Bernard "Ben" Joseph Fainer (1 May 1930 - 2016) [1] was a Holocaust survivor and educator who documented his experiences in his 2012 memoir, Silent for Sixty Years. [1]
Fainer was born in Bedzin, Poland to Rubin Fainer and Hannah Ida Urman Fainer. [1] He was abducted from his home by the Nazis at the age of nine and forced into six slave labor camps including Blechhammer, a satellite location of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked in a metal shop. [2] He was later moved to Buchenwald concentration camp. [3]
Fainer was liberated during a death march near Buchenwald at the age of 15. [1] His mother, three siblings, and 250 relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. His father survived. [2] [3]
Following liberation, Fainer stayed with relatives in Ireland where her met his wife, Susie. The couple passed through Canada before settling in St. Louis, MIssouri in 1957. [3] They had seven children. [1]
Fainer worked at Barad & Company. [1]
Fainer didn't speak about his experiences during The Holocaust for sixty years after which he recorded testimony for the Shoah Foundation and spoke regularly spoke to students at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. [1] Fainer, with his friend Mark W. Leach, wrote a memoir about his experiences. The book, titled Silent for Sixty Years, was published in 2012. [3]
While at Blechhammer, Fainer made a bracelet with his name, his mother's maiden name, and his ID number. The bracelet was discovered during a 1990s archaeological dig near Buchenwald. In 2018, the bracelet was returned to Fainer's daughter who donated it to the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. [2] [4]
Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose to each person's life through one of three ways: the completion of tasks, caring for another person, or finding meaning by facing suffering with dignity.
Robert Clary was a French actor who was mainly active in the United States. He is best known for his role as Corporal Louis LeBeau on the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971). He also had recurring roles on the soap operas Days of Our Lives (1972–1987), and The Bold and the Beautiful (1990–1992).
The Holocaust has been a prominent subject of art and literature throughout the second half of the twentieth century. There is a wide range of ways–including dance, film, literature, music, and television–in which the Holocaust has been represented in the arts and popular culture.
Leopold Engleitner was an Austrian conscientious objector, as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and a concentration camp survivor who spoke publicly and with students about his experiences. He was the subject of the documentary Unbroken Will. Before his death, Engleitner was the world's oldest known male Buchenwald, Niederhagen and Ravensbrück concentration camp survivor and the oldest male Austrian.
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are considered Holocaust survivors as well. The definition has evolved over time.
Sir Benjamin "Ben" Helfgott was a Polish-born British Holocaust survivor, Olympian and champion weightlifter. He was one of two Jewish athletes known to have competed in the Olympics after surviving the Holocaust, along with Alfred Nakache, a French champion swimmer and water polo player. Helfgott spent his adult life promoting Holocaust education, meeting with national leaders in the UK to promote cultural integration and peace.
Herman A. Rosenblat was a Polish-born American author, known for writing a fictitious Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence, purporting to tell the true story of a girl who passed him food through the barbed-wire fence at the Schlieben sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II. The book was planned to be published in 2009 by Berkley Books, but was cancelled after it turned out that many elements of his memoir were fabricated and some were contrary to verifiable historical facts. Rosenblat later admitted to lying on purpose with the intention of "bringing joy".
Noémi Ban was a Hungarian-born American Jew and survivor of the Holocaust. Later in life she was a Golden Apple Award-winning lecturer, public speaker, and teacher residing in Whatcom County, Washington.
The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust (DRVH) is an annual eight-day period designated by the United States Congress for civic commemorations and special educational programs that help citizens remember and draw lessons from the Holocaust. The annual DRVH period normally begins on the Sunday before the Israeli observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, and continues through the following Sunday, usually in April or May. A National Civic Commemoration is held in Washington, D.C., with state, city, and local ceremonies and programs held in most of the fifty states, and on U.S. military ships and stations around the world. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum designates a theme for each year's programs, and provides materials to help support remembrance efforts.
Chamber of the Holocaust is a small Holocaust museum located on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, Israel. It was Israel's first Holocaust museum.
Thomas Geve is an engineer, author and Jewish Holocaust survivor
André Rogerie was a member of the French Resistance in World War II and survivor of seven Nazi concentration camps who testified after the war about what he had seen in the camps.
Judith Hemmendinger was a German-born Israeli researcher and author who specialised in child survivors of the Holocaust. During World War II, she was a social worker and refugee counselor for the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a French Jewish children's aid organization based in Geneva, and from 1945 to 1947, she directed a home for child survivors of Buchenwald in France. She authored books and papers on the Holocaust experiences and later lives of child survivors. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2003.
Pinchas Gutter is a Holocaust educator and frequent guest lecturer for the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Centre and the March of the Living and March of Remembrance and Hope programs. He is one of the pioneers of an innovative project called Dimensions in Testimony in which a life-sized interactive biography will be wheeled into classrooms, lecture halls and museums. The idea is that the audience asks questions and pre-recorded statements from the video Gutter will respond – much as if talking to the real person. Gutter has also been the subject of a number of films by directors such as Fern Levitt, Eli Rubenstein, Stephen D. Smith and Zvike Nevo.
"Like sheep to the slaughter" is a phrase that refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during the Holocaust. It derives from a similar phrase in the Hebrew Bible that favorably depicts martyrdom in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Opposition to the phrase became associated with Jewish nationalism due to its use in Josippon and by Jewish self-defense groups after the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. During the Holocaust, Abba Kovner and other Jewish resistance leaders used the phrase to exhort Jews to fight back. In postwar Israel, some demonized Holocaust survivors as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter" while armed resistance was glorified. The phrase was taken to mean that Jews had not tried to save their own lives, and consequently were partly responsible for their own suffering and death. This myth, which has become less prominent over time, is frequently criticized by historians, theologians, and survivors as a form of victim blaming.
Margit Buchhalter Feldman was a Hungarian-American public speaker, educator, activist, and Holocaust survivor. Feldman and her family were placed in a concentration camp in 1944, where her parents were killed immediately. She survived her incarceration after lying about her age, resulting in her being placed in a work camp. She was freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 15, 1945. After moving to the United States, she raised a family and became a public speaker, sharing her experience with students until her death.
Henri Kichka was a Belgian writer and Holocaust survivor who was one of the leading figures in Holocaust education in Belgium. Kichka was the only member of his family to have survived the deportation of Belgian Jews to camps in Central and Eastern Europe. He began speaking on the importance of the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis in the 1980s and spoke widely on his experiences to school audience. In 2005, published his autobiography, Une adolescence perdue dans la nuit des camps with a preface by the French historian Serge Klarsfeld. He is the father of cartoonist Michel Kichka.
Helen Colin, born Hela Goldstein was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. On April 24, 1945, she gave the first audio-visual testimony provided by a Holocaust survivor.
Éva Pusztai-Fahidi was a Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor. She and her family were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in 1944.