of us who are tracing our ancestry with roots in Hungary!

A majority of Hungarian-Americans today can trace to the immigrations of the Industrial Revolution. We find ancestors on US census (and some state census) in 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and now 1940. They have lived through the Great Depression and are will be involved in World War II. These other census are not available as digitalized images at the National Archives site, which is accessible anywhere there is an Internet Computer.