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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Limor Regev
Read between
January 29 - February 11, 2024
regret that we did not know then to treasure every moment together – I breathe in the smells, concentrate on
made Western countries believe that he had no ambitions for a wide-ranging war, but only wanted to annex the territories Germany lost in the World War that included populations of ethnic Germans.
already clear that he was a powerful and dominant ruler.
determined to do all they could to prevent their countries from paying the horrific price of war again.
believed that a policy of restraint and acceptance would appease Hitler, put his mind at ease, and provide the most appropriate response to the aggressiveness of the new German government.
desire for peace were only a temporary cover-up, to disguise his plans for a full-scale war to institute the Third Reich in all of Europe.
diplomatic ‘weapon’ - the Munich Agreement signed in September
1938 between Hitler and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. This agreement allowed Germany to annex without any objection the Czech Sudetenland, where many ethnic Germans lived.
Britain, led by Neville Chamberlain,
pressured its allies to sign an agreement with
the name of peace.
some Jews who at this point decided to flee and immigrate to Eretz Israel.
early 1939, unimpeded, Hungary annexed one-third of the area of Czechoslovakia, including Carpathian Russia - our area - and regained all the territories it had lost in World War I.
given a Hungarian name
economic gap grew between Jews and Christians,
which led to hostility accumulating beneath the surface.
many young Jews made a meager living and toiled, just lik...
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the Czech people continued helping Jews as much as they could throughout the war
This is in contrast to the Hungarians. Only a very few chose to help Jews and were awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Horthy was openly anti-Semitic and encouraged discriminatory decrees against the Jews. The atmosphere changed not only in the upper echelons of the state administration, but also on the street. Our Christian neighbors began to hurl insults and curses at us.
The Hungarian authorities began to issue laws that restricted Jewish entry into public institutions and spaces. In addition, various guidelines narrowed our possibilities and prevented us from enjoying equal rights and opportunities.
At first, these restrictions came slowly, in order to obscure what was happening, but over time the new attitude towards the Jews became obvious and apparent. We were not allowed to practice the liberal professions, the gates of the universities closed to Jewish youth, and the oppression became more varied. In the months following the fall of the Czechoslovak Republic, the Hungarians gradually expelled Jews from all governmental and local offices, as well as from schools and hospitals.
overt and legitimatized anti-Semitism began to spread like wildfire.
we had become an undesirable minority among the general population.
1942, based on the census data, the Hungarian authorities required the Jews of the area to show documented proof that their forebears had been residents of Hungary in 1855. Those who did not possess such proof were subject to deportation to the east - to Poland.
In 1942, executions by firing squads began in the area where they were living. After the war, we learned that Mother’s sisters, along with their families had to dig trenches, were then shot, and fell into them. None of them survived.
The Hungarian government ordered all Jewish men aged 20-45 to enlist in the Hungarian army in Jewish forced labor battalions. Hungary was an ally of Germany in the war, and fought the Red Army, on its eastern border.
but now only the Christians entered the regular Hungarian army. The government sent male Jews to ‘special’ labor battalions to
aid the Hungarian army, some in Hungary and others in conquered
control the territories taken from Russia with irrefutable str...
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they sent Jewish battalions into minefields either by vehicle or on foot, to detonate the mines with their bodies.
thousands of Jewish forced laborers froze to death, after marching approximately one thousand kilometers in the snow and freezing cold in a retreat from the front after a massive assault by the Red Army.
However, to this day, I can still feel the last hug he gave me before he left, and his request that
Arnold and I try not to upset Mom and help her as much as we could. Yes, children in those days too could drive their parents crazy...
Although we were occupied by Nazi Germany, there were no Germans around at all during this stage. The entire evacuation process, the guarding and shepherding, was efficiently carried out by the Hungarian police.
Dang he seeks to make a statement about Hungarians eh
The almost total collaboration of the Hungarian people and its contribution to the fate of the Jews of Hungary is one of the ugliest stains on the human race in the history of World War
Suddenly one of the strange looking bald men scurrying around the platform trying to get us quickly into two columns came up to me and whispered in Yiddish:
The Nazis exploited the Jews even after their deaths: gold fillings were removed, hair was cut off, and the ashes of the dead were used as fertilizer for the camp vegetable gardens and the surrounding fields.
God literally like a slaughterhouse
Birkenau…
Cattle herding. The way cattle are treated in a slaughter house- makes you think about mass production meat and slaughterhouses. It isn’t right for any living thing
three kilometers
1.86 miles
“Arbeit Macht Frei” - “Work Makes You Free,” in German.
cattle trains,
just as they branded cattle.
We departed Auschwitz at the end of May.
How many can even say this ?
On the day of the liberation of the camp, I was 14 and a half and weighed about 35 kilograms.
77 or so pounds
It is without question that we owed our lives to Antonin Kalina, a Czech communist and a veteran of Buchenwald, and perhaps this is the place to give him the respect and gratitude he so deserves.
Antonin Kalina
through self-study he mastered several languages, including German.
Jack’s wife and baby daughter were murdered and he had lost interest in life until the group of young Jewish boys arrived.
Their rescue operation was a balm for his grieving soul.
