Fifth in the video series is up!

This episode focuses on treatment of the Romany (Romani) people and the seldom-discussed Lebensborn project. If you thought you knew enough about the Nazi era, think again. 

Video #2

...and there will be more...

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today, I'm taking a break from my usual blog in which I highlight one right thing done by an individual. The reason? Today, April 24 2017, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Because of its origin on the Hebrew calendar, the day falls on a different Gregorian calendar date every year. Unesco has set January 27th as Holocaust Remembrance Day, so I suppose that makes two dates each year in which we are to remember. Either way, the date's purpose is to give us pause so we can remember victims of the Holocaust and to refocus on the pledge: Never Again.

Twenty years ago, Holocaust survivors talked with school students and civic groups, putting a personal face and story to the greater horror. Fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors are alive now to share their stories in person. Thankfully, many documented their truths via the archives at US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, and numerous books, articles, and videos. There is great wisdom there, free for the asking.

And so here we are, a third generation away from those horrible events, and the question is as relevant as ever - have we learned the lessons of history so we can, with confidence, say 'Never Again'?

Prejudice and racial/religious profiling still exist worldwide, including right in our own country, our own towns. People are still lumped into categories and weighed against a popular standard in an assessment of worth. Genocide, wiping out entire populations based on some defining feature, still happens around the world.

In addition to the prevalence of anti-semitism in today's world, the 'other' victims of the Nazi regime also continue to be viewed as lesser human beings, still fighting for basic rights and basic dignities. This includes people who are homosexual, disabled, Roma Gypsies, or anyone who resists their government's status quo.

So no, even with two recognized dates in which to examine our prejudices and our actions toward one another, we haven't learned. The possibility of another holocaust is quite real.

God help us.

And that's why I continue to read and write about those years. I can't change history, and I can't fix the world. But I must do what I can to share what I've learned with subsequent generations. Anyone who reads Risking Exposure and its sequel (my work-in-progress) will hopefully see how dreadfully simple it is to move from feeling prejudices to verbalizing them to acting upon them (or turning a blind eye while others do so.) Only awareness of the historical cost will prevent us from going down that road again.

Berlin resident turns propaganda into expressions of love

Berlin resident Irmela Schramm is a septugenerian on a mission. Armed with a scraper, nail polish remover, and a can of red spray paint in her 'Anti-Nazi' bag, Schramm has turned hate-filled propaganda into words of love and support for more than 30 years. 


It all started for her one morning decades ago. A poster supporting convicted Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess was plastered to a wall at her neighborhood bus stop. When it was still there on her return trip that evening, she was moved to act. She scraped it off with her house keys. She reports feeling fantastic afterward, knowing that she removed the 'mind pollution.' 

Since then she has single-handedly removed over 130,000 expressions of hate. She uses spray paint to turn swastikas into hearts. She changes the wording of posters and graffiti to include expressions of support and kindness. 

Her efforts has met with mixed support. She has been hugged by strangers and received threats from neo-Nazi groups. Police have at times been bemused and have at other times threatened charges for defacement of property. Some community members have decried her activities as destruction of free speech. 

Schramm doesn't see it that way. She told CNN, "Freedom of speech has limits. It ends where hatred and contempt for humanity begins."

One doctor's ingenious fake epidemic

When the Nazis moved into Poland in 1939, Eugene Lazowski had just finished medical school. He was made an officer in the Polish army and stationed in the town of Rozwadow where he worked for the Red Cross. The fence which marked the border of the town's Jewish ghetto was right behind his house.

Dr. Lazowski had heard of recent discoveries by fellow Pole Dr. Stanislaw Matulewicz. It seems that a certain strain of the typhus bacteria, when killed and injected, will allow the patient to test positive for the deadly epidemic disease while remaining symptom-free. Dr. Lazowski tried it, and sent the patient's blood sample to a German lab for testing. 

The response was a red telegram - the patient has epidemic typhus and must be quarantined.

The patient was not ill.  

So Dr. Lazoswki came up with a plan. Whenever a patient came to him, be it a villager or a Jew from the ghetto (who he was forbidden to treat but did so anyway), he injected them with the bacteria. Blood samples left the village, red telegrams returned.

Soon the village and the ghetto seemed to be a hotbed of epidemic typhus. Nazis avoided the area - Germany had not had an outbreak of typhus in a generation, and officials worried about their soldiers' vulnerability. When a medical inspection team was sent to check on the epidemic's status, Dr. Lazowski planted ragged, dirty villagers in the hospital. The nervous doctors took one look and left quickly. The village quarantine was official.

The Nazis stayed away from Rozwadow for the duration of the war. Over 8,000 villagers and ghetto residents were spared the fate of other Polish villages, all because of one doctor's kind heart and his ingenuity.