← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Oliver Cromwell
Thread ID: 4553 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2003-01-21
2003-01-21 20:08 | User Profile
The Daily Northwestern Chicago, January 20, 2003
Speaker: Don't let history die with its participants
Son of Holocaust survivor tells crowd to preserve families' forgotten stories
By Greg Lowe
BERNIE Farber didn't realize he had two half-brothers until 21 years after they were killed in a Nazi death camp. Farber, the executive director of the Ontario region of the Canadian Jewish Congress, spoke Sunday to a crowd of about 25 people in the McCormick-Tribune Forum about his effort to learn about the life [that] his father -- and his father's former family -- led before the Holocaust. Farber was brought to campus by the Tannenbaum Chabad House, where he gave another lecture Friday night on the evils of anti-Zionism.
After escaping the fate of the rest of his small Polish village, Farber's father, Max, came to Canada and started a new life.
Until 1974, Farber and his brothers were unaware that Max had a previous family killed in the Holocaust. Since that revelation, Farber tried to learn his father's past. Max died in 1990 at the age of 92. "How did my father manage to start a second life?" he asked. "How did my father put away such pain and such tragedy?"
It wasn't until Farber's mother was dying that Max finally told his sons about his life in the Polish village of Botchki, a life that included a different wife and two children. While Max and a cousin survived by jumping off a train headed for a concentration camp, the rest of his family was killed in a Nazi gas chamber, Farber said.
Farber said he feels a spiritual connection to the half-brothers he never met. "I really only know them from an old, wilted photograph," he said. "When I look in their eyes, it burns a hole in my heart."
During the war, Max stayed with a farmer, not knowing what had happened to his family. When the war ended, he went to a displaced persons camp and eventually moved to Ontario, where he married Farber's mother. After discovering his father's past, Farber decided to research the brothers he never was able to meet. He visited Poland in 1992 and came across some of his father's papers from his time in the displaced persons camp.
"A Red Cross worker told me, 'It's like winning the lottery.' And it is like winning the lottery for the son of a Holocaust survivor," Farber said.
Farber also visited his father's home in Botchki, where he took the iron door from the stove as a memento.
"A piece of what had once been a source of warmth in my father's home," he said.
The door currently is framed and sitting on an easel in Farber's living room.
When he looks into the eyes of his own children, Farber realizes the pain his father must have gone through.
"To have children taken away in such a fashion and to outlive your children is a pain that will remain incomprehensible and inexplicable," Farber said.
Farber stressed the importance of discovering the history of families that were destroyed by the Holocaust, especially when many Holocaust survivors are entering their final years. "We must commit ourselves to history and to memory," he said. "It's our only antidote."
Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, the director of the Tannenbaum Chabad House, said he brought Farber to campus to spread that message.
"I felt these issues are important with the increase of anti-Semitism around the world," Klein said.
David Irving comments:
I DON'T normally comment on news items like this, not even on the absurdity of a son of a Holocaust survivor stealing the door off a stove in his father's old home in Poland. The mind briefly boggles: How did he explain it to Canada Customs when he returned? "It's a door. Off an oven. A gas oven. It's okay. I'm a survivor, uh, son of a survivor." No, my curiosity is aroused by the ease with which Farber tells his crowded Chicago audience of 25, without any proof, that his other family of stepmother and half brothers were killed in a Nazi gas chamber. If it were my father, I'd be curious to know more. Which camp? Killed, or died in an epidemic? And how did my father manage to save his own skin, abandoning his wife and two sons to their fate? And how come that he never mentioned this tragedy earlier to his new Canadian son Bernie? As so often, stories like this seem to prompt more questions than they answer.
2003-01-21 20:35 | User Profile
Yeah, no wonder ole Maxie kept it quiet.
He didn't exactly cover himself with glory when he jumped off that train.
Oh, well, every man for himself he probably muttered.
He was probably singing If I Were a Rich Man or Sunrise Sunset.
Something like that.
You know how family oriented those Polish jews were.
If, in fact, he did jump.
I suspect he wasn't capable of anything that required any guts.
More likely he fell out of the car trying to reach a coin he saw stuck between the couplers.
2003-01-21 22:05 | User Profile
I have to agree with Herr von Zipper: am I to understand this guy jumped off the train that was carrying the rest of his family? Or perhaps the family had been transported separately? I hope to hell it was the latter...
2003-01-22 11:43 | User Profile
BERNIE Farber[Canada's answer to Abe Foxman] didn't realize he had two half-brothers until 21 years after they were killed in a Nazi death camp.
Until 1974, Farber and his brothers were unaware that Max had a previous family killed in the Holocaust
Hey kids let try some goy math today!
1974 - 21 = 1953
So Bernie Farber's half-brothers died in a 'Nazi death camp' in 1953?
2003-01-22 15:44 | User Profile
Nice catch, I missed that. He probably blames his bad math on White Christians or something.
2003-01-23 01:22 | User Profile
"A Red Cross worker told me, 'It's like winning the lottery.' And it is like winning the lottery for the son of a Holocaust survivor," Farber said.
Yes indeed - the whole Hollowco$t racket has produced a 57 year-long lottery jackpot for the Chuzzen Pipple.
2003-01-23 17:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE]"Max and a cousin survived by jumping off a train"
They were probably pushed off the train by some of their fellow tribesmen.
It never ceases to amaze me how all these "survivors" could have lost the majority of their families, yet there are still so many around to collect reparations.
So many questions, so few answers.
2003-01-25 02:40 | User Profile
I always remember reading an article in Atlantic Monthly, I think it was... The article started out describing a Nazi officer in his sharp uniform, and the jewish women staggering off the train, and the Nazi officer separating the women and children (for gassing, obviously <_< ) -- and when one woman spoke up, the Nazi office grabbed her infant and pulling a leg in each hand, brutally ripped the child in two!!
Back before I was awakened, I would have reacted as expected, "oh god! Those filthy nazis, how brutal, what monsters!" NOW, of course, I think: "Huh. Dja ever try to tear the leg off an uncooked chicken? I know Hitler was tryin' to breed him up some SUPERHUMAN Nazis, but I never heard he succeeded to the point of a man being able to tear a child in half!!"
The propagandizing leads to uncritical acceptance of the most idiotic things!
2003-01-25 03:06 | User Profile
** I know Hitler was tryin' to breed him up some SUPERHUMAN Nazis, but I never heard he succeeded to the point of a man being able to tear a child in half!!**
In my readings of history, I've come across plenty of references to people doing bad things to babies. The most common method of infant disposal, from the Medieval Europeans to the American Indians, is to swing them by the ankles and dash their heads against a rock, tree, or wall. They've also been tossed around on the tips of spears, thrown into fires, or to dogs, and dragged by nooses around the neck. I've NEVER heard of a baby being ripped in two like that. I've heard accounts of mobs - even mobs of women - ripping men to shreds with their bare hands, so maybe it is possible for a strong man to rend a baby like that. But it sounds a bit like the story of fountains of blood jetting up from the mass grave that whatsiname circulated.
2003-01-25 04:14 | User Profile
This thread reminded me of something I had seen on VNN (that'll scare some away) a few weeks ago. It was actually funny and goes hand in hand with the story that started this thread. It was the "television" listings that VNN ran. The second listing on this page; [url=http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/cartoons118.htm]http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/c...cartoons118.htm[/url] is about as realistic as Bernie Farber's story.
I'll list the other TV offerings in case anyone is interested. A few of the other listings are relevant to this as well.
[url=http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/cartoons117.htm]http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/c...cartoons117.htm[/url] [url=http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/cartoons119.htm]http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/jan03/c...cartoons119.htm[/url]