Category: Holocaust

Gunter Demning, a German artist, is working on a project called “Stolpersteine,” where the former houses of Nazi victims are identified with 10 inch square brass monument plaques known as “stumbling stones.” Shortly, Demning will be placing the first marker to honor an African victim of the Nazi regime.

The stone will be placed in front of the house on Brunnenstrasse in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood formerly occupied by Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, a Sudanese man, who enlisted as a soldier in the colonial forces of then German East Africa. In 1929 Mahjub moved to Berlin, where he worked as a waiter in an upscale hotel while holding bit roles in 20 films from 1934 to 1941.

In 1941, Mahjub was arrested by the Nazi authorities and accused of miscegenation. He died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin on Nov. 24, 1944.

The placement of the stone coincides with the release of a biography, “Truthful Till Death,” about Mahjub written by Africa scholar Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst.

Thus far, Demning’s stones have been placed throughout Germany, with the exception of Munich where they’re concerned with anti-Semitic activity, as well as Salzburg and Budapest.

Raul Hilberg, one of the earliest Holocaust scholars, died Saturday at the age of 81. He was perhaps best known for his book The Destruction of the European Jews (originally released as a three volume set).

Hilberg’s reputation was made through his meticulous examination of documents from every facet of German life – the Nazi government, bureaucrats, citizens, etc – which revealed that the Holocaust was not part of a single idea dreamed up by Hitler.

Though some critics said Mr. Hilberg had understated the impact of historic German anti-Semitism, his broad conclusions were based on painstaking research. He examined microfilm of thousands upon thousands of prosaic documents like train schedules and memorandums between minor officials.

“This head-against-the-wall technique is the only virtue I can parade without blushing,” he said last year when Germany gave him with its Order of Merit, the highest tribute it can pay to someone who is not a German citizen.

The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote that Mr. Hilberg’s book “reveals, methodically, fully and clearly, the development of both the technical and psychological process; the machinery and mentality whereby one whole society sought to isolate and destroy another, which, for centuries, had lived in its midst.”

Aside from The Destruction of European Jewry, Hilberg was also known for Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, The Politics of Memory, and Sources of Holocaust Research.

Emotional Arithmetic, a Holocaust related drama, will be closing this year’s Toronto Film Festival (Sept 6 – 15).

The film, based on the Matt Cohen novel of the same name, stars venerable Swedish actor Max von Sydow, Hollywood stalwarts Gabriel Byrne and Susan Sarandon and Canadians Christopher Plummer and Roy Dupuis.

Sarandon and Byrne portray survivors of a Second World War internment camp for Jews in France.

They make plans to reunite after discovering the political dissident (von Sydow) who had protected them at the camp did not die at Auschwitz as they had thought, and is still alive.

The film is of particular interest to me because it deals with the much neglected emotional aspect of Holocaust survival.