Germany dedicates railway station to Holocaust Survivors

[Flintlock76]

York1

These photos he kept in a trunk in our basement, and as far as I know, he never looked at them.

Reminds me of a police officer friend I had years ago.

He'd inherited his uncles photo album from WW2.  There were plenty of shots of friends and places, ships and equipment.  All the photos had captions to them as to who, what, when, where, and why.

Until the section where his uncle was part of an infantry unit that liberated a concentration camp, Dachau I believe it was.  Photos, photos, more photos, each more horrific than the next.  No captions, except one, just one, at the end of the section. It said:

"After this we didn't take no more prisoners." 

[Overmod]

Flintlock76

"After this we didn't take no more prisoners."

My thesis advisor told me in private that he was among the first into one of the liberated camps.  He told the troops to take pictures and remember, because there would come a time people tried to pretend it didn't happen or wasn't as much if a horror as it was.

And yes, there have been horrors since then, notably in Cambodia and Rwanda -- the most painful thing I ever saw someone 'have' to do was Madeleine Albright stand in the General Assembly and petition that the Vietnamese who had invaded Cambodia to stop the murdering should be required to leave and restore authority to the Khmer Rouge.  (And no, I didn't do anything about the 2-½ million people dying while I ate quarter-pounders with cheese and studied expedient statecraft...)

[daveklepper]

243129:  Exactly which author are you accusing of lack of empathy?

The subject of this Forum happens to be a  particular memorial to a particular group of people.  And the only reason I posted it was because it's a railroad station, not intending to accuse anyone of anything, including not accusing the German people in general.

As for my own empathy, here goes, something I wrote some twenty-one years ago and has been distributed as part of my "Jews have Green Hair book:"

 

b.    Segregation

 

 

 

In the late summer and early fall, 1939, my parents and I spent a few weeks living in Franklin, New Hampshire.  My sister Gertrude had become ill at her summer camp counselor work, and my parents wished to visit each day her during her recovery.  After her recovery, she returned to her studies at the University of Michigan, and my parents and I returned to New York City.  In Franklin, the owner of the home where we rented two rooms had a young daughter of my age, and we began to play together.  But then my parents told me not to join her under any circumstances because the landlord did not wish her daughter to be friends with a young Jew.  Instead, I used my daytime free time to explore the town and watch Boston and Maine Railroad trains pass or stop at the Franklin Station.

 

 

 

To return to New York, we took a local taxi to the Franklin station.  A Montreal – Boston express passed by at speed, and then a local, with its wood, open-platform coaches, arrived.   We had a few hours in Concord, and in addition to a restaurant meal, we watched a motion picture show.   I have no memories of the show itself, but very firm memories of the newsreel that preceded it.  We saw German planes bombing Poland.  We saw German soldiers marching through streets of Warsaw.  We saw a Warsaw two-car tram train, both the motor-car and trailer single-truck, deck-roof cars, the smaller trailer probably a converted horsecar, with the sign “Juden” on its side.   We saw the construction of the Ghetto walls, in one case closing off a street interrupting its streetcar tracks.   These pictures remain in my mind almost seventy years later as if I saw them yesterday.

 

 

 

Four years later I was on my own traveling to Richmond, Virginia, to visit my sister Lillian, married at that time to Daniel Hyman, then a flight surgeon in the Army Air Corps.  They lived on Richmond’s north side, and I had specific instructions (from the Main Street Station on the Chesapeake and Ohio train from Charlottesville) to take the Broad and Main car to Broad Street, then the Ginter Park streetcar, changing to the Northside Avenue bus at that Avenue.  In New York City, I frequently rode the Broadway-42^nd Street streetcar, and often the motorman’s seat at the rear of the double-end car was not folded away, and I could enjoy an “observation-car” ride through the city.  On boarding the Ginter Park car (known to me now as a double-truck Birney lightweight), I thought I could do the same in Richmond.  As soon I sat down, a well-dressed black woman said:  “Sonny, the rear of the streetcars is for us black people, please join the white people in the front of the car.”   I was not a Rosa Parks and did what she suggested.   But it reminded me of what I had seen in the newsreel in Concord, New Hampshire, and sparked an interest in learning what were the causes of segregation.

 

 

 

c.   The Athena Tragedy

 

 

 

When Dad, Mother, and I arrived at our West 85^th Street brownstone home on our return from Franklin, New Hampshire, a note was waiting for us.  I am unsure who wrote it.  It informed us that my second cousin, Janti Wilkes. his mother, my cousin Bell Klepper Wilkes, and several hundred British school children hoping to spend the war years in Canada, had gone down with the Cunard Liner Athena after a U-boat attack in the Atlantic.  My cousin by marriage and Janti’s father, pediatrician Dr. Edward Wilkes, and Janti’s older brother, Daniel Wilkes, survived.  That tragedy was pushed to the background by the tremendous tragedies of the Holocaust and Dad’s rescue efforts work.  It was until many years later, when I began studying at Yeshivat Beit Orot, that I realized how deeply the loss of Janti affected me.

 

 

 

Janti was my virtual twin.  We looked alike, were the same age, enjoyed the same things, and tried to be together as much as possible.   Many a weekend my parents and I would ride the 86^th Street Crosstown streetcar, the last of the “Green Lines,” to the 90^th Street East River ferry to Astoria, and walk or bus to the Ed Wilkes Sunnyside apartment, until the streetcar was replaced by a bus and almost simultaneously the Triboro Bridge put the ferryboat out of business, and we went by subway.  I wonder today if my love for streetcars is somehow an attempt to make up for the loss of Janti. 

 

 

 

When I worked for the Electro-Motive Division of GM as a student engineer in the summer of 1952, a German ex-rocket scientist at EMD made a special effort to be my friend.  Rudy was his first name.  I had already learned that there are good and bad people in every population and returned my friendship with Rudi.  Deiter was a Hebrew University graduate student from Germany, studying economics, and his thesis was on “Ribit,” interest, and the Jewish prohibition against it and how Jews were able to succeed economically despite this prohibition.  He asked me for help in insuring his thesis was accurate in the use of the English Language.  I was most happy to help him, and I understood he later converted to Judaism.

 

I post the above just in case I am the author you are referring to.  And as a teenager, I did not just photograph lots of streetcars and trains, but also joined New York City's Inerracial Youth Conference, where fellow teenages of all ethnic groups could discuss our problemes and sometimes come up wih solutions.  My dance partner was ofen a different color than me.  We usually met at the Japenese Methodist Church, because they served us the most delicious food, and I learned to eat with chopsticks.

Here in Israel, in explaining the anger of USA blacks, I have to point out that the slavery experience, horrible though it was, was a paradise compared to what those to-be-slaves had endured on slave ships, where conditions were even worse than in any of the Holocaust Camps.  This explanaition is one reason I moved here.

Again, I wish to remind you that it simply is wrong to make accusations about other posters, accusations for any reason what-so-ever.  Argue about facts.

If by author, you mean the author of some book referenced, I hereby apologize.

 

[243129]

daveklepper

243129 : Exactly which author are you accusing of lack of empathy?

You Mr. Klepper. Your lack of empathy is apparent not an accusation as you state. What occurred during the Holocaust era is appalling and despicable to ALL who suffered. Ethnic cleansing in pursuit of a 'master race' was not specific to Jews. More often than not when you ask of people, how many humans died in the Holocaust more often than not the answer is six million Jews. That is due to a lack of empathy on the part of Jewish people for others who suffered and died alongside of them. Black Lives Matter is a modern-day version of said empathy. What about the Hispanic and Native American travails with police and discrimination? Check out the atrocities we have perpetrated upon the indigenous people of this country that we stole from them.

 

[Convicted One]

But don't you see? Sifting through the same 75 year old ashes over and over hoping to find a smoldering ember is a vital part of railroading. You can look back in this forum's history and see that it is a cycle that repeats every 8-10 weeks, as far back as you care to go.

[charlie hebdo]

David K: I am unsure of your use of the term Ribit for interest, as that is not the word in German or Yiddish. 

In any case, interest on loans (usury) was prohibited by the Catholic Church  until the13th century,  when the definition was modified to mean excessively high rates. Charging interest "riba" was frowned on under Islam Law  Under Hebrew Law,  charging interest on loans to other Jews was not sanctioned but charging interest on loans to non-Jews was permitted. One technique of the early Italian bankers to get around usury prohibitions was to place a discount "Rabatt" on interest paid out on deposits compared to that charged on loans. 

[54light15]

"That is due to a lack of empathy on the part of Jewish people for others who suffered and died alongside of them-" 

Does that cover every Jewish person in the world today? That's a hell of an assumption on your part. It also smacks of "what-about-ism."  There have been genocides of many ethnic groups over the years but what makes the Jewish holocaust the worst one of all was that there was machinery designed and patented to achieve mass murder. The Todt company of Erfurt adapted barley-smoking ovens as used in breweries for a far more evil purpose than making beer and the corpse-lifting elevators as used in the gas chambers was not patented until 1949. (I don't recall the source for that one but I did read it) There is a Todt oven in the brewery museum in Bamberg Germany- I saw it about 15 years ago and it looked just like the ovens used at Auschwitz. That was not done in the slave trade or the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s or the massacre of Indigenous people in North America or the genocide of Armenians at the hands of the Turks in 1915. 

All genocides were horrible. But, Armenians were killed to put down what the Turks saw as a potential rebellion, the Ukrainian kulaks were allowed to starve to death on Stalin's orders in order to collectivise the farms, and I don't have to tell anyone about the American Indians. Jews were killed because they were Jews. 

[Overmod]

Modern Hebrew indeed uses 'ribbit' for added interest (supposedly taken from 'marbat' or 'tarbat' meaning interest added to principal, as opposed to deduction from the anount received from the loan)

[243129]

54light15

There have been genocides of many ethnic groups over the years but what makes the Jewish holocaust the worst one of all

You have made my point.

[Convicted One]

I think the horse has been rendered immobile.

[charlie hebdo]

I don't think comparing and ranking various genocides in history serves any valid purpose.  I certainly hope it will cease. 

[daveklepper]

1.  We do not lack empathy for other groups.  My Bar Mitzvah Rabbi was one pof the four founders of the NAACP. Orthodox Jews marched at Selma.  Israel took in Vietnamese Boat People  We send food and medical siupplies to people taiught daily to murder us.

2.  Talmud and Torah alse use the word rebbit.

3.   I survived attemptrs to murder me for answering yes to being a Jew,so I will sirvive your lie that I lack empathy.

 4.  Major tragedies, such as Haiti, usually see an Israeli medical team on the spot soon after to help with recovery.

5.  You [percist in attacking me personally.    

[daveklepper]

Colonial Williamsburg has an excellent exhibit of slavery in America and is reachable by Amtrak.

[243129]

daveklepper

I will sirvive your lie that I lack empathy. facts

There is no "lie" as you spin it. Your lack of empathy for other ethnicities and 'persuasions' lost in the holocaust is obvious in your postings.

If you consider stating facts a personal attack that is your problem.

[daveklepper]

Apparently, you don't even bother to read my postings.  I believe most readers would consider them proving the opposite. 

That I lack empathy for others is a lie.  And i will continue to label it a lie every time you state this lie.  And indeed, my life as reflected in my postings does proove it a lie.

What evidence is there in your life that you have empathy for others or that you are in any position whatsoever to judge others on this issue?

HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Sociaty.  Nearly all its funding, even today, comes from the Jewish Community.  It was started over 100 years ago specifically to aid Jewish immigrants to the USA from Eastern Europe and Russia.  Today, all its clients are illegal immigrants, all non-Jews, mostly from South and Central America.  And it is very active in this work.

My New York congregation, Shearith Iserael, raised money for Irish Famine releaf at the time of the Irish Potato Crop Failure. 

And I am not calling you a lier.  I am calling one specific statement a lie.  Outside your hatred for me, personally, you might be the most decent, loving, kind, honest person that one can find.  But you seem to have some obsession with me.

I started this thread because a memorial uses a railroad station, not to make one form of persecution all-important as compared with others.

Aside from Grunewald in Berlin, are their other memorials, not necessarily Holocaust-related, that use railroad stations?

Something similar is the European freightcar in the Washindgton, DC, Holocaust Museum illustrating how Jews were transported to the camps.

 

 

 

 

[daveklepper]

There may be a way out of the argument:

If you say that "yes, Jews have empathy for others, but not as much as empathy for their own suffering, " then I have no problem with that.

If you say: "yes, David has empathy for others, but not as much as empathy as he has for other Jews," again  I have no problem with that.

But if you say that David has no empahy for ohers at all, then I have to call you a liar, and if you say that Jews have no empathy for others at all, then perhaps you are proud to identify yourself with Lindberg, Edison, and Herny Ford before he was cured by Edsil showing him a movie of a USA Army camp-liberation.

[daveklepper]

Oh yes, I should add Richard Wagner to the list of Edison, Lindberg, and pre-WWII Henry Ford. But I would not turn-off Der Meistersigner (Sp?) orThe Flying Dutchman if either appeared on my stereo system, however.

[daveklepper]

But labeling can take strange forms.  My late Israeli composer friend, Ben Zion Orgaad, who became my friend while he was studying at Brandeise, and he was also a ckise neighbor of my Aunti in Tel Aviv, refused to ride Israeli trains, because "Trains were the main transport in the Holocaust." I was not smart enough to point out, while he lived, that they were also the main transport for Jews to escape the Holocaust and for black slaves to escape Southern slavery.

Bentsy

[Flintlock76]

*

 

[Flintlock76]

That's a good point David.

When you come down to it, trains are like any other piece of machinery.  Bad people do bad things with them, good people do good things with them.  Trains have no mind of their own, like anything else made by man.

With the possible exception of steam locomotives.  The jury's still out on that one!

I mean, they eat, drink, breathe, snort, rumble, talk to their operators, you know what I mean?  Makes you wonder.  

 

[Backshop]

Why is it that there's only one poster on this whole forum who I'm positive what religion they practice?

[daveklepper]

Simple answere:  Because Railroad Station, the subject of the thread, concerned the end of the lives of the people who practised the religion of the poster.

And the invitation remains open for posting stories about other railroad facilities and equipmene named as similar memorials.

[Flintlock76]

Backshop

Why is it that there's only one poster on this whole forum who I'm positive what religion they practice?

 

I'm a lapsed Roman Catholic.  I still believe, but not in organized religion.  Kind of like Thomas Paine.  But if others believe in organized religion and take peace and comfort from it, that's fine with me.

OK, now you've got two. 

[daveklepper]

Further to your point, uses of machinary.  With the help of others, on another thread, we discussed how Hollywood finaned most of the research that led to today's, and the past 85 years, adequately loud for all situations, intelligible under all audience sitations, and easily and even routinely implemented, of sound reproduction and reinforcement.  Metro Goldwin Mayor's partners, and most of the other Hollywood capitalists, were Jews, and so was Sarnoff at RCA.  Without their funding, the research that developed compression drivers for directional horn loudspeakers and large horn enclosures for large bass loudspeakers would not have been developed at AT&T's Western Electric and at RCA.  And this technology was licensed to Grundig in Germany, who developed its own efficient horn loudspeakers that Hitler used at all his mass rallies so he could speak to 10,000 people in a sports stadium at the same time.  The photographs of these raillies clearly show these loudspeakers.

[daveklepper]

And Backshop, what you do is fine with me.  And if you revert to practise again, also fine with me.

[243129]

daveklepper

Apparently, you don't even bother to read my postings.

I have read your posts and you did not refer to or include any other ethnic groups until confronted as to why. That in itself indicates a lack of empathy.

daveklepper

What evidence is there in your life that you have empathy for others or that you are in any position whatsoever to judge others on this issue?

I am displaying empathy for the other ethnic groups by pointing out your and others lack thereof.

daveklepper

HIAS is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Sociaty. Nearly all its funding, even today, comes from the Jewish Community. It was started over 100 years ago specifically to aid Jewish immigrants to the USA from Eastern Europe and Russia. Today, all its clients are illegal immigrants, all non-Jews, mostly from South and Central America. And it is very active in this work. My New York congregation, Shearith Iserael, raised money for Irish Famine releaf at the time of the Irish Potato Crop Failure.

That is all quite admirable however I am referring to your thread and yours and others lack of empathy for ALL Holocaust victims.

daveklepper

Outside your hatred for me, personally,

Again you spin. I don't know you, I don't know anything about you, I have a difference of opinion with you, I post my opinion and observation on your lack of empathy ON THIS THREAD and you spin it to say I hate you?

daveklepper

I started this thread because a memorial uses a railroad station, not to make one form of persecution all-important as compared with others.

You made this thread specific to Jews until confronted. So I ask you again, were only Jews sent from Wurzburg?

 

 

[243129]

daveklepper

There may be a way out of the argument: If you say that "yes, Jews have empathy for others, but not as much as empathy for their own suffering, " then I have no problem with that. If you say: "yes, David has empathy for others, but not as much as empathy for other Jews," again I have no problem with that.

Surely you jest.

[daveklepper]

I think I need to make a correction, right away!  Thanks!

[daveklepper]

Corrected:  "as he has for" somehow got left out.   Again, thanks!

But:

I have read your posts and you did not refer to or include any other ethnic groups until confronted as to why. That in itself indicates a lack of empathy.

The above is absolule nonsense.

Plenty of posts discuss African-American slavery or Jim Crow or the exploitation of the Chinese in building the transcontinental railroads, or Blacks confined to firemen, without opprtunity to become engineeers, on USA railroads, without each thread or original poster having to include others suffering or discriminated agains or whatever.

But somehow posters on the memorials to the Holocaust are required by some readers to immediately start discussing discrimination or the genuside of other groups, outside the specific memorial that is the subject of the post.

Absolute nonsense and discrimination itself!

I  don't need to prove my empathy for you.  Other readers can read about what I have done with my life and conclude I've demonstrated a whale of a lot more empathy that you have in your life.

And I'm sure the young Arab taxi driver that drove me from the Yeshiva to my apartment yesterday evening would agree.

Taxi and Travel, Sheikh Anbar, 02-5449449   02-5449444

 

[daveklepper]

I do need to point out.  I used a taxi because currently friends at the Yeshiva do my laundry, and I had a heavy load to take from the Yeshiva to my apartment.

Usually my evening journey involves the Arab 255 or 275 bus to Damascus Gate, the light rail to Amunition Hill, and the Egged 52 or 34 bus to my apartment.

But the taxi is reasonable, not excessive.