
On this solemn day of Yom HaShoah we encourage everyone to spend some time with the first-person testimony of Holocaust survivors. It is important to hear many survivors’ stories to appreciate the gravity and horror of the Shoah.
Renée Firestone is a distinguished fashion designer and survivor. She began sharing testimony about the devastation her family experienced in the Shoah after a Jewish cemetery and synagogue in her home city of Los Angeles, CA were vandalized with swastikas. Her mother and sister were both murdered at Auschwitz.
Leo Rechter was the founding Secretary of the HSF-USA, and served as the long-time President of the National Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (NAHOS). He passed away in February.
Holocaust survivor Margot Capell, 100 years old, spoke to the Staten Island Advance about her family’s experience under the Nazi Holocaust for their “Stories We Can’t Forget” series. Her parents were killed in a concentration camp in Poland.
Thank you to the community who visits this page for your support and encouragement as we pursue justice and dignity for survivors.
Today in the Forward, Herbert Karliner tells Stewart Ain “it is shameful for anyone to compare anything to Kristallnacht.”
“On Kristallnacht, my father, Joseph Karliner, had his store set on fire and destroyed. Within hours, the Gestapo arrived and took him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was a time of absolute terror for Jewish people. My father returned a few weeks later, and we thought we were lucky to be escaping Germany on the SS St. Louis. Well, as most people should know, we were turned away from this great country, dooming my father, my mother, my two sisters, and hundreds of others to their deaths in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camps.”
“My brother and I were very, very lucky to survive, and I was privileged to emigrate to the United States. I served in the U.S. Army and raised a family here. I believe in the strength and virtue of the American people to overcome the political differences of today, and pray for President Biden and all of our elected leaders to help heal us. But analogies to Kristallnacht or Nazism reflect a very serious misunderstanding of the vast scope of Nazi Germany’s crimes, and the crimes of its collaborators. They also denigrate the memory of 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.”
Read the rest of the interview with Herbert Karliner, who also serves on the HSF-USA executive committee, today in the Forward.
HSF-USA Statement on Riots at the United States Capitol
January 10, 2021
As Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors, we are profoundly saddened and angered by the violent attack on the United States Capitol and Congress to prevent our Nation’s sacred peaceful transition of power. It was an insurrection, an effort to overturn the people’s will in the November 3 election. For shame! We abhor the violence that threatens our ability to live together in the diverse, free, and democratic United States that we so deeply love.
It is also painful, in the year 2021, to see so many people brandishing symbols of anti-Semitism and racial bigotry, such as shirts glorifying the Holocaust, a gallows and noose, and the Confederate flag, as they attacked our Democracy. We appreciate President-Elect Biden’s clear denunciation of the anti-democratic riots, and his recognition of their anti-Semitic and racist elements.
Dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracies once confined to dark corners of the internet are gaining traction in “respectable” quarters, without clear condemnation by all who call themselves leaders. We have previously spoken out about the painful rise of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence including murders at religious gatherings in Pittsburgh, Poway, Monsey, and in Europe as well.
We, the remaining voices for six million Jews who were murdered because of the “normalization” of these tactics in Nazi Germany and Europe, are speaking out to sound the alarm loud and clear. The poisonous political rhetoric from government leaders and media designed to arouse hateful passions, fan the flames of anger and violence, must be condemned by our leaders at every level, and by all of us in our families, businesses, religious institutions, and communities.
Civil Rights leader John Lewis stood up for his family and all Black Americans to demand desegregation of white supremacist institutions and address systemic injustice through nonviolence and direct action. HSF-USA recognizes the importance of Representative Lewis’s voice, from the Freedom Riders to the House of Representatives, in advancing the cause of freedom, justice, equality and dignity for all people.
Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is occurring in 2020 during the very uncertain and dangerous coronavirus pandemic, with its terrible toll in human lives and suffering. Our hearts go out to all who have lost loved ones.
We are compelled to speak out about continuing injustices and at the same time, reflect on our survival, and the survival of the Jewish people, and share a common message of hope. It is our belief that the only way forward is to help each other, to rely on ourselves.
After a decade of incremental home care increases, Members of the Senate Select Committee on Aging cited evidence from its 2014 hearing that “the levels of home care funding by the Claims Conference would meet only 25% of the current needs of impoverished survivors.”
To make matters worse, emergency services funding has not increased at all.
Samuel Dubbin before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims
“This is an insult to humanity,” said Schaecter, 90, president of the organization and a survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. “I think they are trying to sweep it under the carpet. The fact is, we are a dying breed. There are so few of us left.”
Read more in the Sun-Sentinel and Associated Press
It is with great sadness that we share the passing of Mark E. Talisman, Founding Vice Chairman of the US Holocaust Memorial Council and beloved friend. Mark was appointed to the Council by President Carter and served as Vice Chairman from 1980-1986.
We share our love and condolences with Mark’s wife, Jill Talisman, daughter Jessica Talisman, granddaughter Colby Herman and grandson Gus Herman, son Rafi and daughter in law Karma Talisman, and grandson Sascha Talisman.
The Times of Israel Obituary for Mark Talisman
Mark Talisman, a tireless advocate for the Holocaust survivor community, passed away last night.
Mark was loved and respected for being a strong and tenacious fighter for long delayed justice.
I was proud to call him an amigo.
May his memory be a blessing.
— Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (@RosLehtinen) July 12, 2019