The Holocaust museum in Amsterdam (at long last)

      

      On Sunday, the new Netherlands National Holocaust Museum will be dedicated in Amsterdam.

      (On the front of the building the sign says Nationaal Holocaust Museum ... that's the Dutch spelling of national).

       Anyway -- to use a favorite (borrowed) expression: What took them so long?

       It has been 82-plus years since the abuse, degradation and eventual deportation/deaths of Dutch Jews at the Nazi concentration camps began.

       There are several buildings and memorials to honor Holocaust prisoners and victims in Amsterdam; we have visited them on our three trips back to the old country, and we've written about them.

        But never has there been an actual Holocaust museum -- like many around the world, including those in Washington, D.C. and Dallas, for example -- in the Netherlands.

        Until now, thank goodness.

        We thank a friend at Trinity Terrace -- our seniors residency in Fort Worth -- for alerting us to The New York Times story about the museum (see link at the bottom of this blog). It was news to us. 

        If you know and understand our family's Holocaust history, you know that we think it is important.

        And it is important enough in Holland that today the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, will attend the museum ceremony.

        (He will do so alongside the president of Israel, and with today's fragile Middle East situation, some 200 mosques -- Palestinian supporters -- and even a protesting Jewish organization or two suggested/demanded that Willem-Alexander not attend. His reply: I will be there.)

        Not coincidentally, we -- Beatrice and I -- were in Amsterdam the day (April 30, 2013) that Willem-Alexander became the first king of the Netherlands in more than 100 years.

       That was just a few days after we visited -- or re-visited -- four sites in the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam: the Hollandsche Schouwburg,  the Joods Historisch Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue, and the Auschwitz memorial. 

    Here is a link to the blog piece I wrote then: https://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-place-for-memories-and-tears.html

     Plenty of Holocaust history at those places, and we appreciated the sights.

     The new museum will tell -- as an Associated Press story this week noted -- the story "in video footage, photos, scale models and mementos, of Dutch victims of the Holocaust."

      As you also might know, my mother (Rose Van Thyn) spoke and wrote about her and our family's Holocaust experiences for many years. Will some of her material (photos, videos, articles, letters) be included in this Holocaust museum?

     Answer: We have no idea. Certainly no indication of that.

      My sister -- Elsa Van Thyn -- said in a note: "Guess the museum will feature Mama's statements about how the Dutch weren't the best for the Jews." 

      Don't know.

      But what we do know is that -- whether our family, especially those who lost their lives in the World War II years -- is directly acknowledged at the museum or not, the opening of this facility is a great thing.

       We cannot forget our people.

       And we are grateful for those who remember, and -- with this museum -- honor their memory.

---

      Here are links to information about the museum:

       -- Nationaal Holocaustmuseum  Museum/nl\ 

       -- https://www.yahoo.com/news/holocaust-museum-amsterdam-aims-tell-063005778.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

     -- https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-holocaust-museum-antisemitism-4b7f1e725bb014283c57381425001aee

   -- With a New Holocaust Museum, the Netherlands Faces Its Past 

   

On this date 77 years ago ...

     On October 14, 1946, Rozette Lopes Dias -- then with the last name Lazer -- married Louis Van Thyn in war-weary Amsterdam.

    We are still grateful 77 years later.

The wedding photo: 1946

    Who knew on that day -- a Monday and a trip to City Hall for the wedding ceremony -- how long their lives would go, and how far they would travel.

     They'd known each other for little more than a year. And they had been through so much in the previous half-dozen years, some horrific experiences -- certainly not of their choosing.

     They each had lost so much, and they had precious little family remaining.

     So, who knows how deep their love was then. But they knew they needed each other.

      Their stories -- their combined story -- has a beautiful ending, of course: Almost 62 years of marriage, the last 51-plus in two homes they owned.

       And such good fortune: Two children they never expected -- me and my younger sister Elsa --  and from that, five grandchildren. From there, to the present-day nine great-grandchildren (but only a couple born while Louis and Rose still lived).

       Plus, a journey of almost 5,000 miles and two weeks from the wonderful place where they grew up (Hup Holland!) to the country  where Mom always dreamed of living, the result of how well American military personnel treated her and other women Holocaust survivors upon rescue in early 1945.

      And what culture shock -- from a busy center of a million people to a state and city of which they'd never heard (Louisiana? Shreveport?).

    They could not have known, did not know, how accepting, how helpful, those people in Shreveport would be. First, the Jewish community, but soon far beyond that, from all over. 

      It was a perfect fit, certainly moreso than it could have been in, say, the New York City melting pot of millions.           

      In 1 1/2 years, they were home owners. In five years, they became U.S. citizens ... and darned proud of it.

      Parts of their hearts, though, was with the few family members and many friends they left behind in The Netherlands. And also with the friends -- and eventually some family -- in Israel, the Jewish-dominated state created in 1948.

       That included the very couple that had introduced them to each other in the summer of 1945. Those two people were the only married couple housed -- in an attic room -- at the former factory converted into a safe shelter for women Holocaust survivors who had returned to Amsterdam.

     The man knew Dad from boyhood days in Amsterdam. The woman was Mom's best friend at Auschwitz; they had been in elementary school together and had reunited while standing in line after they got out of the cattle-car transport to the concentration camp.

     After they survived the Holocaust, that couple moved to Israel, specifically to Narahija.

      Which brings us to today, to this past week and Hamas' invasion of Israel. 

       Because -- as I've been asked repeatedly this week -- we do have distant connections in Israel.

      That couple's granddaughter is now on active duty with the Israel military.

      A grandson and granddaughter of Mom's favorite first cousin (Maurits) in Amsterdam, and the granddaughter's husband (a tank driver) are reservists called to active duty. 

      Maurits' son married an Israeli girl; they live in Jerusalem. And Maurits' daughter, who lives in Antwerp, Belgium, has four children living in Israel, but -- because they are Belgian citizens -- none are in the service. 

     (Maurits' children are our second cousins, once removed. At least, that's the best we can figure.)

---  

      Can tell you this: Grateful that Mom and Dad are not around to endure this latest invasion of Israel. They would have been extremely concerned.

      Because that's how they were in 1967 (the "Six-Day War" and 1973 (the Yom Kippur War) when Arab military forces invaded Israel.

       Television news then wasn't 24-7 -- Shreveport had only three TV stations and three networks -- but Mom watched (and worried) every report. Dad was working at the pipeyard, but I know he and the people there were paying attention.

       I think about this now because we've had the news on constantly here. 

      Thought about writing about baseball -- how much I've watched this Texas Rangers' season -- or football (LSU, Louisiana Tech and the Dallas Cowboys are always topics of interest in this apartment). 

      Wanted to say how good the Rangers have been and how good it feels for their fans. Same for the Houston Astros and their Yankees-like dynasty of the past seven years.

       But writing about athletics just didn't seem right this week. (Maybe if a certain team had recaptured its glory of so many decades I might be more involved, but that hasn't happened in 14 seasons. So there.)

        No, there is sadness here for all those deaths and injured in Israel, in Gaza. Not only the Jewish people, but the thousands of innocent Palestinians. They, too, are victims of Hamas, and Israel's penchant -- determination -- for revenge.

       No winners in this. None. No end in sight.

       Sad.

       And when I heard on TV someone say that "people died just because they were Jewish," I thought, yes, that's how it was for our grandparents, uncles and aunts, Mom and Dad's first spouses, plus their many uncles, aunts and cousins.

      Even through many good times, Mom and Dad never forgot. Nor do we ever forget, and we shouldn't.

      We want Israel to survive and thrive. But we, too, want the Palestinians to have peace and good times.

      We are for peace, period.

      I know those two people who took those wedding vows -- who committed to each other -- on October 14, 1946, would approve of that.

      They were blessed, and so were we. We wish the same for millions of others.          

          

"The rest of the story" on a boxing/Auschwitz hero

     Facebook Messenger note, APR 27, 2020, 8:24 PM:
     "My name is Joe Sanders. I am the son of Leen Sanders. I just read an article that you wrote about my father and his actions as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Things I was never aware of. I am not much of a reader, but I really enjoyed reading your story about my father.
      "Thank you so much.
      Joe Sanders"
---     
     Life, as it does, has presented challenges for Joe Sanders. 
     Being the child of a Holocaust survivor (or survivors) is different. Hard to capsulize in one sentence or paragraph.
     Joe experienced it -- as many have, me and my younger sister included -- so he knows, as we know.
     To hear from Joe, some 6 1/2 years since I first wrote about Leen Sanders was quite a surprise. Never realized that Leen had a "second family" because -- to be honest -- I did not research much of his post-World War II life for that blog piece.
     That was published January 25, 2014, as part 15 of the series on my father's "story" and subsequently became Chapter 16 of the 2017 book on my parents and family.
     I described Leen as one of Dad's heroes. The details are in the blog piece (if you care to read it again):https://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-boxer-leen-sanders-my-dads-hero.html
     Look, many people who knew Louis Van Thyn knew him as a hero, too -- and still do. But he wasn't a national hero.  Leen Sanders was.

Leen Sanders, in 1985
(photo from Rotterdam Jewish Heritage)

     He was a star, a Dutch boxing champion through the 1920 and '30s, and a behind-the-scenes champion at Auschwitz who through sacrifice, selflessness and -- honestly, some thiefery -- made miserable existences a bit better for fellow prisoners.
     This blog will be about "the rest of the story," his final 4 1/2 decades. Much of the information below was supplied by Joe Sanders, and some of it is from a November 1985 "Rotterdam Jewish Heritage" webpage article available online.
     There was much glory and much travail in Leen Sanders' life.
---
     When contacted by Joe Sanders, it was reminiscent of a follow-up of another blog piece involving another chapter of Dad's story. Jacqueline Frankenhuis, daughter of one of the three men with Dad in the Russian Army-uniform photo, sent a note 2 1/2 years after my original piece (in July 2014) and we subsequently did a Skype session that led to a blog about Jack Frankenhuis' post-WW II life in Amsterdam.
      So now more correspondence with Joe, and the follow-up on Leen Sanders and his second wife, Joe's mother ... 
     In the Nazis' destruction, the murdered included Leen's firrst wife and two sons (ages 10 and 8) -- all killed not long after arriving at Auschwitz -- plus seven of his siblings (including the older brother (Bram) he had followed into boxing.
     And before that even, when the Nazis bombed Rotterdam -- where Sanders' family lived -- their house was destroyed and everything -- medals, cups, scrapbooks included -- burned. 
     So emptiness on his return to Rotterdam after survival of Auschwitz and a "death march." But soon -- like my parents in Amsterdam -- a new start.
      Leen married a friend of one of his deceased sisters, Henriette van Creveld, on July 4, 1946. (The sister's name was Rosette -- same name as our mother, slightly different spelling).

Jetty and Leen Sanders greeting his former sparring
 partner, Rinus Krijger, on a 1975 visit to Rotterdam.
(photo from boksen.nl)

     Joe and "Jetty" were together nearly 47 years -- nomadic in a way, with much happiness and much sadness, bitterness mixed in, with U.S. citizenship and then a return "home." 
       The journey, from 1946: A brief time in Rotterdam; a move to Aruba, a Dutch-influenced island in the Caribbean Sea; a move to the United States -- the Los Angeles area (first in Culver City, then Canoga Park) for 31 years; and finally a return for the final decades in Rotterdam.  
     Leen died at age 83 in April 1992. Henriette outlived him by almost 22 years; she died in January 2014 at age 101. 
     Joe was born in Aruba in 1949. But he eventually became a California surfer dude.
     And here is a we-can-identify start: tension, some anger, in the home, no love -- at all -- for the Nazis and Germany. 
     "I think the best place to start is what it was like growing up with my parents," Joe wrote. "As a child I was curious about the war and how it was for them." (Henriette was hidden during the war, and survived it.) 
     "Both my parents were willing to tell me, but after a few years I realized it caused a lot of tensions between my parents. They would become angry thinking about the horrible things the Germans did to them and their families."
     There is a reason that Joe describes his father as "a pressure cooker." There were times when the old boxing champion's aggressive nature surfaced.
     "They would say things to each other," Joe related, "and before they knew it, a violent argument ensued. So I knew some facts, but not all.
     "They never hit each other, but the yelling and screaming at each other was horrible for me to witness. They would cool off and make amends to each other and that is the way it was until [I was] in high school.
     "I was now bigger and quicker than my father and I told him not to take his anger out on my mom any more. Although things cooled down in the house, the rage in my father's head stayed with him until the day he died." 
     But, Joe added, "Life was not always like that. There were plenty of good times." More on that in a moment.
---
     After liberation from Auschwitz, at age 38, Leen boxed two more bouts -- and won -- against the same opponent. The war had taken its toll, and he knew it was time to retire as a boxer. 
     With a new life and a new wife, he also needed a new career in a new place.
     The bad memories in Rotterdam haunted him, just as they haunted my mother in Amsterdam. Especially how hard he had tried to save his wife and two boys.
     As a Dutch soldier, the Nazis had taken him as a POW (same as my Dad), but he escaped and found his wife and kids hiding in a barn. 
     For two years -- as the Nazis began their cruely campaign against Jewish people -- Leen did subterfuge resistance work, distributing illegal magazines and stolen identify documents to help fellow Jews. Then in August 1942, he and his family went into hiding, only to be discovered four months later ... and the Nazis sent them to the camps.
     Three years later, he could tell people that "I really owe my life to a Polish kapo (prisoner guard) who gave me extra food in exchange for boxing lessons."
     But no Selly, Josua ("Joopie") or David. Only their memory, and his sorrow, and a place that no longer felt like home.
     Henriette was the new life, Aruba the new place, boxing trainer the new job. And "he wanted to try a second time in having a family," Joe said.
     The job fizzled, so Leen opened a bar in the town of St. Nicholaas. Then in 1954, when Joe was 4, their application for immigration to the U.S. was accepted.
     In 1959 (Oct. 9), they became U.S. citizens. My family  can identify with that big step. 
     In Los Angeles, Joe noted, "My mom and dad did whatever kind of work they could get to support themselves."
     Leen was a truck driver, then had a government job as a cleaner in schools, which led to his one-man cleaning company during the 1960s.
      "I was an only child, so I was as close as I could be with my parents," Joe wrote. "They always seemed to be working. So I was a latch-key kid."
     His old sport was now a distant memory for Leen. "He never got back into boxing," Joe recalled, "other than to teach me. Although we would watch an occasional match, he did not appreciate the fighting styles he saw. It was more fighting than boxing."
     (Boxing encyclopedias refer to Sanders as a defense-minded, punching stylist, willing to outwit and outpoint his opponent, rather than slug with him. So his "old school" form didn't jive with many of the 1960s fighters he observed.)  
     Joe wasn't interested. "I had developed a passion for surfing," he said -- in Southern California, remember -- "and had no passion for boxing. He thought I was a beach bum. But when I pointed out how his parents disapproved of his boxing, he was a lot more understanding."
      After leaving Rotterdam in 1946, Leen had made only one return trip in 1952. The next visit was 19 years later. But in the 1970s, it became a trend; they made several trips back to see what family and friends remained there.
      And Rotterdam -- a city bombed to shreds by the Nazis in 1940 and totally rebuilt and modernized, one great Dutch success story -- began to grow on them again.
      Leen, in the 1985 Rotterdams Niewsblad interview,
explained that he liked talking to people anywhere and everywhere, "and that was difficult in Los Angeles because you hardly see people on the street there. Besides, my wife and I grew older and we couldn't take the heat so well in the summer. ..."
      So, in 1978, they packed it all up and went back to live in Rotterdam -- The Netherlands' major port city.
       "I am glad I came," Leen said in the '85 interview. "I was born here and I still have many acquaintances in Rotterdam."
       Joe, now totally Americanized, surf-crazy, and with a family, remained in California. He made three trips to visit the folks in Holland, and Leen and Jetty made a return visit or two to Los Angeles. 
      Joe went through a variety of jobs, and one he liked and stuck with was as a micro photographer/artwork cutter.
      "The flexibility of the job worked great with my passion for surfing," he wrote. "Surfing has been a major part of my life. My closest friends that I've gotten to know are from surfing. It is how I met my wife (Diane), who was also a surfer."
      But the business faded, and later work included carpentry. And in June 2006, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. Joe and their two sons watched her decline over 3 1/2 years; he quit work at the start of 2009 to care for her. She died in mid-December 2009 at age 58 1/2.
       Joe: "It was devastating, very depressing ... life was nerve-wracking."
      But he drew inspiration from a familiar source: "There was Dad. Although he had passed away ... he showed me the way. If he was able to survive the things he went through, so could I."
       And there was Jetty, in Holland. "My mother was always on the nervous side, so Diane and I kept her condition from my mom. I was always lying to my mom. She wanted to know why we wouldn't fly to Holland and visit."
      Life, he admits, "was a series of extreme highs and extreme lows. Surfing during the day lifted my spirits to euphoric highs. Being home alone at night was so depressing."
      Ten months after Diane's death, he attended a Breast Cancer Awareness fund-raiser, and he met a girl.
       She soon became his girlfriend -- it's been a decade -- "and I feel so lucky to have her in my life now."
       His and Diane's oldest son served as a U.S. Marine in Iraq and is now a computer tech. The younger son is a structural engineer, working at University of California-San Diego in the testing lab.
      The grandsons of boxing/Auschwitz hero Leen Sanders.

photo from eubcboxing.org

      And the man is not forgotten in The Netherlands. A little more than two years ago -- May 4, 2018, the day of a national sports commemoration in Amsterdam -- the president of the Dutch Boxing Association placed a garland of flowers in Sanders' honor near a statue outside the historic 1928 Olympic Stadium.
      In the 1985 interview, Leen said, "We have a beautiful flat in Bijdorp, and we hope to have a few more pleasant years."
     And they did. They had long, memorable journeys.
     "I love both my parents," Joe summed up. "They were not well educated, but they taught me a lot. To think about what they had to live through, they did very well for themselves and me."

A family connection to "Righteous Among the Nations"

     You likely are not familiar with the "Righteous Among the Nations." If you are, good. If not, and you are interested, read on.
     It is Holocaust-related, and now we can say that our extended family -- in Israel and Belgium -- has a connection to it.
     The "Righteous Among the Nations" is part of Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center located in Jerusalem.  
     It is a tribute to those individuals -- as the Yad Vashem web site says -- "who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust."
         The worldwide project to research and find those names began in 1963. But here it is, 55 years later, and -- finally -- two names are going to be added to the list: 

Wilhelmina and Cornelis de Ru
(photo from Elena Bins-de Ru)

     Cornelis and Wilhelmina de Ru (Retel). Commonly known as Kees and Mien.
     And our family -- that is, the Kopuits (second cousins Heleen and Philip, and their families) and, by extension, the Van Thyns -- is grateful. We share the same great grandparents on my mother's side, and we share this story.
     It centers on Maurits Kopuit, Heleen and Philip's father. The de Rus basically saved his life.
     But for 5 1/2 decades, the de Rus declined the recognition they deserved. That has been corrected.
     The connection is this: It was at their grocery store in the city of Leiden -- in south Holland, close to The Hague -- where Maurits was hidden away during much of World War II. He was in his early teens.
     The Nazis never found Maurits, nor his parents hidden  closeby at a small farm in Voorschoten, although Maurits' father, Philip, died of heart disease at age 39 during that time.
     Of Mom's 35 first cousins -- her mother and father each were from large families -- Maurits was the only survivor of the Nazis' reign of terror. All the others, like most of my parents' families, perished in the gas chambers or otherwise.
     (Three years ago, I wrote two blog pieces on Maurits, who after the war returned to Amsterdam, lived with his mother two houses over from us and eventually became a writer, columnist and dynamic editor for the main Jewish newspaper in The Netherlands. Links to those blog pieces are below.)
     Quick summation: My mother and Maurits were very close.
     Philip Kopuit, who lives in Jerusalem and relatively close to Yad Vashem, informed us of the de Ru honor in a note earlier this week.
     Philip wrote: "Some history. During the war, Papa [Maurits] was mainly with one Christian family, the de Ru family. A family with seven children; the youngest were about his age. 
     "Arie, the oldest, was a guest at my bar mitzvah dinner [1973 in Amsterdam]. Heleen and I remember a visit we all paid at the de Rus once when we were very young.
     "Today, only the youngest child is still alive. He lives an hour and a half from Los Angeles.
     "One of the granddaughters contacted us over a year ago. They wondered why their grandparents were not registered at Yad Vashem and were not recognized as Righteous Among the Nations. 

     "Heleen and I gave some testimonies and memories, and last week I got this attached letter from Yad Vashem."

     Some background (from the "Righteous" section of the Yad Vashem web site):
     "One of Yad Vashem's principal duties is to convey the gratitude of the State of Israel and the Jewish people to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. This mission was defined by the law establishing Yad Vashem, and in 1963 the Remembrance Authority embarked upon a worldwide project to grand the title of Righteous Among the Nations to the few who helped Jews in the darkest time in their history.

Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad 
Vashem (photo from the Yad Vashem web site)

     "To this end, Yad Vashem set up a public Commission, headed by a Supreme Court Justice, which examines each case and is responsible for granting the title. Those recognized received a medal and a certificate of honor and their names are commemorated on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem."
     So over the past year, the de Rus -- with Philip and Heleen making their case -- were up for consideration.
     Done. Accepted.
     The letter above, from the "Righteous" department director, was sent to Herman de Ru, the remaining child, who lives in Fallbrook, California (between Los Angeles and San Diego, a town known to me because that was the hometown of baseball great Duke Snider).
      For years, Herman -- like my mother did -- has been a public speaker about the Holocaust years, his experiences as a teenager in Holland, and his parents' help in hiding Maurits ... and many others.
      The letter was copied, among others, to Philip Kopuit and de Ru family members -- Mrs. Elane Lazet in San Marcos, Calif., and Mrs. Elena Bins-de Ru in Gent, Belgium.
     It was Elena Bins who contacted Philip and Heleen and asked for their help in gaining the "Righteous" honor for her grandparents.
     She is the daughter of Kees de Ru, who she said died the same year (1992) as Maurits, and related fond memories of  her visits with her uncle Herman in America.
      She said her grandparents had hidden other Jewish people, but names were changed and she could not find those who survived. But she and her uncle remembered the name Maurits Kopuit, who was called "Maup" by the de Rus.  Herman often talked about him.
      (Elena also said that her recall is that at least six de Ru family members were at his bar mitzvah. The elder de Rus had died in 1971 and '72.)
      When Maurits long ago suggested to the de Rus that they belonged on the "Righteous list, they declined. As Elena explained, "My grandmother was very modest." But Maurits had a tree planted in their honor at Yad Vashem, and they were very pleased.
      And when, in 1985, the Dutch government granted Maurits knighthood in the Order of Orange Nassau -- for service to the country -- the de Ru family members, especially Kees and Mien, were proud.
       Fitting, because the once young man really was part of their family, and he of theirs. 
---
     Looking at the Yad Vashem "Righteous" database, there are as of today, 26,973 people who have been honored. The most (6,863) are from Poland, and The Netherlands has the second-highest total (5,669).
     Soon it will be 5,671 -- Cornelis and Wilhelmina de Ru do belong. They were Righteous.
     "Heleen and I pretend this doesn't mean much to us," Philip wrote, "but we are actually moved by it."
     So are we. I know Rose and Louis Van Thyn would have been, too.
---
http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2015/08/my-mothers-first-cousin-one-of-my-heroes.html
http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2015/08/cousin-maurits-driving-force-in.html

• • 
    

Rose and Louis -- in the New York Daily News

     The article below was published Tuesday (June 26) on the op-ed page of the New York Daily News, and it is centered on my parents, particularly Mom.
     It is about the Holocaust -- and today's world, today's America. It is about the President's rhetoric and policies, OK.
     I suggest you put your political beliefs aside as you read this. Perhaps you cannot do that, but it is about Rose and Louis, so give it a try.
     This is written by Brandon Friedman, co-founder and chief executive officer of The McPherson Square, a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C.
      Here is why Friedman is aware of my parents: He was born and raised in Shreveport, he graduated from LSU-Shreveport and he has a master's degree from University of Texas.
       What many of my readers might not approve of: He served in the Obama Administration. What they will approve of: He served -- with some distinction -- in the U.S. Army, a rifle platoon leader in Afghanistan and Iraq.
        (I was alerted to the article by Lisa Nicoletti, professor of art history and visual studies at Centenary College, guiding force of the Holocaust studies there, and -- with husband Steve -- great friend to my parents. We thank her -- again.)
      The article:
---
     What 'Never Again' Holocaust educators would say now about civility and fascism

     By Brandon Friedman
     As a kid, I was surrounded by people who went on and on about “Never Again.”

     Holocaust survivor and educator Rose Van Thyn was one of those. She spoke to classes often, and what I remember about each time she visited my school over the years was the conviction in her voice — as if she really believed it could happen here.

     Rose was sincere. She had been through a lot. Like the others, she had a number tattooed on her arm. She was a survivor of Auschwitz.

     Still, I took her warnings with a grain of salt. I think all the kids did. No one really believed her. Because that had happened a long time ago. It was Europe. And this is America.

     Nevertheless, Rose spent her entire adult life in north Louisiana warning anyone who would listen. She never stopped. Then her husband Louis, also a Holocaust survivor, died in 2008. She died two years later.

     I didn’t hear about their deaths. Life had gone on. I had grown up and I was busy. I found out when I googled it this week.

     And then something occurred to me: Like the Van Thyns, many of the most famous Holocaust educators and Nazi hunters have died in recent years.

     Simon Wiesenthal, the most famous Nazi hunter, died in 2005. Elliot Welles, who the New York Times called an “indefatigable Nazi hunter,” died in 2006. Tuviah Friedman, who helped track down Adolf Eichmann, died in 2011. Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night,” died in 2016.

     I bring this up because we’re in the midst of a national discussion about “civility” in the face of authoritarianism. And in all this talk about civility in America’s political discourse, it occurred to me that the passing of Rose’s generation has left us extraordinarily vulnerable. In fact, I don’t think today’s resurgent fascism — and the dark enthusiasm that animates it across America — is coincidence.

     Rose was a tiny woman, but she was unrelenting. She was not violent, but she was also not willing to negotiate with a racist ideology. She knew that going along just to get along made things worse — not better.

     Her fellow survivors were the same. They knew that calls for civility in the face of oppression had been used as a weapon against them. And they knew what we took for granted.

     They knew that Nazis weren’t an aberration. They were regular people. Your friend. Your neighbor. Your uncle who forwards racist memes.           They knew that Nazis are what happens when hate goes unchecked by polite people who fear confrontation.

     They also taught us is that dictatorships and genocide don’t happen all at once. They don’t start with extermination camps. They start when vulnerable classes of people are blamed for society’s problems. They start with state propaganda.

     They start with the encouragement of violence at political rallies. They start when elected leaders call the press the “enemy of the people.” And they start when people don’t push back forcefully and publicly — early and often.

     As with any cancer, the time to stop creeping fascism is not after the arrests and the killings begin. By then, it’s too late. The time to stop fascism is when the President calls some Nazis “very fine people.” That’s the time, before it metastasizes and spreads further.

     President Trump has called for his followers to “knock the crap out of” political opponents. He threatened this week to suspend due process for immigrants. He said immigrants “infest” America — a literal use of Nazi terminology. Meanwhile, the government he runs is holding children hostage in cages until their Mexican and Central American parents agree to deportation.

     I don’t think I fully understood the urgency of Rose Van Thyn’s warnings when I was younger. But now that I’m older, I understand power. I know that human nature doesn’t change. Most importantly, I know that when a leader flouts the rule of law and begins “othering” minorities, the time for civility is over.

     What does that mean? In my view, political analyst Josh Berthume said it best yesterday: “Racists, misogynists, homophobes, bigots, fascists, and every single one of their enablers should feel the sting of shame and ridicule. When their behavior is not challenged, it is encouraged.”

     That’s a sentiment every Nazi hunter would get behind, and I share it. We must shun these people back into the shadows. It’s the only way to ensure that what Rose experienced does, in fact, never happen again.
Friedman has spent 17 years in politics and government, including time as an Army infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Bio links:
http://www.mcphersonsquaregroup.com/brandon-friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Friedman
  

Remembering the Holocaust ... and Charlottesville

Rose and Louis (The Shreveport Times photo)

     This Sunday afternoon, I will be thinking of Mom and Dad ... and millions of other people.
     I also will be thinking of last August, and the tumultuous weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.
     Thinking, remembering, and reflecting. That is what the annual Holocaust Remembrance Service in Shreveport-Bossier is for me. And I am sure Beatrice Van Thyn feels the same, as do many others.
     That is why we attend. To honor those who suffered through the Holocaust, those who paid the ultimate price (6 million Jews, 11 million victims, 60 million altogether -- military, people of the world). Our family lost too soon: four grandparents, two uncles, one aunt, an in-law aunt and uncle, one nephew, and my parents' first spouses. 
     This Sunday (3 p.m. start), I especially will think of Mom. Because the service this year will be in Brown Chapel on the Centenary College campus.
     Special connections: (1) Mom often was a featured speaker at the Shreveport-Bossier Holocaust Remembrance Service; (2) she and Dad, as Holocaust survivors, were among those lighting the 11 eleven candles commemorating the 11 million victims of Nazi occupation/persecution; (3) Mom loved Brown Chapel, was a speaker there several times, and chose it for her memorial service (eight years ago in July).
     As many people remember, for years she spoke publicly about the Holocaust, her experiences in it and in life.
     She wrote prolifically in English, her second language, although I am sure she wrote Dutch to her friends back in the old country. Long takes on her and her original family's Holocaust days; poetry -- most her own, some borrowed -- and letters to the newspapers.
     I am sharing some of those editorial-page letters (saw them again recently as I culled our paper files and created digital files).
     One of her favorite subjects -- and not in a positive manner -- was David Duke. Surprised?

1990 The Shreveport Times

     Is there anyone in the United States, and with Louisiana ties, that is more symbolic of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and white supremacy advocate? He was the America's leading Nazi wannabe and Grand Wizard (of the Ku Klux Klan), so the answer is ... no.
     Much as I love my home state, it is a forever-stain on Louisiana that he actually had success there politically.
     He was -- among other things -- an elected state representative and a finalist in the 1991 state governor's race, having drawn 80,000 more votes in the primary than the incumbent governor, Buddy Roemer. It took a "Vote for the Crook" campaign for Edwin Edwards to keep a Nazi promoter/sympathizer out of the governor's chair. (Soon enough Edwards and Duke were convicted felons.)  
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     Duke is still around, of course, spouting his white trash, and he has enough followers to draw attention ... from those who want to pay attention. 
     Which brings us back to Charlottesville. He was there, he was on camera, and he had plenty of would-be-Nazis company. 
     Just as a reminder, I again watched the "Vice News Tonight" behind-the-scenes coverage of the Nazi/KKK/white-supremacists types ... and the slanted hatred they espouse. It is really head-shaking. Pitiful. Annoying. Obnoxious. And, well, laughable.
     Had my say on this last August: http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2017/08/here-is-my-red-line.html
     Do not care to rehash it any further, except to say that I will not agree with the "many sides," "both sides" were guilty. That argument is an overreach, a misinterpretation.
     And those Nazi/KKK/white supremacists publicly loved that people -- influential people -- are at least partially, if not fully, taking their side, giving them an out or an excuse.
     Of course, this protest also involved the Confederate-hero statue issue -- in this case, Gen. Robert E. Lee -- so the question of slavery, of those clinging to their Southern roots and heritage, was combined with the pro-Nazi cause.
     We could write a whole blog on that. Personally, I like statues; I did a sports page piece on the sports statues in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. But, hey, statues of Stalin and Saddam Hussein -- and for football's sake, Joe Paterno -- came tumbling down. Can you imagine statues of Hitler, Goebbels, Rommel, etc.? Yeah, right. 
     So the Confederate statues symbolize heroes to some, slavery to others. Heritage or shame. There is both sides of this debate.
     But both sides guilty in Charlottesville? C'mon. It is just not right.    
     No, no, no -- one side is bent on hate speech, and prone to violence, eager to provide that violence and, in this case, even defending and slanting the facts about a car driven into the crowd, injuring many and killing one young woman. 
     The other side is sticking up for decency. 
     Even if we disagree on politics and social issues today, I would hope we could agree that David Duke and his cronies are wrong, wrong, wrong. 
     They were waving their Nazi, KKK and Confederate flags, carrying their lit torches through the night, chanting "this is our country" and "blood and soil" -- the Nazi standby from the 1930s -- and "Whose streets? Our streets!" and, the twist on the current-day slogan, "White Lives Matter."
     The decent view is: It is all our country -- no colors needed -- and all lives matter. 
     To equate the thugs in Charlottesville with a left-wing radical shooting bullets rapidly into a Republican baseball practice, we don't consider it the same thing. Our U.S. Congresswoman from the district here in Fort Worth did that in echoing the "both sides" claim, and a couple of people on my Facebook page agreed with her. 
     Mrs. Kay Granger's office is close to where we live, across the street off University Drive, so I took a copy of my blog piece and a short note there. To her credit, she answered with a lengthy, well-done letter and strongly denounced -- twice -- the white supremacists' actions and views.
     She cited the baseball practice shooting as "an example of political violence, and I denounce it as well" and went on to write, "... I cannot imagine that anyone but severe partisans would not agree with my position in denouncing both actions."
     I don't consider myself a severe partisan -- you might -- but that was one man with an obvious mental-health problem (we've heard this description repeatedly in other cases). How many one- or two-person violent acts have we seen here in recent memory?
     One lone wolf, not a mob or a movement. It is not a parallel situation.
     Cannot deny that the counter protesters in Charlottesville -- the anti-fascist group -- were ready for battle, that some went there knowing they would have to fight to protect themselves. History tell us how violent the Nazi/KKK types love to be.
     But the rally itself -- the largest white supremacists gathering in the U.S. in a decade, they bragged -- was the instigator. 
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     Look, the Charlottesville movement had a license to protest (so giving that crowd permission was the first problem ... but where do you draw the line on protests?). 
     Tried to tell you before the current administration was in office that there would be plenty of protests. Got lots of criticism for defending the Hamilton cast ("wrong place," "wrong time," "disrespectful). 
     And now you have had the women's marches, the NFL players' national-anthem protests, the young people-led gun-restriction protests, the abortion/anti-abortion protests won't subside, the Black Lives Matter protests. We don't all agree, but -- Lord help us -- we don't want violence.

1994 The Shreveport Times

     So about Charlottesville, it's not anger I feel (although my friend in Holland, daughter of a Holocaust survivor, wrote a note saying she thought that). It's sadness. Sad that the Nazi/KKK/white supremacy loudmouths are there and visible.
     It is, true, a small and loud faction of our society. It is, unfortunately, a growing menace -- again -- in Europe. We don't need to ignore them; we need to pay attention. We need to tell them, often: You are just wrong.
     We don't need to be scared, either. Guarantee you that Rose Van Thyn was not scared of David Duke or any of the others.
     Don't think she ever was in the same room with him. She chose not to be; he had some public appearances in Shreveport-Bossier.
     But one member of our family -- my sister Elsa -- was an LSU student at the same time as Duke in the early 1970s. The other night, when I told her I was going to write this blog, she remembered several times listening to him speak at LSU's Free Speech rallies, almost always wearing his Nazi uniform (as did often on campus).
     And she remembered laughing at how outrageous he was, that while others were denouncing the Vietnam War, Duke was blaming the Jews for it and blaming Jewish women for inciting protests.
      Had my mother seen Duke, she would have gone face to face, toe to toe with him -- well, sort of, at 4-foot-9 and 110 pounds (maybe), perhaps not face to face.
      She did not use bad language, but if there was something she did not like, you knew it. She would not have backed away from David Duke. She would not have been violent, but you could see his always-present bodyguards stepping in, couldn't you? Rose did not need bodyguards. 
      What happened in Charlottesville last year, and the Nazi-type rallies and speeches we read and hear about (too often) are very good reasons why a Holocaust Remembrance Service is important.