From a Guardian Article, see it HERE.
Their 11th-hour escape on the eve of the second world war became the stuff of legend, earning international recognition for the man who organised it, Sir Nicholas Winton.
Now people spirited out of German-occupied Czechoslovakia when they were children are to pay homage to previously unsung heroes in the affair – the parents who boarded them on to Winton’s “kindertransport” trains bound for Britain in a desperate attempt to save them from the Nazis.
The Guardian has published some stories from Holocaust survivors. Here are two. Please go HERE to read all of them. Polar Bear and Company has published books by Neil Rol
de about the Holocaust. Rolde’s latest seres has dozens of stories, like the Guardian’s, about survivors and about the people that help them escape in clandestine ways. Rolde highlights the work the War Refugee Board did throughout this time. Please go here to read more from a Maine Insights’ article.
The Guardian article also highlights the photography by Harry Borden, who traveled far and wide to capture soulful images of these nobel survivors.
Lidia Vago
Holocaust survivor Lidia Vago at home in Israel – Photograph: Harry Borden
Lidia Vago was born in Romania in 1924. She was a 20-year-old French and English student when she and her sister were selected for a women’s work camp. They were liberated in May 1945.
On 10 June 1944 we were taken to what the SS called the Central Sauna (disinfection chambers) at Birkenau (also known as Auschwitz II). We had our heads shaved, even our pubic hair, everything, and I was given a black gown to put on. My sister and I were empty-handed because everything had been taken away from us. We had been separated from our mother and father, and didn’t know where they had gone.
We were marched to a row of huts, surrounded by electric barbed wire, that had no bunks, just wood floors and a leaking roof. This was the horrendous quarantine camp. It was a terrible place we would never have been able to imagine, even if someone had told us about it. We were defeminised: all our periods stopped. And we were given a metal bowl for five women to share but no spoon; so we had to sip this horrible soup-like liquid, taking a gulp and passing it to the next woman. We slept on the floor without blankets and after a few days everyone had diarrhoea. There was a makeshift toilet but we weren’t allowed to use it all the time, so we had to use the metal bowl for our physical needs; we washed it out in water so dirty, there was a sign above the ditch that read “Danger of epidemics”.
One of the women asked the head of our block, Hella, “Where are our family members?” and she pointed at dark clouds of smoke and flames in the distance [coming from the gas chamber]. Most of the women did not want to believe it, but I knew then that I’d never see my mother again. Continue reading
Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed. Many of the same elements that led to the Holocaust survive today. Neil Rolde has dedicated himself to broadening our awareness of this era. His histories highlight the degree to which the U.S. helped save Jews during the war and what that required.
The War Refugee Board saved over 200,000 lives, but there hasn’t been a comprehensive written history about the extraordinary work that the Board did—until now.
Neil’s More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean, The Tempestuous Story of the War Refugee Board is the definitive history of this heroic organization.
“The War Refugee Board’s feat of saving some 200,000 targeted innocents is surely worthy of respect. I’m proud to have told the saga of the War Refugee Board in its detailed entirety, in these two volumes,” said author Neil Rolde.
A new documentary by Ken Burns, The Sharps’ War, is the story of how a Unitarian minister and his wife risked their lives to save an estimated 125 Jews, during the height of WWII. Burns said that their story needed to be told.
While researching, Rolde found a treasure trove of stories where people accomplished extraordinary things to save Jewish refugees but their actions were rarely attributed to the work of the War 
Refugee Board.
For example, Raoul Wallenberg, a heroic Swede who saved at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews is known. “But not many people know that the War Refugee Board had sent Wallenberg secretly to Hungary,” said Neil. “Most of the workers weren’t Jewish. They were a small group of about thirty people doing extraordinary things.”
Tragically, during WWII the U.S. didn’t help refugees as
much as the should have because of the U.S. State Department official in charge of matters concerning all European refugees during the Holocaust, Breckinridge Long.(click to view Neil’s book on Long)
“When I researched Long I came across the War Refugee Board and soon saw the need to write about their work. That lead to my latest about what happened to the Jews after the allies ‘liberated’ Europe. It concentrates on the Bricha, which is Hebrew for escape.”
Rolde’s books are always extensively researched. Neil has won awards for his books from the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and the Maine Humanities Council.
President Barack Obama in Israel at the Holocaust Museum in 2013
We must never forget.
Neil Rolde’s comprehensive history of the War Refugee Board
Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed. Many of the same elements that led to the Holocaust survive today. Neil Rolde has dedicated himself to broadening our awareness of this era. His histories highlight the degree to which the U.S. helped save Jews during the war and what that required.
The War Refugee Board saved over 200,000 lives, but there hasn’t been a comprehensive written history about the extraordinary work that the Board did—until now.
Neil’s More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean, The Tempestuous Story of the War Refugee Board is the definitive history of this heroic organization.
“The War Refugee Board’s feat of saving some 200,000 targeted innocents is surely worthy of respect. I’m proud to have told the saga of the War Refugee Board in its detailed entirety, in these two volumes,” said author Neil Rolde.
A new documentary by Ken Burns, The Sharps’ War, is the story of how a Unitarian minister and his wife risked their lives to save an estimated 125 Jews, during the height of WWII. Burns said that their story needed to be told. Continue reading
Crimes of War deals with a true life SS massacre of a small town in France during World War II called Oradour-sur-Glane.
“The drama here was that some of the perpetrators were French citizens—Alsatians drafted into the SS. They were put on trial in 1953 for their part—under duress, it was claimed—in the horrendous killings and destruction of that peaceful village,” said historian/author Neil Rolde.
During the Spanish Inquisition many Cathars where tortured and murdered in the same region where the SS massacre took place, echoing the past.
“Neil tells this compelling story as if he were there—a silent witness through the centuries,” said Paul Cornell du Houx, of Polar Bear & Company, the book’s publisher. Specific historical figures make appearances in the story.
In the novel Professor Eugene Desfosseux, a historian and self-taught ventriloquist, conjures amid the ruins figures from deep into his past and records the interviews and interrogations in a tale that epitomizes what this or any other war crime might encompass—including his own daily life of pleasures, romance and memories inflamed to a vengeance that would destroy his life’s work.
“Thus it brings up the question of what war crimes entail and thus the plural in the title. Crimes of war are still a universal problem,” said Neil.
Upon the order of President Charles de Gaulle the town was kept as the Nazis had left it in ruins and is a national monument.
More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean is the definitive history of the War Refugee Board.
Niel Rolde’s biography on Breckinridge Long, the U.S. State Department official in charge of matters concerning all European refugees during the Holocaust, exposed the tragic reality that the U.S. appointed the wrong man for the job. As a result to Long’s policies 90 percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled.
When President Roosevelt learned about what Long had been doing he had his power over visas and refugees taken away. In January 1944, he established the War Refugee Board.
“The War Refugee Board’s feat of saving some 200,000 targeted innocents is surely worthy of respect. The saga of the War Refugee Board is a story worthy of being told in its detailed entirety, in two volumes,” wrote Rolde.
H.A. and Margret Rey fled the Nazis on self-made bicycles, carrying manuscript for book on the now world-famous monkeyFrom an article in The Times of Israel, Aug, 6 2016
It takes an inquisitive mind and a steady spirit to get the whole story about the creators of “Curious George.”
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. She recently sat down and talked with The Associated Press about the project.
What made you want to do a film about the Reys?
Yamazaki: I grew up in Japan reading ‘George’ in Japanese, and … when I learned they were these German immigrants who had fled the Nazis on bicycles with the first Curious George book with them, it was enough for me to be interested. … And I assumed there was already a movie out there and when there wasn’t I was immediately in a car, headed to Cambridge to meet the lady who runs the estate.
What sorts of materials have you found?
Yamazaki: There’s … 300 boxes (at the University of Southern Mississippi) of the Reys’ personal archives, anything from their wartime journals to letters they wrote to each other, the process of how they created Curious George — so the rough sketches all the way through to the fine prints, (and) all this other artwork they did that they never published.
What did you learn through your research?
Yamazaki: As I learned more about them, and I learned about their story, it’s almost inseparable. Who they were is why they were able to make that monkey.
I love how Margret describes the monkey as someone that finds himself in trouble and through his own ingenuity gets himself out of trouble. That’s her words and it might have as well been them, describing them, especially in their escape. They literally found themselves, the night before, it was too late to leave, with no cars, no trains to be had, not even a bicycle. All they had was a tandem bike. It was Margaret who had no patience basically to ride a tandem bike to flee the Nazis. And she said, ‘Hans, my husband, do something about this.’ And he cobbled together two separate bicycles out of spare parts.
Things like that, that are very George-like in a way — the creativity, the imagination and their approach to things — really I think seep through into what they created.
“Elie never gave up on humanity and on the progress that is possible when we treat one another with dignity and respect.” —President Obama on the loss of Elie Wiesel:
Elie was not just the world’s most prominent Holocaust survivor, he was a living memorial. After we walked together among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald where he was held as a teenager and where his father perished, Elie spoke words I’ve never forgotten – “Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.” Upholding that sacred duty was the purpose of Elie’s life. Along with his beloved wife Marion and the foundation that bears his name, he raised his voice, not just against anti-Semitism, but against hatred, bigotry and intolerance in all its forms. He implored each of us, as nations and as human beings, to do the same, to see ourselves in each other and to make real that pledge of “never again.”
At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that he helped create, you can see his words —“for the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” But Elie did more than just bear witness, he acted. As a writer, a speaker, an activist, and a thinker, he was one of those people who changed the world more as a citizen of the world than those who hold office or traditional positions of power. His life, and the power of his example, urges us to be better. In the face of evil, we must summon our capacity for good. In the face of hate, we must love. In the face of cruelty, we must live with empathy and compassion. We must never be bystanders to injustice or indifferent to suffering. Just imagine the peace and justice that would be possible in our world if we all lived a little more like Elie Wiesel.
At the end of our visit to Buchenwald, Elie said that after all that he and the other survivors had endured, “we had the right to give up on humanity.” But he said, “we rejected that possibility…we said, no, we must continue believing in a future.” Tonight, we give thanks that Elie never gave up on humanity and on the progress that is possible when we treat one another with dignity and respect. Our thoughts are with Marion, their son Shlomo Elisha, his stepdaughter Jennifer and his grandchildren whom we thank for sharing Elie with the world. May God bless the memory of Elie Wiesel, and may his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.
Elie Wiesel was one of the great moral voices of our time, and in many ways, the conscience of the world. Tonight, Michelle and I join people across the United States, Israel and around the globe in mourning the loss and celebrating the life of a truly remarkable human being. Like millions of admirers, I first came to know Elie through his account of the horror he endured during the Holocaust simply because he was Jewish. But I was also honored and deeply humbled to call him a dear friend. I’m especially grateful for all the moments we shared and our talks together, which ranged from the meaning of friendship to our shared commitment to the State of Israel.
Holocaust & WWII books 