On 29 January, 2012, two days after Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Oxford University Chabad Society hosted an event to commemorate 70 years since the Nazi Wannsee Conference. Three speakers shared their insight and experiences of the European climate during this period of social and political upheaval. Dr. Alexandra Lloyd, a professor of German studies at Oxford University, spoke of the difficulties of Jewish children growing up in a war-torn Germany in the 1940s. She made the poignant remark that for children, watching adults slowly unravel as the difficult climate, having close family members brutally taken from them, took its toll was one of the many tragic consequences of growing up during this period.
Fritz Sternhell, an Austrian Jewish Kindertransport refugee and current Oxford resident, spoke of how though he was disconnected from his Jewish identity growing up in pre-war Vienna, he was subject to anti-Semitism and persecution through the Nuremberg laws not allowing him to sit on park benches. He said ironically, the law of having Jewish only classes allowed for less attacks on them by their non-Jewish peers after the Anschluss in March 1938, when Austria became part of the Third Reich. Despite enduring unavoidable hardship as a child, losing his father, he declared that he considers himself fortunate to have had the opportunity by the insistence of his family to leave central Europe under a period of oppression, and to make a happy life for himself in Britain even though he father didn’t manage to survive.
Mr. Sternhell also spoke about joining the British army after the war and being sent to Palestine only to demand to be released from High Command due to internal conflict in his role as law enforcement with having to perform searches amongst fellow Jews, some of whom were family members in Tel Aviv.
Lastly, Auschwitz survivor Victor Greenberg described the devastation he endured when his family was murdered in the concentration camps, and he barely made it out alive. He told how miraculously at the selection ramp when he arrived at Auschwitz someone randomly came up to him and asked him his age. He said fourteen, upon the person corrected him and said, no, you’re eighteen. He said this saved his life, as children under eighteen and women were sent straight to the gas chambers, as his mother and younger siblings were.
Greenberg ended his moving speech on a positive note, explaining that he has been blessed with a growing family of three children and eight grandchildren, and encouraging the audience to cherish life and live it to the fullest. He intimated that he struggled with identity after the war, after what he had witnessed but made a conscious decision that he will live proudly Jewish and enjoy living for the future. The central message conveyed by the three speakers was that humans have an extraordinary ability to rise out of the worst forms of devastation and despair.
The speakers were welcomed by the society director, Rabbi Eli Brackman, with an introduction by senior member Sara Tisch.
XRumerTest wrote...