Holocaust

• This is Wise Up! column number 800!

• Oskar Schindler was a hard drinker and a womanizer — and a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust. When he first met Isaac Stern, who would be his assistant during the Holocaust, Mr. Schindler held out his hand, but Mr. Stern would not shake it. When Mr. Schindler asked why he wouldn't shake hands, Mr. Stern replied that he was a Jew and it was forbidden for him to shake hands with Mr. Schindler. Mr. Schindler's response was this: "Scheisse" — German for "s**t." Mr. Schindler protected the Jews who worked for him in his factory; thus, many Jews tried very hard to get on Schindler's list of Jewish workers to be moved to Sudetenland — war events necessitated the move. Mr. Schindler did many small as well as big things for Jews in the Holocaust. For example, when he was near a Jewish worker named Moshe Bejski who worked for him as a draftsman, he would light a cigarette, put the pack of remaining cigarettes down, and "forget" to pick it up. Even though Mr. Schindler provided extra food for his workers, it often wasn't enough, and four cigarettes could be traded for a large piece of bread. When a Jewish prisoner became pregnant, he arranged an abortion for her — if the Nazis had discovered her pregnancy, she would have been shipped to a death camp and both she and her fetus would have died. After the Nazis lost the war, the Jews Mr. Schindler had protected gave him many letters in different languages saying that he had saved them and to help him. They also gave him a gold ring made from gold teeth donated by a Jew. Years later, one of the Jews Mr. Schindler had saved asked what had happened to the gold ring. Mr. Schindler replied, "Schnapps." He had traded or sold it for liquor. When Mr. Schindler died, he was buried in the Catholic cemetery at Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The Catholic cemetery was filled with mourning Jews.

• Pastor André Trocmé was the spiritual leader of Le Chambon, a French village whose inhabitants helped save 5,000 strangers, most of them Jews, during the Holocaust. Several other villages in the area, the Plateau Vivarais-Lignan in France's Laute-Loire region, helped in the rescue. One reason for this help was the history of the villages in the Plateau Vivarais-Lignan, which was a Protestant area surrounded by a larger Catholic area. The Protestant inhabitants knew how it felt to be discriminated against because of their religion, and therefore they came to the aid of other people who were discriminated against because of their religion. Another reason for this help was Pastor Trocmé, who preached that the Jews were the people of God. Many of the Jews the French in this area helped were surprised at how accepting the French people here were. For example, one Jewish woman came to a farm to buy eggs. The farmer's wife asked if she was Jewish. Hearing an affirmative answer, the farmer's wife turned and shouted. The Jewish woman was at first about to flee, but she was relieved to hear that the farmer's wife was simply calling to her husband to come and see one of the people of God. Because of their saving of 5,000 lives during the Holocaust, all of the inhabitants of the Plateau Vivarais-Lignan were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.

• Ralph Codikow survived a number of concentration camps, including Auschwitz. When he was a young teenager, he and 130 children were loaded in a train car so they could be sent to Auschwitz. Ralph was able to help create a plot to attempt to save the lives of at least some of the children on the train car. He and some other children distracted the guards, and some of the other boys escaped from the train car. Of course, this could have gotten Ralph and the others killed, but they reported the escape later, miles down the track, and they reported the escape as if it had happened there, not miles away. Because the guards thought that the escape had been reported immediately, they did not punish the children other than to continue to send them to Auschwitz. There, Ralph narrowly escaped death. At a roll call, a guard asked the boys their ages. A boy near Ralph gave the age of 14, and the guard wrote the boy's identification number down. Ralph witnessed this, so when the guard asked Ralph for his age, Ralph answered, "15." The guard did not write down Ralph's identification number. Later, the boys whose identification numbers had been written down were taken away by the Nazis and the boys were never again seen.

• During World War II, a group of German college students banded together to form an anti-Hitler group called the White Rose. Their main form of resistance was to exercise free speech and criticize Adolf Hitler. Unfortunately, in Nazi Germany to criticize Hitler was regarded as treasonous, although such White Rose members as Christoph Probst and the brother-and-sister team Hans and Sophie Scholl loved Germany but were opposed to the Nazis. The three were the first White Rose members to lose their lives. Sophie was seen distributing anti-Hitler leaflets by a janitor at the University of Munich, and soon they and other White Rose members were arrested. Christoph, Hans and Sophie were all sentenced to die, and on Feb. 22, 1943, they were guillotined. Sophie was the first to die.

• Despite massive amounts of evidence, including photographs of many, many corpses, some "learned" professors continue to deny the evidence of the Holocaust. Theatrical guru Danny Newman and his wife, Dina, once watched television as one of these people stated that the Holocaust had never happened. Most of Dina's family had been murdered at the Treblinka death camp. She screamed at the TV set, "Then where is my father? Where are my sister and brothers? Where are my uncles, aunts and cousins?" Because of Nazis records, Danny and Dina Newman knew that these relatives had perished at Treblinka. They also journeyed to Treblinka to say prayers for the dead.