The Last Holocaust Survivors

 

Ken and Robert

Robert Clary died this week at age 96.  He was one of the last few remaining holocaust survivors.  These people have been living testimony to how horribly we humans can treat each other.  He and his family were in their apartment in Paris one day and the next they were in a cattle car on their way to hell. 

Robert Clary was a young teenager when he and his parents and 10 siblings were sent to the death camps.  All of them, except Robert, died in the camps.  I heard him speak a few times.  He believed the reason he was spared was because he was an entertainer.  Small for his age, he sang and danced for the Nazis.  He was liberated from the Buchenwald death camp by American troops.

He was best known for his role in Hogan's Heroes but. along with acting, he was a singer, dancer, writer and painter.  He married Natalie Cantor, daughter of Eddie Cantor. 

Like many holocaust survivors he didn't go public about his horrific experience until around 1980 when holocaust deniers began to flourish.  

I met him in the 1980s in West Palm Beach when he spoke at an event organized by my husband Ken, bringing Jews and Christians together to remember this evil event in human history - to never forget.  He was a charming, calm, kind man.

Thank you, Robert Clary, for never letting me forget. 

***

She'll Fly Away

 

I have a journal for writers.  Every day it gives me a prompt and I, in turn, write one page of whatever comes to my mind.  It's not meant to share.  It's meant to keep my writing juices flowing.  

But, this morning, I want to share with you what I wrote on October 31st. The prompt is encouraging the writer to delve into some macabre, frightening event. 

But I wrote something else. 

The Prompt:  As morbid as it may sound, the universality if death lends itself to great literature.  To wit, in 2011, all thirteen novels nominated for the Booker Prize shared a death plot line.  Your task today: write a death scene. 

My Response:  She hasn't been well for a while.  Her world has become smaller and smaller.  She's physically confined but, strangely, psychologically fine with it. 

She's tired.  Tired of the task of living and all that's needed to keep her alive.  She is in pain, and in addition, is "sick" and weak.  Her brain is tired. 

One evening she goes to bed and says her nightly prayer, one that she learned as a child.  "...if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."  

And this night she's off to a great adventure.

***

The Monuments Men

 

For a while now I've been watching old films that I remember loving the first time around.  Surprisingly, I didn't care for some and even found a couple to be unwatchable. 

This week I watched The Monuments Men and I loved every minute of it, just like I did the first time around in 2014. If you cherish historic art and enjoy World War II history, you will like this film.

 

Hitler was making the greatest treasure heist in history.  And what his men couldn't confiscate, they were ordered to destroy... this thousand years of culture. 

President Roosevelt tasked a group of seven middle-aged art experts with rescuing artistic masterpieces from these Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners.  These men, led by Frank Stokes (portrayed by George Clooney who also directed the movie) were museum directors, curators, and art historians.  They had difficulty with the "real" G.I.s  who could not grasp the importance of this endeavor.  

They split up into several European cities to chase down the art.  One item, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child statue in Bruges, Belgium, exchanged hands several times.  Bruges is one of my favorite cities in Europe.

At the end of the film, decades after the war, an elderly Frank Stokes takes his grandson to see the statue in Bruges.  However, this time he is portrayed, not by George Clooney, but by his dad in real life dad, Nick Clooney.  

By the way, another of my favorite movies is In Bruges.  It's about a couple of hit men who are sent to Bruges to kill a guy but, instead, they fall so in love with the city that their lives and changed.  

I might watch it next.  

***