Calum Grevers

From the BBC:

“Disabled with a deposit, but can't buy a house”

(Calum wants to stay in Edinburgh where his support network is based)

Calum Grevers is looking for his first house and has a £32,000 mortgage deposit raised through crowdfunding. But after a three-year search in Edinburgh, he hasn't found a property that he can afford. Because Calum has muscular dystrophy, his home has to be accessible. Ideally it should be ground floor, have two bedrooms and an en suite bathroom that can be converted into a wet room. After growing frustrated with the lack of availability of social housing, he is attempting to use a Scottish government scheme aimed at helping first time buyers. But he says restrictions, including a price limit set by the scheme, have frozen him out of the city's notoriously competitive housing market. "It feels like you're facing barrier after barrier," he said. "Especially when you've got the funding there and it's just some specific rules that is making it far too difficult to find something. "The fact that so few houses are accessible reflects the fact that, I think, disabled people's independence isn't really valued as something that is important. "It kind of feels like you're a less valued member of society."

The Scottish government said they were sorry that Calum was finding it difficult to buy his own home. "We want disabled people in Scotland to have choice, dignity and freedom to access suitable homes, but we know there is more to do in this area," a spokesman said. Originally Calum signed up for social housing but was told that on average, disabled people could spend about three years on the waiting list due to the limited number of accessible properties. He also became frustrated at delays in getting an assessment for an accessible home via a social landlord. Instead he chose to raise money through a crowdfunding campaign and in just over a year, people had donated £32,800.

'Scheme struck me out'

(Calum said the Lift scheme's price cap in Edinburgh is too low)

It enabled him to apply for the Scottish government's Low-cost Initiative for First-Time buyers (Lift) scheme - a shared equity scheme that was launched in 2007. It allows people to access financial support to buy a property, while the government owns a 10% to 40% share in the home. The problem for Calum is the scheme has two restrictions. In Edinburgh the limit for a two-bedroom property is £165,000, which he says is too low, and buyers cannot pay more than the home's valuation. According to the Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre, buyers paid on average 5% over valuation in the first three months of this year. Calum said: "In Edinburgh it is unrealistic to buy a property at valuation price because it is so competitive here. "On top of that, with the lack of accessible housing, you might have to pay more to get a house that fits your needs. "That restriction means it's struck me out of houses that would be suitable, even though there are so few of them."

'I can't look elsewhere'

Despite the financial challenges, Edinburgh is Calum's home. He would like to live near to his parents and to his team of assistants who provide his round-the-clock care. He is also familiar with the city's public transport and its provisions for wheelchair users - all things he is reluctant to leave behind. "In another situation, I'd move to a more affordable area," said Calum. "Because I have a support network I've built up, with personal assistants and some of the funding I rely on from the council, I can't just move to a less competitive area with more affordable houses." Calum has contacted the Scottish government in the hope they will grant him an exemption to the scheme's rules. In the meantime he will keep placing offers in the hope that someone will take valuation price - but Calum, who is 28, fears he could be 30 by the time he can move out of his parents' home. "I think it's quite important, because I've not really experience that in my life," he said. "I think it would be important for my self confidence and my relationship with my parents as well. "Your relationship can become quite strained if you're with them too long."

'Financial exclusion' Disabilities campaigner Susie Fitton, of Inclusion Scotland, said the Lift scheme could be "flexible" at providing additional funding for disabled people who incur extra costs when buying a home. But she continued: "We've got sky high property prices and rents in Edinburgh and we've got long waits for social housing. "There is a very common experience of financial exclusion and poverty amongst disabled people in Scotland and in Edinburgh in particular. "And all of this in combination with a chronic shortage of affordable, accessible and adapted housing can make finding the right house in Edinburgh and in other parts of Scotland very difficult or impossible." The Scottish government said disabled applicants were given priority access to the Lift programme. "This programme also ensures disabled people are offered flexibility in terms of the properties they can buy through the scheme so they can search for a home that meets their specific needs," a spokesman said. "We are increasing the supply of accessible homes as part of our overall commitment to deliver 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, in addition to the 108,106 delivered since 2007." He added that, where possible, all new affordably homes were built to "Housing for Varying Needs" standards, meaning they have a degree to flexibility to meet people's needs. "We are also introducing a Scottish Accessible Homes Standard which all new homes will be expected to achieve from 2025/26," he said.

^ It’s hard enough as it is to rent or buy a house. Add to that being Disabled and it is much harder. The Scottish Government (and all the other governments) need to do much more to help the Disabled rent or buy accessible homes. ^

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-61246102

New Fight

From the BBC:

“Afghanistan: Former army general vows new war against Taliban”

(Former Afghan Lt Gen Sami Sadat vows to "continue to fight" to liberate Afghanistan)

An ex-general in the Afghan army says he and many other former soldiers and politicians are preparing to launch a new war against the Taliban. Lt Gen Sami Sadat said that eight months of Taliban rule has convinced many Afghans that military action is the only way forward. He said operations could begin next month after the Islamic Eid festival, when he plans to return to Afghanistan. The Taliban took control of the country in a rapid offensive last August.

The hard-line Islamists swept across the country in just 10 days, as the last US-led Nato forces left following a 20-year military campaign. Speaking for the first time about the plans, Lt Gen Sadat told the BBC he and others would "do anything and everything in our powers to make sure Afghanistan is freed from the Taliban and a democratic system is re-established". "Until we get our freedom, until we get our free will, we will continue to fight," he said, while refusing to be drawn on a specific timeline. The general underscored how the Taliban had been reintroducing increasingly harsh rule - including severe restrictions on the rights of women and girls - and it was time to stop their authoritarian order and start a new chapter. "What we see in Afghanistan in eight months of Taliban rule has been nothing but more religious restrictions, misquotation, misinterpretation and misuse of the scripts from the Holy Koran for political purposes." He initially planned to give the Taliban 12 months to see if they would change, he said. "Unfortunately, every day you wake up the Taliban have had something new to do - torturing people, killing, disappearances, food shortages, child malnutrition." He said he received hundreds of messages daily from Afghans asking him what he was going to do about it.

But in a country shredded by more than forty years of conflict, many Afghans are weary of war, desperate to leave, or struggling to survive in the midst of a deepening economic crisis. The UN speaks of a country marked by "combat fatigue" with millions on the brink of starvation. Many in rural areas which bore the brunt of Nato's war against the Taliban have welcomed the relative calm now that US and Afghan warplanes have left the skies and Taliban attacks have ended. Lt Gen Sadat, who commanded Afghan government forces in the southern province of Helmand in the last months of the Taliban offensive, is also accused of ordering attacks which killed civilians. When questioned about the charges he denied them. In August last year he was appointed to head the Afghan special forces and arrived in Kabul the day the Taliban swept in and his commander-in-chief President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Asked whether there was any alternative to another war, Lt Gen Sadat said he hoped that moderate Taliban, known to be uncomfortable with a growing raft of restrictions reminiscent of draconian Taliban rule in 1990's, could be part of a new government. "We are not against the Taliban," he said, just against their current "textbook," describing an Afghanistan where "everyone fits in, not a country only for Taliban."

(A Taliban member stands guard at a checkpoint following a security high-alert in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 27 April 2022)

In recent weeks, an audio message in which the general speaks about an armed fight against the Taliban with the aim of "re-liberating" Afghanistan was leaked to the media. In the past, armed groups including the Taliban won Afghan wars with the support of neighbouring countries, a foothold in the country, and foreign funding. It is not clear that Lt Gen Sadat's allies, as well as the many other armed groups which have been forming, have any of these assets. Multiple groups are now united by their goal of ousting the Taliban but they're also divided along ethnic lines, and loyal to rival commanders. Lt Gen Sadat said he was in touch with one of the most prominent groups known as the National Resistance Front (NRF) whose leading figure is Ahmad Massoud, son of the late legendary commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. "I am in contact with my brother Ahmad Massoud and we support his actions in every way, I also contact and support other resistance groups," he said in his leaked message.

He told the BBC their fight was an insurgency funded by patriotic Afghans. He said they had no foreign backers and were not seeking one. At 37, the former army's charismatic and youngest general - who was educated in London and many western military academies - said his generation recognised that mistakes were made by the past administration he was part of. But he said they were let down by corrupt Afghan politicians and US policies. He believed, he said, that the chaotic US troop pullout in Afghanistan had shown America's weakness and led to Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. There was criticism of the chaotic US-led Nato pullout from the country, with questions raised over how the Taliban was able to seize control of the country at such speed.

Lt Gen Sadat said it was a bad for Afghanistan but he blamed it on politicians in Nato countries, most of all US President Biden, not western military commanders, many of whom he is still in touch with. "It's not an ending that we could be proud of, or happy with." He expressed admiration for Ukraine's resistance but warned that they too could one day be let down by Nato. "I think they are holding their ground pretty well. But I also tell them to, you know, believe in themselves more, because the continued support from Nato and other countries could come to a halt. "I hope they will get continued support as long as they need it."

^ 8 months of the Taliban have shown the Afghans and the whole world that they haven’t changed. Hopefully, the Afghans can change things themselves – since I don’t see any country coming to their help. ^

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61243957

Friday!

 

Ukraine's Lend Lease

From Military.com:

“Lend-Lease Is Back as Congress Gives Biden New Tool for Quick Ukraine Weapons Shipments”

(U.S. Marine Corps M777 towed 155 mm howitzers prior to being loaded onto a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at March Air Reserve Base, California, April 22, 2022.)

Congress has revived a World War II-era tool to quickly ship weapons to Ukraine as President Joe Biden urgently requests billions in new funding, warning existing weapons funding has nearly run out. On Thursday, the House overwhelmingly approved the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, which removes bureaucratic hurdles for the United States to quickly send weapons to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, with the promise of repayment later. The bill, which cleared the Senate in a voice vote earlier this month, now awaits Biden's signature. The last time the United States had a lend-lease program was during World War II.

"Bureaucracy, we all know, is an enemy in a crisis, so streamlining processes and improving speed and agility is extremely, extremely important," Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., the only Ukrainian-American in Congress, said on the House floor Thursday. The bill passed 417-10. All 10 "no" votes came from Republicans: Reps. Andy Biggs, Arizona; Paul Gosar, Arizona; Scott Perry, Pennsylvania; Matt Gaetz, Florida; Tom Massie, Kentucky; Ralph Norman, South Carolina; Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin; Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia; Dan Bishop, North Carolina; and Warren Davidson, Ohio. The House vote came the same day Biden sent a request to Congress for $33 billion in funding for Ukraine, including $16.4 billion for the Pentagon. Congress previously approved $13.6 billion in Ukraine aid in March, including $3 billion to replenish U.S. weapons stockpiles that are being sent to Ukraine. In the weeks since, the administration has committed nearly all of that $3 billion to various weapons packages, pledging and shipping Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Switchblade kamikaze drones, Howitzer artillery systems, armored vehicles and more.

After the Ukrainians defied expectations and staved off a Russian takeover of Kyiv, western officials are warning the next phase of the war, in which Russia is concentrating on the Donbas region in Ukraine's east, could be particularly fierce and that Ukrainians need heavier weaponry faster to build on their momentum in the war.

Biden's latest funding request asks for $5 billion to replace U.S. weapons stockpiles being sent to Ukraine. He also requested $6 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, the program Congress created in 2016 to buy weapons for and help train the Ukrainian military. That would be 20 times the $300 million Congress approved for the program in 2022 as part of the regular government funding process. The weapons funding could go toward "even more artillery, armored vehicles, anti-armor systems, anti-air capabilities that have been used so effectively thus far on the battlefield by the Ukrainian warriors," Biden said during a White House address announcing the request Thursday. The latest request also seeks to create what's called a critical munitions acquisition fund for the U.S. military to ensure the Pentagon doesn't run low on certain types of ammunition when backing countries such as Ukraine with security aid, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a press conference Thursday.

The new funding "will allow the department to purchase and establish a strategic reserve of vital munitions, like anti-aircraft and anti-tank munitions, to surge for this crisis and quite frankly crises to come," Austin said. The request also includes $2.6 billion to fund the continued deployment of U.S. troops on NATO's eastern flank. "We'd urge Congress to approve our request without delay," Austin said. The Ukraine funding has broad bipartisan support, but its fate in Congress could become bogged down in partisan politics. Congressional Democrats have indicated they are planning on moving the Ukraine funding alongside COVID-19 funding, which has become entangled in an immigration fight. While Congress debates the funds, lawmakers say the lend-lease authorities approved Thursday will provide a critical mechanism for the administration to immediately get Ukraine the equipment it needs to win the war.

The World War II "lend-lease program would help propel the Allies to a victory that preserved the promise of democracy for generations to come," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said speaking to the chamber. "Our task today remains the same as it did with the original lend-lease. Make no mistake, Russia invaded with the stated goal of ending liberty and self-governance in Ukraine, yet with unimaginable courage and determination the Ukrainian people are putting their lives on the line for democracy, not only for their own nation, but for democracy writ large for the world."

^ Lend Lease was first created in the 1930s-1940s to help good (UK) conquer evil (Germany) and it did that in 1945. Now Lend Lease is once again needed in 2022 to help good (Ukraine) conquer evil (Russia.) If we aren’t going to actively fight to help Ukraine the least we can do is make sure the Ukrainians have all the weapons they need to defend themselves. ^

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/04/28/lend-lease-back-congress-gives-biden-new-tool-quick-ukraine-weapons-shipments.html

Penguin Postal Job

From News Nation:

“Dream job? ‘Penguin Post Office’ hiring”

(FILE photo of Gentoo penguins at the Port Lockroy Antarctic Base.)

A secluded post office in Antarctica is hiring. This could be a great opportunity for those who enjoy monitoring wildlife, handling artifacts, sorting mail and are eager to embrace the penguin lifestyle. Port Lockroy, also known as the “Penguin Post Office,” is now recruiting for a new team to be based in Antarctica for the 2022-23 season. The roles available are base leader, shop manager and general assistant.

Although some consider penguins majestic, working at the Penguin Post Office could be far from opulent. Temperatures on the island where the post office is located can dip as low as 23 degrees Fahrenheit and can feel even frostier with the wind chill.   Like penguins, staff members will sleep in groups, sharing a single bedroom. Also like penguins, there will be no flushing toilet, but instead, a camping toilet that must be emptied daily. There’s also no running water, and showers are only available every few days when visiting ships arrive to offer staffers a shower. In some cases, staff may go up to two weeks without showering. Concerning communication, there’s no internet access or cellphone reception, and satellite phone calls are costly. Staffers will have very minimal communication with home. In the event of an emergency, medical evacuations could take up to seven days.

On the lighter side, the Penguin Post Office is a popular tourist destination on Goudier Island, just off the west side of the Antarctic peninsula. The historic site receives about 18,000 visitors each season. And the area is also filled with penguins. Applications must have been completed by Monday, April 25, which was, appropriately, World Penguin Day.

^ This sounds like a good job for some people. I wouldn’t want to work there, but would like to visit. ^

https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/strange/dream-job-penguin-post-office-hiring/

Airport Languages

From CBC:

“N.L., Alberta airports to pay $20K for language rights violations”

(The St. John's International Airport Authority and the Edmonton Regional Airport Authority have to pay almost $20,000 between them following a Federal Court ruling on official language rights released Thursday.)

A Federal Court judge has ordered two airports in Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador to pay thousands in damages for official language rights violations. In two decisions last Thursday, judge Sébastien Grammond took the St. John's and the Edmonton airport authorities to task for adopting a "narrow interpretation" of official language obligations in neglecting to translate web pages, reports, slogans and social media posts. In 2018, when Michel Thibodeau made 11 complaints to the federal official languages commissioner, the airports hadn't translated information on their website, including the URL. Almost all of the airports' social media posts were only in English, and annual reports and press releases also weren't translated.  "Such communications are intended for the public or the travelling public and must be in both official languages," the judge wrote in the Edmonton airport decision.

Complaints filed after internet research Grammond's decision notes that Thibodeau, an Ottawa resident, had never visited the airports before making the complaints, which were based on internet research. But Grammond wrote, "This is not a case in which damages are intended to compensate individual harm" and added that damages are necessary to force the airports to respect the rules. "A declaratory judgment will not be sufficient on its own to achieve these objectives," said the judge. Thibodeau receives $5,000 in damages and $6,000 in costs from the St. John's International Airport Authority. He also receives $5,000 in damages and $3,900 in costs from the Edmonton regional Airport Authority. "The Federal Court has reiterated that francophones have the right to service in French in the country's major airports," said Thibodeau in an interview in French with Radio-Canada. "The court clearly said that the Edmonton International Airport and the St. John's International Airport violated the Official Languages Act on multiple occasions, which is unacceptable."

More than 500 complaints in 5 years Thibodeau describes himself as an "ardent defender of language rights," but in court documents, the Edmonton airport authority painted the retired civil servant as a "serial complainant" trying to "commodify" his language rights for profit. "We do not believe individuals should benefit financially from a complaint system", said Edmonton International Airport spokesperson Darrell Winwood in a statement. Court documents show that between March 2017 and January 2019, Thibodeau made 253 complaints to the official languages commissioner.  The complaints concern airports coast to coast (St. John's, Halifax, Toronto, Sudbury, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria), as well as Air Canada, Via Rail, the federal parliament, the Department of National Defence and the National Capital Commission. Thibodeau said he's made more than 500 complaints in the last five years and received  "tens of thousands of dollars" in damages in the last decade. But he also emphasized the hundreds of hours spent researching and filing complaints, and shepherding many of them through the court system. "If we look at the hundreds of hours I've spent defending language rights, the stress, the fatigue, the attacks to my person, the threats I've received, sometimes serious threats where the police has had to intervene, the amount of money is minimal," said Thibodeau, whose first high-profile language rights case, a complaint regarding English-only drink service on an Air Canada flight, reached the Supreme Court of Canada in 2014.

'Deep commitment' to language rights In his decision, Grammond wrote he had "no doubt that Mr. Thibodeau is motivated by his deep commitment to the defence of French and language rights." "While he has received significant sums in damages since 2017, the monetary aspect cannot overshadow the immense personal investment he has made in the defence of language rights," he wrote. "The Federal Court recognized that I am not someone who is simply looking for money. The court saved my honour," said Thibodeau. Liane Roy, the president of the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadiennes du Canada, a francophone community organization and staunch defender of minority language rights, said she wasn't surprised by the decision. "It's frustrating that this sort of situation repeats itself and that its the citizens who want to receive services in French have to put in the work to have their rights recognized, which is unacceptable in our country," Roy said Tuesday. "The airports don't seem to want to respect the Official Languages Act and are spending enormous amounts of money to go to court instead of offering services.… We have to do better." The St. John's and Edmonton airport authorities did not say whether they will appeal the decision.

^ It shouldn’t take court decisions and fines for Airports across Canada to do the legal and right thing. ^

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/official-languages-violations-st-johns-edmonton-airport-1.6432342

Так

^ Так. ^

Headstones' Fix

From AFT:

“Jewish troops who died in World War II finally receive Star of David headstones”

(Seven Jewish-American troops who died in World War II and were mistakenly buried under crosses will have their grave markers replaced with Stars of David on April 27 and 28, 2022. Top row, from L to R: Pvt. Marvin Ashkenas, Pvt. Albert Belmont, 2nd Lt. Howard Feldman. Bottom row, from L to R: Maj. Maxwell Jerome Papurt, 2nd Lt. Kenneth Robinson, Tech. 5th Grade Everett Seixas Jr., 1st Lt. Joseph Sugarman Jr.)

Visitors to American World War II cemeteries in Europe often find themselves awestruck at the seemingly endless rows of crosses, each marking the final resting place of a U.S. service member who died while trying to liberate the western part of the continent from Nazi German occupation. But those crosses inspired a question for a friend of Shalom Lamm, a retired entrepreneur who leads Operation Benjamin — a non-profit dedicated to ensuring that Jewish soldiers who are buried overseas have grave markers that reflect their faith. Lamm was talking with Rabbi Jacob Schacter, now the organization’s treasurer, in 2014, when Schacter recounted a trip to the Normandy American Cemetery in France. The rabbi suspected that there were too few Stars of David among the crosses. The CEO “ran home” that night and “counted the photographs” that Schacter had brought from the cemetery, reaching the same conclusion.

(Mourners gather around the grave of a Jewish-American soldier in 2018 after his incorrect grave marker was replaced by a Star of David.)

Lamm told Army Times in a phone interview that he “could not sleep,” consumed with a question: “Where are the missing Jews?” Since then, Lamm, Schacter and others have banded together to identify Jewish-American troops who are mistakenly buried under the Christian cross. They successfully lobbied the American Battle Monuments Commission to correct the marker for Pvt. Benjamin Garadetsky at Normandy in 2018. Lamm and his team have replaced 11 more since, including troops resting in the Philippines.

And Wednesday and Thursday, seven more Jewish-American troops buried in cemeteries across France, Belgium and Luxembourg will have their markers replaced with Stars of David:

Pvt. Marvin F. Ashkenas of Bloomfield, N.J., who was killed in action Oct. 3, 1944, in France. His ID tags were lost when he was killed, according to an Operation Benjamin release, and his widow didn’t answer letters inquiring about his religion.

Pvt. Albert Belmont, of Syracuse, N.Y., who was killed in action Nov. 30, 1944, in France.

2nd Lt. Howard U. Feldman of Allentown, Pa., was a B-17 bomber navigator who died when his plane was shot down over then-Czechoslovakia April 25, 1945. His religion was erroneously listed as Catholic.

Maj. Maxwell Jerome Papurt, who lived in Brooklyn, was an Office of Strategic Services counterintelligence officer who was wounded and captured in 1944. He died Nov. 29 of that year when a friendly bombing raid destroyed the POW camp where he was held — because he had hidden his Jewish faith, he was buried under a cross.

2nd Lt. Kenneth E. Robinson was an airman from Cleveland who died when his B-17 bomber went down Aug. 17, 1943, during a massive daylight raid targeting a ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt, Germany.

Tech. 5th Grade Everett N. Seixas, Jr., of New York, died during the Battle of the Bulge Dec. 27, 1944, while serving with the 80th Infantry Division. Seixas was listed as Protestant in War Department records for unknown reasons, despite his family lineage including influential Jewish-American faith leaders.

1st Lt. Joseph M. Sugarman, Jr., of Memphis, Tenn., a bomber pilot who died when his plane was shot down March 11, 1945, near Hamburg.

Why were some Jews buried under crosses?

(The stone Star of David grave marker for Pfc. Benjamin Garadetsky in Normandy American Cemetery, which replaced the incorrect Latin Cross headstone.)

Lamm’s group has a number of theories on why some troops didn’t have their faith adequately represented at their gravesites. One, Lamm said, is simple administrative error — mistakes happened during the pre-Internet era, as they do today, and it was more difficult back then to find genealogical information to assist in correcting the errors. That’s what happened with Ashkenas, whose remains were also difficult to identify. For some of the troops, the grave markers may be an unintended consequence of a survival strategy. During World War II, all U.S. troops had reason to fear falling into Nazi captivity — but some did more than others. Many American Jews who fought their way through France and into Belgium and Germany were painfully aware that they could face summary execution or worse if captured. Data errors mean that there could be hundreds of mistakes included on the planned Wall of Remembrance at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in the nation's capital. That led some Jewish-American troops to deface their dog tags in an effort to hide their religion if captured. Others simply said they were Christians when they first joined the military, hoping to avoid the issue altogether. Operation Benjamin says at least one of the seven whose headstones will soon be replaced, Sugarman, did that. So did Albert Belmont, according to his daughter.

What it means to families

(Pvt. Albert Belmont, seen in an undated photo.)

For Barbara Belmont, who will be in attendance when her father Albert has his cross replaced with a Star of David this week, the ceremony represents the culmination of a lifelong effort to discover her father. “This, to me, will almost be like being at his funeral,” Barbara told Army Times in a phone interview. “[The ceremony has] a meaning of contact; it’s meaning I can do something for him.” “I was barely three [years old] when he was killed,” she explained. Her mother remarried and moved from Kansas City to St. Louis, and the family didn’t discuss Albert ever. The war’s impact didn’t end with Albert’s death, which “changed everything.” Her stepfather hid his combat service — and what Barbara now considers PTSD — from the family, too. Since she first saw a photo of Albert when she was 13, Barbara explained, she’s “always been searching [for him], because I wanted to know him and all about him.” Family stories from her dying maternal grandmother a few years later depicted a generous, loving man, only intensifying her desire to find him. Life stymied her efforts for decades, she admitted. She was able to take her daughters to Albert’s grave in 1992, where she found him buried under a cross. She didn’t know what to think at the time. She wasn’t sure how religious he’d been, and she “just didn’t move forward with” requesting a marker change. But she was struck by a “strange” lack of Jewish grave markers. Then in 1994, she received a cold call from a cousin from Albert’s side of the family and was introduced to a world she’d never known. She also learned of her father’s philanthropy, and how he supported both secular and Jewish causes. “[In] my father’s family, there were six boys and one girl. The oldest fought in the Spanish Civil War, and then the rest of them all fought in World War II,” she proudly recounted. Barbara also learned from one of Albert’s brothers that “my father...put Protestant down” on his enlistment paperwork because he feared that if he “were captured...[he] would be shot immediately by the German troops.” But the marker replacement stayed on the back burner until she heard from Operation Benjamin in recent years. They found her father’s name on the rolls of a “Jewish board” in St. Louis that collected the names of local Jews who were headed overseas to fight. Barbara said it’s “wonderful” that groups like Lamm’s are working to correct the record for “men of the Jewish faith that are lying under a tombstone that does not represent their religious faith.” She hopes the work continues — and that more people come to know their ancestors in a new way through the process, just like she did. “I just grew up in a vacuum. I didn’t know [about his Jewish community involvement], but I do now,” Barbara explained. “It was important to him, and so I feel very good about this.”

^ I have visited National Cemeteries throughout the United States and several overseas. It’s great to see these errors finally corrected. ^

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2022/04/26/jewish-troops-who-died-in-world-war-ii-finally-receive-star-of-david-headstones/

Anti-Semtisim Report

From the BBC:

“Anti-Semitism: Dramatic rise in 2021, Israeli report says”

The number of anti-Semitic incidents around the world dramatically increased last year, a study by Tel Aviv University has found. The report identifies the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia as among countries where there was a sharp rise. This was fuelled by radical left- and right-wing political movements and incitement on social media, it says.

The report's release coincides with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins on Wednesday night. Known in Israel as Yom HaShoah, the day commemorates the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany across Europe during World War Two.

The Anti-Semitism Worldwide Report 2021, by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Humanities, is based on the analysis of dozens of studies from around the world, as well as information from law enforcement bodies, media and and Jewish organisations.

It says that in 2021 there was "a significant increase in various types of anti-Semitic incidents in most countries with large Jewish populations".

It found that:

In the US, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded in both New York and Los Angeles were almost twice that of the previous year

In France, the number of recorded anti-Semitic incidents increased by almost 75% compared with 2020

In Canada, a leading Jewish group reported a 40-year record in anti-Semitic physical violence in one month - August

In the UK, the number of recorded physical assaults against Jews increased by 78% compared with 2020

In Germany, anti-Semitic incidents recorded by police were up 29% compared with 2020, and 49% compared with 2019

Australia also experienced a sharp rise in recorded anti-Semitic incidents, with 88 in May alone - the highest monthly total ever

The report's authors blame in part reactions to May 2021's fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip for the rise in anti-Semitic incidents. That month, Israel and militants fought an 11-day conflict in which 261 people were killed in Gaza, according to the United Nations, and 14 people were killed in Israel. The report also calls out "the vast reach of social networks for spreading lies and incitement".

Social media played "an exceptionally alarming role" in anti-Semitic incidents, it says. "The data raise concerns regarding the utility of legislation and agreements reached with social media companies on banning anti-Semitic expressions from their platforms." "The gravest concern is the dark web, which shelters extremists and where anti-Semitic content is freely and openly spread," it warns, referring to a part of the internet only accessible through special browsing software.

The report also identifies the proliferation of conspiracy theories surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic as fuelling anti-Jewish hate crimes. "Right at the outset of the pandemic in 2020, conspiracy theories began to sprout around the world, blaming the Jews and Israel for spreading the virus," it says. "The lockdowns, which glued people to their screens at home, contributed significantly to popularising toxic anti-Semitic discourse on social networks. "In 2021, when the lockdowns were gradually eased, anti-Semites returned to the streets."

^ In case there was anyone still wondering “Why we have Holocaust Remembrance Days 77 years after the end of the Holocaust – this Report is why. The ADL also recently announced 2,717 Anti-Semitic Incidents in 2021 (the highest number since Incidents were first tracked in 1979.

To see the whole Study look at the following link:

https://cst.tau.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Antisemitism-Worldwide-2021.pdf

^

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61228552

2 Armies

 

Strong Vs Weak

These pictures speak volumes.

One shows a great Leader (Zelensky) meeting with another Leader (Nehammer) up-close and personal even while in a war zone. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine on April 10, 2022.

The other shows a paranoid, scared and sickly man (Putin) meeting with a Leader (Guterres) in a bunker with a 20 foot long table between them in a country not under attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Moscow on April 26, 2022.

Veteran Caps

 

^ The same with those that wear World War 2 Veteran caps. ^

Holocaust Memorials

The Holocaust saw 6 Million Jews and 11 Million Non-Jews (Slavs, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Biracial Germans,  Communists, Freemasons, the Disabled, etc.) murdered. Millions more were imprisoned and/or forcibly-sterilized.

These were Men, Women and Children of nearly every Nationality (including: Americans, Canadians, Brazilians, Brits, Irish, French, German, Spanish, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Russians, Dutch, Latvians, Estonians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins, Belarussians, Moldovans, Greeks, Luxembourgish, Belgian, Norwegian, Croatians, Finnish, Slovakians, Czech, Slovenians, Bosnians, Austrians, Serbs, Surinamese, Swiss, Danish, Portuguese, South African, Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian, etc.)

 They were Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Protestants.

Here are pictures of the Holocaust Memorials and Museums I have visited around the world:

Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum - Jerusalem - Israel - 2017.

Monument to the Children Killed at Babi Yar (at the exact location of the Massacre) - Kyiv, Ukraine - 2007.

Gas Chamber at Dachau Concentration Camp – Germany – 2006.

Anne Frank’s Hiding Place – Amsterdam, the Netherlands – 2006.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Washington DC – 2005.

Montreal Holocaust Museum – Montreal, Quebec, Canada – 2003.

Kinder Transport Memorial – London, England, UK – 2006.

Memorial to the 1,000 Gypsies deported from Cologne to Ghettos in Poland in May 1940 – Cologne, Germany – 2014.

Marion Pritchard

Marion Pritchard

(Marion and the Jewish baby Polak she rescused with others)

Marion Pritchard was studying to become a social worker when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. At the beginning of 1942, the Germans started concentrating Jews in Amsterdam, and many were forced to relocate from the countryside. The growing Jewish population was then confined to certain areas of the city. July of that year marked the beginning of mass deportations to the killing centers in occupied Poland, mainly to Auschwitz. One day Marion Pritchard witnessed Germans throwing young Jewish children onto a truck for deportation. It was a shocking sight, and Marion was overwhelmed with rage.

The twenty-two-year-old student decided then that she would do whatever she could to rescue Jewish children. Working with friends in the Dutch resistance, Marion began to bring food, clothing, and papers to Jews in hiding. In addition to carrying out short-term assignments, Marion hid a Jewish man and his three children from the fall of 1942 until liberation in 1945. Marion’s friend, Miek, asked her to find a hiding place for his friend, Freddie Polak, and his children, ages four, two, and newborn. When Marion could not find a place, Miek persuaded his mother-in-law to let Freddie and the children, Lex, Tom, and Erica, stay in the servants’ quarters of her country house. For the first year in hiding, Marion visited the family every weekend. When she finished school in November 1943, she moved into the home and took over the full-time care of the children.

 Miek had built a hiding place under the floor in case the Germans came looking for Jews. All four of them could fit in the space. One night three Germans and a Dutch Nazi came to search the house. Marion had put the Polaks under the floor but had not had time to give Erica, the baby, her sleeping powder. The search party left after failing to find any Jews. The baby started to cry, so Marion let the children climb out. The Dutch Nazi returned half an hour later; he saw the children sleeping and the hiding place uncovered. Marion knew she needed to act quickly. She reached for a gun that Miek had given her and killed the Dutchman. The Polaks stayed with Marion until the end of the war.

During the German occupation of the Netherlands, Marion helped save approximately 150 Jewish children. Marion Pritchard passed away on December 11, 2016, at the age of 96.

King's Day

King's Birthday in the Netherlands

The King’s official birthday (King’s Day, Koningsdag) in the Netherlands is celebrated each year with parties, street markets, concerts and special events for the royal family on April 27.

Is King's Birthday a Public Holiday?:   King's Birthday is a public holiday. It is a day off for the general population, and schools and most businesses are closed.

What Do People Do?:   In many towns and cities, particularly Amsterdam, Arnhem, Utrecht and The Hague, the King’s Day celebrations begin on the evening before the day. Some people set up stalls to sell second-hand goods and King’s Day themed products in many city and town centers. The day features official musical performances on King’s Day. Many people spontaneously sing "Het Wilhelmus". This is a poem written in 1574 and describes the life of William of Orange (William the Silent) and his fight for the Dutch people. It is written as if William of Orange is introducing himself to the Dutch people. Versions are also played by bands performing at King’s Day events and on radio stations. Each year, the royal family visits one or a few places on King’s Day. They are entertained with displays and performances around local historic events. Royal family members generally join in with the games in a good natured way and greet thousands of people who turn out to see them.

Public Life:   King’s Day is an official public holiday in the Netherlands. Banks, post offices, and many businesses are closed. Opening hours in stores vary. Some stores are open as usual, some are open for part of the day, and some are closed all day. Public transport runs to a normal or special timetable and there are extra train services to take people home from large celebrations. However, buses and trams in the center of large cities may have different or shortened routes to avoid the crowds. Restaurants may be shut, open as usual or only serving special "King’s Day" meals. Cafes and restaurants may close earlier than usual. Due to mass celebration, it is difficult to reach many addresses in the center of large cities, especially Amsterdam by most forms of transport. Apart from minor criminal acts such as pick pocketing and urinating in public, King’s Day events are usually very peaceful. If King’s Day falls on a Sunday, the celebrations take place on the Saturday before that Sunday.

Background:   The monarch’s birthday has been a festive celebration in the Netherlands for many years. Queen's Day was celebrated in 1890 after princess Wilhelmina became queen following the death of her father. Queen Juliana, Wilhelmina's daughter, was crowned in 1948 and from 1949, the Queen's Day celebrations honored her birthday on April 30. Queen Juliana’s daughter Beatrix became queen on April 30, 1980. Her birthday is on January 31, but Queen's Day remained on April 30 – coinciding with Queen Beatrix’s own coronation day and her mother’s birthday. In 2013 it was announced that as of 2014, Queen’s Day in the Netherlands would become King’s Day, to be celebrated on April 27 rather than on April 30. This announcement followed the queen’s abdication from the throne in favor of her eldest son Willem Alexander, whose birthday is on April 27.

Symbols:  The national flag of the Netherlands is a horizontal tricolor flag with red at the top, white in the middle and blue at the bottom. On some feast days, an orange strip of cloth, known as a wimpel, is hung above the national flag. This is a symbol for the Dutch royal family, which uses the name "House of Orange-Nassau". The national flag and the colors red, white, blue and orange are widely displayed on King’s Day. Many people make a special effort to wear an orange item of clothing, to dye their hair orange or to color their faces orange. Accessories that combine the color orange with some symbol of the royal family, such as a crown or a lion, are especially popular.

https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/netherlands/king-birthday

Yom HaShoah

Yom HaShoah

Yom Hazikaron laShoah ve-laG'vurah (Hebrew: יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה‎, lit. 'Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day'), known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah (יום השואה) and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel's day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. In Israel, it is a national memorial day. The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. It is held on the 27th of Nisan (falls in April or May), unless the 27th would be adjacent to the Jewish Sabbath, in which case the date is shifted by a day.

Origins:  The first Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel took place on December 28, 1949, following a decision of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel that an annual memorial should take place on the Tenth of Tevet, a traditional day of mourning and fasting in the Hebrew calendar. The day was marked by the burial in a Jerusalem cemetery of ashes and bones of thousands of Jews brought from the Flossenbürg concentration camp and religious ceremonies held in honor of the victims. A radio program on the Holocaust was broadcast that evening. The following year, in December 1950, the Rabbinate, organizations of former European Jewish communities and the Israel Defense Forces held memorial ceremonies around the country; they mostly involved funerals, in which objects such as desecrated Torah scrolls and the bones and ashes of the dead brought from Europe were interred.   In 1951, the Knesset began deliberations to choose a date for Holocaust Remembrance Day. On April 12, 1951, after also considering as possibilities the Tenth of Tevet, the 14th of Nisan, which is the day before Passover and the day on which the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (April 19, 1943) began, and September 1, the date on which the Second World War began, the Knesset passed a resolution establishing the 27 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, a week after Passover, and eight days before Israel Independence Day as the annual Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Remembrance Day. On May 3, 1951, the first officially organized Holocaust Remembrance Day event was held at the Chamber of the Holocaust on Mount Zion; the Israel Postal Service issued a special commemorative envelope, and a bronze statue of Mordechai Anielewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt, was unveiled at Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz named for him. From the following year, the lighting of six beacons in memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis became a standard feature of the official commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day. On April 8, 1959, the Knesset officially established the day when it passed the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day Law with the purpose of instituting an annual "commemoration of the disaster which the Nazis and their collaborators brought upon the Jewish people and the acts of heroism and revolt performed." The law was signed by the Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, and the President of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. It established that the day would be observed by a two-minute silence when all work would come to a halt throughout the country, memorial gatherings and commemorative events in public and educational institutions would be held, flags would be flown at half mast, and programs relevant to the day would be presented on the radio and in places of entertainment. An amendment to the law in 1961 mandated that cafes, restaurants and clubs be closed on the day.

Commemoration:

Israel: Date:  The date is set in accordance with the Hebrew calendar, on 27 Nisan, so that it varies in regard to the Gregorian calendar. Observance of the day is moved back to the Thursday before, if 27 Nisan falls on a Friday (as in 2021), or forward a day, if 27 Nisan falls on a Sunday (to avoid adjacency with the Jewish Sabbath, as in 2024). The fixed Jewish calendar ensures 27 Nisan does not fall on Saturday. Evening: Yom HaShoah opens in Israel at sundown  in a state ceremony held in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes Authority, in Jerusalem. During the ceremony the national flag is lowered to half mast, the President and the Prime Minister both deliver speeches, Holocaust survivors light six torches symbolizing the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and the Chief Rabbis recite prayers. Daytime: On Yom HaShoah, ceremonies and services are held at schools, military bases and by other public and community organizations. On the eve of Yom HaShoah and the day itself, places of public entertainment are closed by law. Israeli television airs Holocaust documentaries and Holocaust-related talk shows, and low-key songs are played on the radio. Flags on public buildings are flown at half mast. At 10:00, an air raid siren sounds throughout the country and Israelis are expected to observe two minutes of solemn reflection. Almost everyone stops what they are doing, including motorists who stop their cars in the middle of the road, standing beside their vehicles in silence as the siren is sounded.

Abroad:  Jewish communities and individuals throughout the world commemorate Yom HaShoah in synagogues as well as in the broader Jewish community. Many hold their commemorative ceremonies on the closest Sunday to Yom HaShoah as a more practical day for people to attend, while some mark the day on April 19, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Jewish schools also hold Holocaust-related educational programs on or near Yom HaShoah. Commemorations typically include memorial services and communal vigils and educational programs. These programs often include talks by Holocaust survivors (although this is becoming less common as time passes and there are fewer survivors who remain alive), candle-lighting ceremonies, the recitation of memorial prayers, the Mourner's Kaddish and appropriate songs and readings. Some communities read the names of Holocaust victims or show Holocaust-themed films. Since 1988 in Poland, a memorial service has been held after a 3-kilometer walk by thousands of participants from Auschwitz to Birkenau in what has become known as "The March of the Living"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_HaShoah

Anne And Eva

Tomorrow night is Israel’s Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day.)

While Anne Frank is widely known around the world as a symbol of the 1.5 Million Jewish Children murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust and her “Diary of a Young Girl” (first published in Dutch in 1947 and in English in 1952) has sold over 31 million copies and is translated into 70 languages many do not know of her Step-Sister, Eva Schloss, whose life before and during World War 2 nearly mirrored Anne’s.

Anne Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt Germany. 

(Anne Frank at School in German-Occupied the Netherlands in 1941.)

Eva Schloss (née Geiringer) was born on May 11, 1929 in Vienna, Austria.

(Eva Schloss - née Geiringer-  at School in German-Occupied the Netherlands in 1941.)

Anne’s Sister, Margot, was born 3 years before her in 1926.  Eva’s Brother, Heinz, was born 3 years before her in 1926.

Anne and her Family left Germany for Amsterdam, the Netherlands , because of the Nazis, in 1934. Eva and her Family left German-Occupied Austria for Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 1938.

Anne and Eva lived in the same apartment block on the Merwedeplein in the Rivierenbuurt neighborhood of Amsterdam from the 1930s-1942.

9 year old Anne introduced herself to 9 year old Eva on the playground shortly after Eva’s family moved to Amsterdam (Anne spoke German to Eva since Eva hadn’t learned Dutch yet.)

Both Anne and Eva were made to leave their Non-Jewish Schools -after the German Occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940  - and were forced to attend the same Jewish Lyceum School in September 1941.

Both Anne and Eva were forced, by the Germans, to wear the Star of David on April 29, 1942.

On July 5, 1942 both Anne’s 16 year old Sister Margot and Eva’s 16 year old Brother Heinz received a Call-Up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) to be deported to a “Work Camp in Germany” (in reality those who were deported went to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.)

Both Anne’s Family and Eva’s Family went into hiding (separately) to avoid the Deportations.

Anne and her Family hid together (with 4 other people) in Amsterdam. Eva and her Mother hid together and Heinz and her Father hid together.

Anne, her Family and the 4 Others in Hiding were betrayed to the Gestapo on August 4, 1944.  Eva and her Family in Hiding were betrayed to the Gestapo in May 1944.

Eva and her Family went to the Westerbork Transit Camp in the Netherlands where they were branded as Criminals by the Germans for having been in hiding and kept in the Punishment Block.  Anne and her Family went to the Westerbork Transit Camp in the Netherland where they were branded as Criminals by the Germans for having been in hiding and kept in the punishment Block.

Anne and her Family were deported from Westerbork to the Auschwitz Death Camp on September 4, 1944 (on the last train to leave Westerbork.)  Eva and her Family were deported from Westerbork to the Auschwitz Death Camp in 1944.

Anne, who was 15 years old (the minimum age the Germans allowed people at Auschwitz to be Forced Laborers instead of immediately going to the Gas Chambers on Arrival) was separated from her Father, at Auschwitz, and never saw him again.    Eva, who was 15 years old (the minimum age the Germans allowed people at Auschwitz to be Forced Laborers instead of immediately going to the Gas Chambers on Arrival) was separated from her Father and Brother, at Auschwitz, and never saw them again.

Note: Here is where the lives of Anne Frank and Eva Schloss differ. 

(Eva Schloss - née Geiringer - recently – date unknown.)

Anne was separated from her Mother at Auschwitz when she and her Sister, Margot, were deported from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in Germany. Anne died in Bergen-Belsen a few days after her Sister, between February-April 1945 at 15 years old.

Eva and her Mother survived Auschwitz and was liberated in January 1945 when Eva was 15 years old.

Only Otto Frank survived the War (his Wife and 2 Daughters were killed during the Holocaust.)

Only Eva and her Mother survived the War (her Father and Brother were killed during the Holocaust.)

Otto Frank married Eva’s Mother, Elfriede, in 1953. Otto died in Switzerland in 1980 and Elfriede died in England in 1998.

Eva maried Zvi Schloss (a Jewish Refugee from Germany who spent the War in Palestine) in 1952. They moved to the United Kingdom and had 3 Daughters. Zvi died in 2016.

Eva Schloss is still alive and is turning 93 years old on May 11, 2022.

Transnistria

From the BBC’s Breaking News:

“Where is Transnistria and why does it matter?”

Mysterious explosions in Transnistria, a breakaway Russian-controlled territory in Moldova, have raised fears that the Ukraine conflict may be spreading. Russia has about 1,500 troops based in Transnistria, which borders on Ukraine and broke away from Moldova in a brief war in 1992. If Russia reinforces Transnistria it could enable its forces to move on Odesa - a strategically important port city - from the west. Its push on the city from the east was blocked by Ukrainian troops. On Friday, a top Russian general, Rustam Minnekayev, said "control over the south of Ukraine is another way out to Transnistria, where there are also cases of oppression of the Russian-speaking population". President Vladimir Putin has pledged to “protect” ethnic Russians in ex-Soviet republics. That was his argument for invading Ukraine. Moldova was formerly Soviet Moldavia. Moldova is not in Nato or the EU. It is one of Europe’s poorest countries and home to many ethnic Ukrainians.

^ As I said from the beginning Putin will not stop at Ukraine and that’s why the world needs to stand-up to him. ^

Publishing Anne's Diary

From The Times:

“The full story of Otto Frank’s bid to publish Anne’s writings”

(Anne Frank and her father, Otto, going to the wedding of their friends Miep and Jan Gies in Amsterdam, July 1941)

Rarely does the suspect of a 77-year-old murder case become the lead story in every news bulletin and newspaper around the world. However, the announcement in January that a team led by a retired FBI investigator had discovered the man who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis led to a sensational run of headlines, until a quick rebuttal by historians, and outraged protests by the suspect’s granddaughter, led to an equally swift climbdown and the withdrawal of the book that accompanied the investigation from some markets. Over time, speculation about who betrayed Anne has reached the same fever pitch as conspiracy theories about who killed President Kennedy, but as I researched my own book, The Diary That Changed the World, I was astonished to discover the complicated history of a book that spurred court cases, lifelong feuds and murder threats, and drew in public figures as well known as Eleanor Roosevelt and Nelson Mandela, and as notorious as the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

Anne has been portrayed as the ultimate victim of the Holocaust, an icon for adolescents around the war and a political pawn used by both sides in the Cold War, and has even been heralded by some US teachers as a bizarre sort of diet and fitness guru.

When Otto Frank unwrapped Anne’s diary with trembling hands and began to read the first pages in Amsterdam in late 1945, he could hardly have imagined that he would take his daughter’s teenage thoughts and experiences and mould them into one of the most influential and widely read books of the 20th century, The Diary of Anne Frank. Nor that he was opening himself, and her work, to scrutiny and controversy that would last for decades. Seventy-five years after the first publication of the book I set out to discover why we still care so much about Anne, and how her remarkable father obsessively overcame every hurdle to ensure her lasting fame. Otto must have felt he was handling a miracle when his friend and employee Miep Gies handed him the pages of the diary she had salvaged from the floor of the annexe on the day that the family were betrayed and taken away by the Gestapo. What was amazing, however, was what Otto did next.

Almost immediately, he was seized by an unshakeable conviction that Anne’s diary was worthy of publication and had a message about our shared humanity that would change the world. In the beginning, few agreed with him. As he walked the streets of Amsterdam, carrying the diary in his briefcase, Otto would encounter old friends and tell them about his discovery. Not many believed that there would be interest in the musings of a teenager. After corralling the help of a group of influential left-wing Dutch writers and publishers, Otto arranged the first publication of The Diary of Anne Frank in the Netherlands in 1947. A UK and German edition followed, but it was not until the American edition of the book was published in 1952 that the phenomenon of Anne Frank took off.

The Diary of Anne Frank has sold more than 31 million copies, been translated into 70 languages and been the subject of countless documentaries, feature films and television series. Nelson Mandela said it was one of the books he shared with his fellow inmates on Robben Island. He opened the Anne Frank Exhibition in Johannesburg in 1994. Her story is still potent: an animated film, Where Is Anne Frank, by the Israeli director Ari Folman debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. In Amsterdam more than one million people visit the Anne Frank House every year, and millions more around the world have seen the touring exhibition. To those who weary of her singular fame, it sometimes seems as if everyone who met Anne has written about their acquaintance, however fleeting. Far from slipping into history, more than seven decades after the first publication of the diary interest in Anne remains as strong, and as controversial, as ever. The cold-case review in January, and subsequent book by the Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, is one among many that seeks to answer the whodunnit aspect of the story. In reality, many people knew that the Jewish families were hiding in the attic at 263 Prinsengracht, and any of them could have betrayed the Franks.

How The Diary of Anne Frank related to the bigger context of the Holocaust has been every bit as incendiary as the question of who betrayed the family. From the first reading, people opposed the publication of the diary. In Amsterdam the influential Rabbi Hammelburg called Otto “sentimental and weak” and said all “thinking Jews in the Netherlands” should oppose the “commercial hullabaloo” of the diary and the Anne Frank House. And in 1997 Cynthia Ozick of The New Yorker said: ‘The diary has been bowdlerised, distorted, transmuted, reduced; it has been infantilised, Americanised, sentimentalised, falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatantly denied.” The claim that Otto had sentimentalised the diary, at the expense of the family’s true Jewish heritage, would be at the centre of a bitter 1950s court battle, then a lifelong feud, with Meyer Levin, an American writer who first championed the diary, but then fought Otto for a share of the proceeds from the highly successful play of the same name. At one point Levin threatened to shoot Otto, called him a tax dodger, compared him to a Nazi and enlisted Eleanor Roosevelt to speak out on his behalf. Otto himself said that he had never been so disappointed in a man in all of his life as he was in Meyer Levin.

At the same time, Otto was also forced to defend the diary’s authenticity in Germany, where Holocaust deniers brought a series of claims against him alleging that the diary was a fake that Otto had written himself. The Diary of Anne Frank was now at the heart of the battle over Holocaust denial, and controversy would rage for decades, exacerbated by the revelation in the 1980s that Otto had personally withheld five pages from publication. An unexpurgated publication of the diary in the 1990s prompted another round of soul-searching over Otto’s editing of the original script.

(Otto’s stepdaughter Eva Schloss)

Otto’s desire to share his daughter’s story embroiled him in years of legal battles, driving him to a nervous breakdown and eventually into leaving Amsterdam and seeking a new life in Switzerland. The popularity of the diary had turned Otto into a father figure for the world, and he spent his days overseeing every aspect of the publication and legacy of the diary from his home in Basel, and answering thousands of letters asking for his opinion, support and understanding. He had found happiness and love again with his second wife, Fritzi, who was also a Holocaust survivor, her daughter Eva, and Eva’s three children.

Yet Otto remained a remarkable, complex and haunted man. After his family had been killed by the Nazis, he was gripped by his belief in Anne’s diary, but that dedication overrode all else, and friends noted that in later life he rarely mentioned his other daughter, Margot. In his stepdaughter Eva Schloss’s book, After Auschwitz, her daughters remember the happy family holidays they took with Otto and their grandmother, and how he told them stories and taught them to ride a bike and ice-skate — but also that visiting the house in Basel could make them feel uncomfortable. Eva’s daughter Sylvia said: “For weeks beforehand I dreaded the thought of having to stay in that flat. It was like a museum and I even called Basel a ‘ghost town’.” Otto often used Anne as an example when he spoke to the children, saying, “Anne would not have done that,” Eva said. “Occasionally he would even call one of the girls ‘Anne’.” Arguably Otto’s mission to spread awareness of Anne’s diary was, if anything, too successful. His work resulted in an unstoppable momentum and appetite for her story that turned the image of his daughter into a sometimes remote icon and exploited figure. Over the decades Anne’s name has been given to things as diverse as a rose, a refugee village in Germany and a Japanese tampon (in Japan the phrase “Anne’s day” is a euphemism for menstruation, after the candour with which she wrote about her first period).

Today, almost 80 years after Anne’s death, the battle to define what she means to the world is still intense, with the future of a multimillion-pound industry at stake as competing foundations, cultural critics and former friends and relatives clash over the legacy of Anne Frank — and who should control it. In 2004 the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il struck an agreement with the Anne Frank Foundation to publish the diary in the hermit kingdom. It is taught to all schoolchildren there today but they are encouraged to identify Anne’s struggle against the fascists with North Korea’s conflict with the West. Are Anne’s words still meaningful to a young generation three times removed from the Holocaust of the 1940s? The director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Ronald Leopold, insists that in a world where so many young people are struggling to find and express their identities, Anne has never been more relevant. “In April 1944 Anne wrote, ‘If only I could be myself I would be satisfied.’ She didn’t say, ‘I want to be a woman, I want to be Jewish, I want to be Dutch, or German,’ ” Leopold says. Anne shared a longing for the freedom to discover who she was, and in today’s culture wars that still connects with young people around the world. The Diary that Changed the World — the Remarkable Story of Otto Frank and the Diary of Anne Frank by Karen Bartlett is published on April 28 by Biteback

^ This was interesting. ^

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-full-story-of-otto-franks-bid-to-publish-annes-writings-8qt8zsrfx?fbclid=IwAR3WYN_E0z7u-LsoHrvKovyZBMmS4uyuG9xB1Vxvmx23aEi2SBwQFJtT42E