600 Holocaust Survivors and Their Families Sing "Chai" in Jerusalem

As Israel commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day, 600 Holocaust survivors and their families met in Jerusalem and celebrated their life through song. 

As the Arutz Sheva staff wrote on April 9,

Leading up to Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day), six hundred Holocaust survivors and their families, including second, third, and even fourth generation survivors, gathered at Jerusalem’s Beit Avi Chai to unite in recording, in Hebrew, Ofra Haza’s Chai (Hebrew for “alive”).

The song Chai was specifically chosen for this event. It was written by the late Ehud Manor and composed by Avi Toledano for the 1983 Eurovision Competition in Munich.

Manor noted that the words were written as an expression of defiance and victory of the Jews, directed at those who made every attempt to destroy the Jewish people. Indeed, the song proudly declares that the Jewish people are very much alive: “This is the song that our grandfather sang yesterday to our father, and today, I, I am able to sing it.”

As the song was being recorded, many of the survivors were overcome with emotion. Hands shaking, some with concentration camp numbers visible on their arms, yet hands planted firmly on their Israeli children and grandchildren, they described their memories of the horrors – and survival. Many family members arrived from all over the country, some from abroad, to join their grandparents and great-grandparents in this unique event.

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Yom Hashoah Special: How Sir Nicholas Winton Saved 669 Children from the Holocaust

Tonight and tomorrow we commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. It's not a day for Jewish humor, but it can be and should be a day to recognize acts of bravery and compassion of Jews and non-Jews who saved lives in those troubled days of the 20th century.

Nicholas Winton was a British humanitarian who organized the rescue of 669 children, most of them Jewish, from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport (German for "children's transport"). Winton found homes for the children and arranged for their safe passage to Britain.The world found out about his work over 50 years later, in 1988. The British press dubbed him the "British Schindler".

Winton's parents were German Jews named Wertheim who changed their name to Winton in an effort at integration.They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptized. His rescue achievements went unnoticed for half a century until in 1988 his wife found a detailed scrapbook in their attic, containing lists of the children, including their parents' names and the names and addresses of the families that took them in. 

The wider world found out about his work in February 1988 during an episode of the BBC television program That's Life! when he was invited as a member of the audience. At one point, Winton's scrapbook was shown and his achievements were explained. The host of the program asked whether anybody in the audience owed their lives to Winton, and if so, to stand. More than two dozen people surrounding Winton rose and applauded. This scene is shown at the end of the 10-minute long documentary below.


In 2003, Winton was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi Germany occupied Czechoslovakia." On 28 October 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman. He died in July 2015 at the age of 106.

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Israel Pauses on Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. 

The full name of the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust is “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah”— in Hebrew literally translated as the "Day of (remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism."

It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan — a week after the end of the Passover holiday and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers). It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Througout Israel, a siren will wail for two minutes starting at 11 am. All activity comes to a halt. Traffic slows and comes to a complete stop on all streets and highways. Shoppers freeze in their place wherever they are. 

The video below shows Israel pausing last year on Yom Hashoah. 

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Holocaust Remembrance Day Starts Tonight: Dudu Fisher Sings The Partisan Song

With Holocaust Remembrance Day starting at sunset today and continuing through tomorrow, we're holding off on the humor until Wednesday, so we can post videos appropriate for the commemoration.

"Zog nit keyn mol" (Never Say; Yiddish: זאָג ניט קיין מאָל‎) or "Partizaner lid" (Partisan Song) is a Yiddish song considered one of the chief anthems of the Holocaust survivors and is sung in memorial services around the world.

The lyrics of the song were written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick, a young Jewish inmate of the Vilna Ghetto. The title means "Never Say", and derives from the first line of the song. Glick's lyrics were set to music from a pre-war Soviet song

The annual March of the Living program brings thousands of young people from around the world each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day to Auschwitz-Birkenau to honour the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and to pledge to build a better world for all humanity.

In 2013, singer Dudu Fisher and the March of the Living Choir sang The Partisan Song on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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"The Last Laugh" - A Documentary About Humor and the Holocaust

The Last Laugh is a feature documentary about humor and the Holocaust, examining whether it is ever acceptable to use humor in connection with a tragedy of that scale, and the implications for other seemingly off-limits topics in a society that prizes free speech.

Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016, the film had a theatrical release in NYC on March 3. It will be playing at Jewish film festivals and is in selected theaters now (see list below).  The documentary is directed by Ferne Pearlstein, and produced by Robert Edwards, Amy Hobby, Anne Hubbell, Ferne Pearlstein, and Jan Warner.

It includes commentary by Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Rob Reiner, Gilbert Gottfried, Alan Zweibel, Harry Shearer, and David Steinberg.

As Kenneth Turan wrote in a Los Angeles Times review,

"The Last Laugh" is at its best when its people are telling jokes, often ones in which the Holocaust is involved. There's Baron Cohen in country-western mode singing "throw the Jew down the well," Sarah Silverman ending a skit with "Auschwitz? You'll say Wowschwitz" and Larry David focusing a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode on a dinner-party battle between a Holocaust survivor and a contestant on the TV show "Survivor."

The Last Laugh is now playing at the following theaters:

Pleasantville, New York: Jacob Burns Film Center
Beverly Hills, California: Laemmle's Music Hall 3
Encino, California: Laemmle's Town Center 5
Jacksonville, Florida: Sun-Ray Cinema @ 5 Points


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French Jewish Refugee Creators of "Curious George" are Subject of New Documentary

Ema Ryan Yamazaki, a 27-year-old graduate of New York University’s film school, is working on a documentary about H.A. Rey and Margret Rey, the husband-and-wife team behind the multimillion-selling Curious George children's books. 

The Reys were Jewish refugees during World War II, fleeing from Paris in 1940 on homemade bicycles. Eventually settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they would launch a series that has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. (H.A. Rey died in 1977; Margret Rey in 1996.) 

As Hillel Italie wrote in The Times of Israel,

Yamazaki, whose previous credits include directing a short documentary about an 800-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and editing the HBO documentary “Class Divide,” had read “Curious George” in Japanese as a girl and was surprised to learn that no one had made a film about the Reys. Through a mutual friend, she got in touch with the literary estate and received its cooperation.

Yamazaki plans a 75-minute documentary, which has the working title, “Monkey Business: The Adventures of George’s Curious Creators,” and will include original animation of the Reys themselves, and has begun a Kickstarter campaign to help with funding.

In the video below, Yamazaki tells the story of how she got involved with the project, and the story of the Reys' escape.

Enjoy!

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A Yom HaShoah Special: The Inspiring Story of the Founding of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, so we're postponing the Woody Allen standup comedy routine that we had scheduled as today's Throwback Thursday post for next Thursday.

Today we're sharing an inspiring video clip from Orchestra of Exiles, a documentary shown on PBS that is now available for rental from Netflix. This documentary focuses on Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who rescued hundreds of Jews from the Holocaust and founded the Palestine Symphony, the globally renowned orchestra that would eventually become the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Palestine Symphony Orchestra was made up of Jewish musicians from the top ranks of orchestra and chamber music groups across Europe. Nearly 80 musicians joined, with only a few already living in Palestine. Those who moved from Europe brought their families, which meant Bronislaw Huberman’s efforts to found the orchestra under the threat of a pending Holocaust ultimately saved nearly 1,000 lives. 

It was not an easy decision for musicians to leave their homes and professional associations in Europe and move to Palestine, a desert land in political transition since the end of World War I. But particularly in Germany, Jewish musicians had lost positions in orchestras because of their ethnicity. As early as 1933, Hitler ordered the firing of Jewish musicians and his anti-Semitic policies increasingly became laws that stripped Jews of their civil rights.

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Artist-Musician Rara Kuyu Plays Hebrew Songs in Miami Beach's Lincoln Road Mall

Strolling along Miami Beach's picturesque Lincoln Road mall last Friday afternoon, the last thing we expected to see was a Haitian artist and musician entertaining the passersby with a collection of Hebrew songs. But that's exactly what we saw.

Rara Kuyu, a local artist and musician who graces the Miami scene, often stations himself in the center of the Lincoln Road in Miami Beach's colorful South Beach outdoor shopping mall. Rushing to get back to our apartment before Shabbat, we were only able to catch a few of his songs. While we were there, he sang Rad Halayla, Siman Tov U'Mazal Tov, and Ani Ma'amin. 

We wondered: Who is this street musician? A bit of research revealed that he is a popular artist who paints murals and his own van with the colors of his native Haiti. He has adopted a mission to keep the Jewish culture alive, and toward that end fills the Miami streets with Jewish and Hebrew songs. 

He also has created a large painting titled No More Holocaust that is based on the huge hand sculpture that dominates the Holocaust Museum in Miami Beach. Click on the link below to see his YouTube video in which he explains the symbolism of the various parts of the painting.


https://youtu.be/klvUxJtMByM


Enjoy!

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Jewish Humor Central Featured on Voice of Israel Radio Show

On the set of Israeli satire show Eretz Nehederet (Tomer Neuberg/Flash 90)

On Tuesday we were interviewed on the Voice of Israel radio network by Molly Livingstone, the station's humorist and interviewer on her show, The Big Falafel.

Molly shares our interest in spreading laughter and showing the world that Israel is a funny country.

Molly kicked off the interview with her comments on a 24-hour-visit to Jerusalem the day before by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, a visit that we didn't know about and frankly didn't care about. 

But then she settled into the main interview about Jewish Humor Central, how it got started, and how we manage to keep it going through 1,700 posts over six years to thousands of readers in 210 countries. OK, most of them are in the US, Israel, Canada, the UK, Australia, and South Africa, but we do get some in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

We talked about humor in Israel and how it differs from humor in other countries. Toward the end of the interview, we discussed the challenges of a humor site posting appropriate material on days such as Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut. We hope you find the questions and the answers interesting and meaningful.

Yom HaShoah Remembrance: Itzhak Perlman Plays John Williams' Theme from Schindler's List

This evening marks the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) around the world.

As Edward Serotta wrote in Haaretz this week,

The date is commemorated in a great variety of ways. There are the events and ceremonies – a candle lighting in a synagogue here, a school presentation there; all traffic comes to a stop in Israel at 10 A.M. Speeches are delivered. 

Then there are programs like March of the Living, which sends thousands of Jewish teenagers to walk through concentration camps in what had been German-occupied Poland (they often leave out the ‘German-occupied’ part) with the goal of having them witness the horrible past – they stand in Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day – then fly to Israel to witness the bright Jewish future.

Today we're taking a break from humor to honor the spirit of the day by sharing a video clip that we found of Itzhak Perlman (2003 Kennedy Center Honors honoree) playing a beautiful rendition of the theme from Schindler's List for John Williams, a Kennedy Center Honors recipient the following year.

Williams was picked by director Steven Spielberg to write the music and Perlman played the violin in the film.

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Unbelievable But True: Jewish Woman Tells How Her Photo Was Shown as Nazis' "Perfect Aryan Baby"

Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg, Yedioth Ahoronot

It happened back in 1935 but just came to light this week. When the Nazis were promoting their idea of a Nordic or pure Aryan race as the highest level of humanity, they commissioned ten German photographers to submit photos of six-month-old babies as examples of a "perfect Aryan baby." 

What they didn't know then was that the cute baby in the winning photo was a Jewish girl named Hessy Levinsons, who is now 80-year-old Hessy Taft, a chemistry professor in New York.

Taft recently presented a copy of a Nazi magazine from 1935 with her baby photo on the cover to Yad Vashem, Israel's center for Holocaust research, documentation, and education.

As Dr. Ruchama Weiss and Rabbi Levi Brackman wrote in Ynet News, the online version of Israel's Yediot Ahoronot newspaper,

Taft's parents managed to scrape together enough money for professional photographer Hans Ballin to snap their baby.

A few months later, the family was shocked to discover that their daughter's image was on the front cover of a Nazi propaganda magazine called "Sun in the House", which was edited by Kurt Herrman, a friend of Hermann Goering and a staunch Nazi. 

Ballin deliberately entered the photograph in a contest for the most beautiful Aryan baby, and when Taft's mother questioned his actions, he told her: "I know, but I wanted to make the Nazis ridiculous." The winning photograph was personally chosen by Goebbels.

 The family fled Germany to Paris in 1938, and then moved to Cuba before arriving in the United States in 1949.

The Nazis never discovered that their perfect baby, whose image they heavily disseminated, was in fact Jewish.

 "I feel a little revenge, something like satisfaction," Taft told the German newspaper Bild.

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90-Year-Old Jewish Holocaust Survivor Makes Symphony Debut With Yo-Yo Ma

A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor made his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma last week to benefit a foundation dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed by the Nazis.

As reported by the Associated Press, Ma and George Horner received floral bouquets and a standing ovation from their audience of about 1,000 people in Boston's Symphony Hall. They appeared to enjoy their evening, chatting briefly between numbers and walking off the stage hand-in-hand after taking a bow together.

Before the performance, Ma and Horner met and embraced ahead of a brief rehearsal. Ma thanked Horner for helping the Terezin Music Foundation, named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.

They played music composed 70 years ago when Horner was incarcerated.

"It's an extraordinary link to the past," said concert organizer Mark Ludwig, who leads the foundation.

Horner played piano and accordion in the Terezin cabarets, including tunes written by fellow inmate Karel Svenk. On Tuesday, Horner played two of Svenk's works solo — a march and a lullaby — and then teamed up with Ma for a third piece called "How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?"

Svenk did not survive the genocide. But his musical legacy has, due in part to a chance meeting of Ludwig, a scholar of Terezin composers, and Horner, who never forgot the songs that were written and played in captivity.

Still, Ludwig found it hard to ask Horner to perform pieces laden with such difficult memories.

"To ask somebody who ... played this in the camps, that's asking a lot," said Ludwig.

Yet Horner, a retired doctor who lives near Philadelphia, readily agreed to what he described as a "noble" mission. It didn't hurt that he would be sharing the stage with Ma — even if he thought Ludwig was joking at first.

"I told him, 'Do you want me to swallow that one?'" Horner recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it because it's a fantastic thing for me."

Ma said before the performance that he hoped it will inspire people to a better future.

In this video, NBC's Brian Williams introduces a short summary of the event.

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Israel Hosts First Miss Holocaust Survivor Contest

This week marked the first beauty pageant of Holocaust survivors as 14 women, aged 73 to 89, walked the runway in Haifa, Israel, as contestants for the title of Miss Holocaust Survivor. 

Only ten percent of the score was based on beauty, and 90 percent was based on their stories of survival.

As Jodi Rudoren wrote in The New York Times,

It was the first time down the runway for all 14 finalists, in what was billed as the first-ever pageant of Holocaust survivors.They wore sensible shoes, and no swimsuits. Personal stories counted as much as poise.

But this pageant was of greater consequence than to serve up a feel-good moment. It tapped into a core conflict that bedevils this society, where most everyone agrees on the need to keep the memory of the Holocaust central and alive, but not everyone agrees on how.

Some criticized the celebration for trivializing a tragedy, a reminder that in Israel the Holocaust is both omnipresent and ever-contentious.

Avrum Burg, author of the 2009 book “The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” said in an interview that “what you see in Haifa is a struggle over the strategy of the memory.”

“Will it be permanently victimizing ourselves, and whining, whining, whining? Or will it be something else: the something else is the syntax of life, the vocabulary and the lexicon of the Holocaust survivors saying, ‘Remember us positively.’ ”

Shimon Sabag, director of Helping Hand for a Friend, the nonprofit group that organized the event, said it was important because “we have to remember history but also have to let these survivors think about the present. When people take an interest and pamper their outside or external beauty, this makes them feel better physically and then has a positive effect on their soul.”

But the struggle seeped through even in the two minutes each contestant was given to tell her story Thursday night. Each spoke of hunger, beatings and loss in Europe, but also of books written and prizes won in Israel. The survival theme was underlined as each listed her progeny: two children, three grandchildren; three children, six grandchildren; three children, seven grandchildren, nine great-grands. 

The crown, and a weekend in a five-star hotel, went to Hava Hershkowitz, 78, who wore an ankle-length black skirt and long-sleeved jacket, her bright-red lipstick matching her toenail polish. The oldest contestant was 89, the youngest 73. Most, including Ms. Hershkowitz, were from Romania, and many avoided the camps. 

On Thursday afternoon, professional hairdressers and makeup artists donated their services to help the women primp. Heli Ben-David, runner-up in 1979’s Miss Israel contest, spent the last two weeks teaching them how to prance.

After an elegant dinner in a room decorated in black and white save for tall centerpieces topped with balls of red roses, the women walked gingerly down the red carpet, many needing help ascending and descending the stage. Then they danced in a circle, singing along with Israeli standards.

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