Hey babes, “Holocaust Fun” in a headline?
and the attitude that Elie and Oprah “DO” Auschwitz as a lark and book promo?
The red just boiled up in my eyeballs, and the fingers flew.

Hey, I hate to break it to ya, but I’ve known Elie–holy shit–I’ve known him for 46 years– OUCH–I am so older than whoever, and I’ve actually had disagreements with him, ya know? And his wife is a very strong, focused woman who is doing the right things–and keeping it private…and frankly, for him it ain’t about the bucks, tho that’s nice too….the money gets shoveled into the foundation that does all kinds of good stuff around the world, but you don’t hear about it, cause they don’t publicize it much…

Still, I did use my beitzim to ask him about his favorite rebbeh, Menashe HaKaton Klein, the Ungvar Rebbe in BoroParkBoh–who is the biggest enemy of Jewish women on planet Earth, and someone who helped EW in Auschwitz.

(The org. Shalom Bayis this guy set up in the early 90s had a Concubine Hotline, declared a moratorium on gets for 10 years, and faxed out a list for why it’s ok to bring a second woman–just to screw–into your household (I have all that crap in a filing cabinet)…oh yeah, and to this rebbeh, Metzizah be Peh is totally non-negotiable…the rebbeh’s own wife was an agunah for years…and people I know were physically abused by this teacher–with beatings and verbal crap….so…Elie, I asked, what gives? And he had a hard time believing me…but I hounded him some more and sent him the newspaper articles about this guy from around the world…This rebbe is the same one who did the Goldstein kiddushei ketana way back when…which was the case that caused me to explode all over AOL…in 93? 94? Who remembers. I think I have all that on some 3.5 floppies in a box somewhere.

Is there anyone out there who thinks the Holocaust, agunah issues and domestic violence in some areas of the Jewish community aren’t related?

ROTFLMAO.

In the meantime, back to the main topic–every poster here has really missed the point. This isn’t about Frey, since Elie’s book was labeled a novel essentially because he wasn’t sure how old he was–deniers had been picking on Night for a long time, calling it a novel. I asked Elie why he wrote Night, and I have the answer in an article somewhere in my files…don’t want to fudge the facts here. (I also asked him how he met Marion, and she has her own amazing story.)

So now comes Iran and international appeasement, led by the !@##$%#$ UN and China and Russia, and Elie is at the WEF in Davos, where they are deep into crap about the Jews and Israel…when it hits the fan…right after Marion retranslated Night and had it republished…
Now, if you were EW, and your wife had hooked you up with Oprah in the early 90’s, the pres of Iran is spewing his shit, the Protestants are back to their Martin Luther attitudes (check out those Anglicans, boys, and what about The Rapture???!!), votes are rigged in every election, including our own, and you expect the W’s not to use America’s most powerful woman and medium to convince America’s heartland and black citizens that there was indeed a Holocaust? Less than 27% of the American people even know there was one.

I ought to know. I edit the Holocaust survivors’ newspaper, Together, and run their website. This stuff is tossed at me everyday. And here’s what I noticed:

Someone is googlebombing to always keep the deniers on top, and most of that is Iranian sourced. Internationally, no one gives a shit about the cartoons the Muslims have been using for the last 60 years, including the Striecher cartoons, to demonize Jews. The international media is not addressing those attacks at all. Very few people are reacting to Muslim antisemitism and media saturation, education saturation etc.

I have been howling about this for years…but what the hey…we perceive ourselves as powerful. We aren’t. We packed the UN on 1/27 and got zero coverage in the big leagues…on the same day El Baradi told Bush to hand Iran nuclear power plants.

So, I also do have a wicked sense of humor, but somethings are serious…

As for Holocaust education…the when, whys and wheres….Ask Mobius who can write the book. He watched it happen from the time he was 6 months old.

Am I Jeanette?

So I have no idea who Jeanette is except that she came on here and blasted us for something that isn’t there.

Nobody here is talking about funds for survivors. In fact, I completely agree that what has happened is shameful. Not only do survivors have to lobby Swiss banks for their own money, they need to chase Israeli banks as well. There are many reasons for them to be angry at what is unjust treatment, but I don’t see what any of this has to do with Oprah and Iran or our supposed popiliciousness and unseriousness with respect to the Holocaust. Wait, it has nothing to do with it.

Heyt Jeanette, if you like I can talk to ck about having you become a regular poster here on Jewlicious. We need somebody new and fiery with whom to argue and Mobius is already busy on another site.

Look, I have been after the big shots since a Lehrhaus seminar in the early 90s to put all Jewish knowledge on the net. When David Pfeffer and JEMM showed up with a multi-media CD rom that I worked on in the very early days, he was tossed out of every Jewish establishment office in NYC.

Vision? Hah! The establishment was blind then. Andy had vision, JJ Greenberg had vision, they are gone, and we are back to being blind.

Jewish education needs a total revamp. But hey, Jobber, didja notice, they already climbed into my brain, know what I am thinking, and judged me. Amazing, ain’t it?

jeanette (am I really?)

That’s over, and that was my training for helping get Holocaust education off the ground in Jersey way back in 1979.

Almost immediately I realized that the way the establishment teaches the Holocaust stinks. But can you change the establishment? HAH! The Israelis spend millions to send kids to Auschwitz to make them better Jews. All that does is make better Polish antisemites.

Jobber, friend, whoever you are, since your screen name has obviously changed over the decades (mine just as obviously hasn’t) thanks for defending me, but it seems these folks don’t even bother reading carefully, they see what they want to see and spew whatever they want to spew.

What sucks is the prevailing notion of deconstruction that infuses every young person I know–that nothing on the net or in life is real, important or even worth respect (i guess according to middle whoever, I am a fraud and suck anyway, so that’s perfectly fine, I know how to bathe when I get up out of the gutter.)

The Jewish community I grew up never addressed the Holocaust and/or the domestic violence that was a big part of the aftermath. Not in yeshiva, not in public school, not on TV. In 1979, the Holocaust deniers came out of the closet–10 years after I encountered black people on the Brooklyn College campus who wanted us Jews dead because our grandfathers enslaved their grandfathers down south–and that’s a quote thrown into my face my a fellow student on the Quadrangle, about 15 minutes after a firebomb went off in the women’s bathroom in SUBO in 1969.

So, there was virtually nothing in the 50s and sixties, Yaffa started the center in Brooklyn, began teaching at the college in the early 70s, and it wasn’t until the late 70s that it was even an issue… so it’s much easier for some folks here, who were not on the ground floor, to skim the posts, twist what they do read and tell people to &&(* off.

Fraud. Snort. My concern is the survivors who read what’s on the net, hear the “kids” complain, and despair. I deal with them daily and they are at their wits’ end.

The survivors fought bitterly to get some credibility in the American Jewish community. The transition from rejection to begging them for money can be documented.

But people aren’t interested in truth anymore…just truthiness.

Thanks Jobber.

The real Jeanette Friedman and proud of it.

She was also an Agunah, and she spoke out and continues to speak out on many painful problems which she went through and knows about, in the areas of spousal abuse, agunah, “Hassidic” Rebbes beating young boys, so on.

She was the first person to go public on the spousal abuse scandals and violence in general in this Hassidic frum population, in Brooklyn primarily where she is from.

This was done at a time I beleive just before the internet advent, so she appeared on radio programs that were geared towards the frum community, she wrote articles on this subject, and continues to do so to this very day. You can search the archives on Mail-jewish email list, you can find this on Shamash.org. There are likely many other sources.

Now it is possible that this poster here is a fraud, but they would be a very good one, as I truly recognize the passion that is Jeanette’s hallmark.

Now getting back to the topic, she is making a good and valid point. The money is the survivors money. For example, Middle, a man in SHule sits in front of me, for years. He was from Germany, and I suppose relatively fortunate, in the war, he was kept at important work for the Nazis, some skill or something, so they fed him relatively well. Yet he did see killing and such. But he never got paid for those years of work, nor for the loss of his career path, as he had to become a non professional when he finally started his life again. So the compensation money, he should get a fair share ( he had not gotten anything for this work, we are talking several years). And the many worse examples. Jeanette is raising a valid point, why the taking of well fed American children to spend their nights in Warsaw’s pubs drinking Polish beers?

Now middle, I think you are lacking in your life a sense of humor and fun. I am greatful for all of your kind support.

Jobber