HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE WITH EVELYN BANKO

Last night my wife and I, along with our friends Barry and Phyllis, attended a Holocaust remembrance in the Tigard library.

 

Please join us on the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht for a witnessing by the local Holocaust survivor Evelyn Banko.

She will be talking about her experiences under Nazi persecution in Austria, and her family’s eventual journey to safety in the US by way of Latvia and the Soviet Union. 

Caution: strong language involving violence and death.

Program presented in partnership with the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education.

Our friends are have been working for holocaust education at Chapman University.

 

Barry and Phyllis Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education

For them it’s personal; for you it’s personal.

For anyone watching historical documentaries of Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, it’s personal.

Look for families with small kids. Evelyn Banko was one of those kids.

 

Historically Awful

Let’s agree that not one kid asked, or deserved, to be swept away by the tides of history.

Can we do that?

If so, then can we agree that no one deserved the rampage on the night of broken glass?

On the night of November 9–10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany.

On the night of November 9, Nazi leaders ordered members of the Nazi Party’s paramilitaries (the SS, the SA, and the Hitler Youth) to attack Jewish communities.  

A Reference For Today

Who among anyone you know, anyone you’ve met, or anyone you’re related to, would go on a vandalizing, murderous, riot?

No one? Good.

But, like many good Germans discovered, you could be wrong.

Normal people went off the deep end of human misery when they decided to go along with the current trend of bashing and trashing and following orders.

Would you follow orders to attach a specific target and every target related?

Who in their right mind would take the green light and join the competition to become the biggest POS on the block?

Who would go on their idiotic spree and come back like they did nothing wrong?

When the ruling class opens the door to death and destruction with no repercussions, no blow-back, who’s going through it?

The Holocaust is a stunning revelation to kids opening a book on WWII history for the first time.

They need to understand that there’s no ‘Good people on both sides’ discussion or argument.

The perpetrators of the Holocaust were not normal people, not decent people, and those who carried it out are abnormal and indecent.

Time passes and takes those who witnessed events first hand with it.

Who will stand at the gates of historical accuracy for those who are gone?

Last night in Tigard was a full house, many on the older side.

 

PS:

If education is important to you, be well versed in the past.

 

PSS:

If you’ve got a streak of gray, or all gray, you are old and you’ll get questions from kids as if you were on the scene.

So be old and wise.

You may get questioned about the Holocaust by a student in the family.

Try and frame an answer with historical references beyond, “The Holocaust was an on-going tragedy performed by the most vile sons of bitches to stand on this green earth.”

While it is all of that and more, trust that the student will find their own interpretation of the tragedy owned by the most vile sons of bitches who earned their fate.

History matters.

One of the final questions of the night was, “What do you think of Stephan Miller?”

Good question, Barry.