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Anne Frank’s Classmates Remember Holocaust and Days of Hiding

 “What we had was a ‘killing machine’--not just part of a normal war,

but a killing machine. We shouldn't forget this past, and we must

remain informed about what's happening today. What went on thenshould never happen again.” Nanette Blitz Konig, best friend of Anne

Frank (p. 127) 

 “By the end of the war, I looked like a skeleton. My hip bones were

poking through my skin. They weighed me when I'd already been inthe sanatorium for a while, and I was thirty-two kilos, barely seventy

pounds. So I must have weighed a lot less before.” Nanette BlitzKonig, who spent three years recovering in the sanatorium after her

release in 1945 from Westerbork, a Nazi prison in The Netherlands (p.

132-3)

 “The dates tell you that the children who arrived in Auschwitz andSobibor [Nazi extermination camps] were gassed immediately.” 

Nanette Blitz Konig, viewing the plaque with the names and deathdates of Jewish children (including that of Anne Frank) of the

Montessori School (now named Anne Frank School) where she and

Anne and many of their classmates went to school before they wentinto hiding or were murdered by the Nazis (p. 160)

 “My freedom.” Nanette Blitz Konig, when asked by a twelve-year-old

boy at the Anne Frank School, in 2008, what was the most cherishedthing that had been taken from her as a Jew during the Second WorldWar. (p. 163)

 “The informers were paid [by the Nazis]; and sometimes it was a

matter of carelessness on the part of those in hiding, or of those who

were hiding them as well. In any event, many people were betrayed.One third seems to be the official figure, but I believe that half the

Jews who went underground were betrayed.” Lenie Duyzend, anotherfemale classmate of Anne Frank (p. 180-1)

(All quotes from We All Wore Stars, Memories of Anne Frank from Her 

Classmates, by Theo Coster--also an Anne Frank classmate--English

translation published by Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)

Those few excerpts from the book may help to fix in your mind theconditions under which millions of Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe

managed to avoid death during the Holocaust. I say “avoid death” 

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because even the word “survive” fails to give sufficient impact. Deathby disease or starvation was common, even while the Jews were

 “free,” in hiding from the Nazi troops. Many did not manage to avoiddeath. Eighty percent of the Jews in The Netherlands before the war

did not survive.

Of the ones who hid and were discovered, they were sent in railway

freight cars to concentration camps. The cars were so crowded thatindividuals had no room to sit down. Some literally died en route, of 

disease or starvation. Those who were not fit to help the Nazis in some

way, while in the camps, were told they were to take showers to cleanup the lice and filth that most had accumulated. The showers emitted

not water, but lethal gas.

Why, I wondered when I was younger, did so many go peacefully

rather than fighting to the death after they were captured? They werestarving, they believed that if they were sent to “work camps” they at

least would be fed. They didn’t mind working if they would be fed.Most didn’t work. They didn’t live long enough to need to be fed.

They believed the “showers” would not only cleanse their skin, but

they were told that a mild chemical would rid them of lice and

parasites. The “showers” were to be a privilege.

They believed. They died. Six million of them.

Seventy years later, many of us have lost the message. Today wehave more Jew haters than in past decades. Why? Because those whohated the Jews before and during the Holocaust continued to hate

them after the war was over. And, like the Nazis who invented modernday propaganda methods, they continued to spread their word,

relentlessly.

I recently defriended a man on Facebook. While he was a marvelous

resource for anti-establishment “facts” and video materials, he wasalso rabidly anti-Jewish. Anything done in Palestine he could justify in

some way, whereas anything done by Israel he could “prove” was evil.He posted between one and five anti-Israel or anti-Jew Facebook itemsevery day. He had 4000 Facebook “friends.” Read: followers of his

propaganda.

Today we have the endless conflict between Israel and Palestine thattires many of us so much that we want to ignore it. What many don’t

realize is that Palestinians, who wanted independence from their

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former masters Jordan and Egypt for at least a century, not only lostthe war (they supported Germany), they also lost what they had

hoped for so long would be a free Palestine.

When the state of Israel was created after the war, from land taken

from countries that supported the losing side (Germany, home of theHolocaust), Palestinians refused to give up their fight. Where

previously Palestinians and Jews had lived peacefully, side by side, inPalestine, when the Jews succeeded in getting international support for

the creation of Israel while the Arab Palestinians failed to get their own

official homeland, the Palestinians vowed to never forget or give uptheir fight.

Palestinians, in general, may not be as well educated as the average

Israeli. But they learned their lessons about propaganda from their

German allies. They learned how to manipulate the media. Theylearned how to lie, repeatedly and consistently, until eventually

enough people believe the lies. That’s what propaganda does, asdemonstrated so well in the 1930s by Hitler’s buddy Goebbels, the

master propagandist.

Israel learned too, but from the Roman empire, not from modern day

militaries. Israel learned that when an enemy hurts you, you shouldhurt your enemy back ten times as hard as it hurt you. That’s how

Israel has responded to attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.

Such principles of fighting back do not fit with modern morals andethics. Hitting back with far more force than you were hit with makesyou a bully today. Palestine tries to make Israel come off in the media

like a powerful bully. It’s working. Blogs and social media give anti-Israeli propagandists free reign. White supremacists of the past have

become anti-Israeli heroes of present day, in the eyes of some people.

The most important key to successful propaganda is to say your

message with confidence. Truth is not important (in fact, lies are thepreferred content of propaganda), so long as the message is delivered

with confidence and determination. In propaganda, you never admityour own mistakes or weaknesses, you always blame your opponentfor what you did wrong and you usually accuse your opponent of using

the same dirty tactics as you use yourself. The whole US experience inIraq is an excellent example.

Please, when you think about Israel today, remember that Jews have

survived many extermination attempts over the past three millennia in

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which they have been denied a land of their own (the Holocaust wasbut one). How might you expect today’s Israelis to act when they

finally got a country to call their own? How would you react if sixmillion of your culture mates were gassed while millions of others were

starved and abused?

Israel has acted badly, by modern standards, no doubt. Call it brutal.

But is the answer to disenfranchise Israel? Bullying of other kinds hasnot been stopped by putting the bullies in jail. In fact, jail and

punishment of other kinds of bullies have created more bullying than

they have solved or prevented.

When enemies face each other as enemies, peace will never happen atthe table. Only when they face each other as similar peoples with

common interests is there any chance for peace.

Jews and Arabs are both Semitic peoples. Each is a collection of 

various tribes of the past. Wherever tribal customs, traditions andmores of the past continue today you will find conflict. Check out

where conflict is happening in the world today and which maintaintribal values and you will find an almost perfect coincidence.

Not all Israelis subscribe to tribal values, but there are enough strongminded purists to influence their government. Not all Arabs, or even

Palestinians, subscribe to the old tribal values, but there are enoughthat peace talks always mean enemy facing enemy across the

negotiating table.

Whenever political representatives face each other as being “different” 

peace cannot be achieved. Only when they face each other as beingthe same people, only with different opinions that need to be resolved,

will there be a viable possibility for peace.

Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for 

Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a book for teachers and parentsabout how to raise children who can cope in today’s complicated

modern world. It’s a book about commonalities, not about differences,which is why it works.Learn more at http://billallin.com