Summer in Israel

    Shai Cohen

Nazi objects from WWII uncovered in Argentina

JTA

German soldier WWIIצילום: iStock

Argentinean federal police discovered original Nazi objects from World War II, including tools for Nazi medical experiments.

The objects were found on Friday in a hidden room of a house located in the northern part of greater Buenos Aires.

The objects are now in the custody of the justice who is tasked with investigating the find.

“We are too shocked, too touched by the impressive finding but also happy” to have made this find, Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who defined it as: “the biggest seizure of archeological objects and Nazi pieces of our history,” said Tuesday in a statement accompanying a video published on her You Tube channel to show objects from the seizure.

The judge in the case is Sandra Arroyo Salgado, the widow of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who earlier this year visited Israel.

The judge imposed a gag order on the investigation so no further details were revealed. But the security minister said she will ask the judge that the objects be donated to the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires.

The Argentinean Jewish political umbrella DAIA will hold a ceremony next Monday to honor the Security Ministry and the federal police division that undertook the investigation.

The ministry also tweeted photos from the cache on its official Twitter account, including photos of the Nazi objects as well as Asian historical objects.

“The main hypothesis is that someone who was part of the regime entered into Argentina, because the amount of objects of the same style is difficult to find in private collections that can have one or two objects, but not of this amount and of this quality ” a police officer who was part of the nine-month investigation told Argentinean television.

The police officer said that some of the objects “were used by the Nazis to check racial purity.”

Nazi puzzles for kids also were discovered in the cache.

One suspect identified by the police is not in Argentina. There are Argentinean and non-Argentinean suspects being investigated about the case, but not further details have not been provided.

In June 2016, a collector from Argentina paid $680,000 for Nazi underpants and other memorabilia.

Argentina was a refugee for Nazis after World War II. Adolf Eichmann was captured in the northern area of Buenos Aires in 1960. Nazis war criminals Joseph Mengele and Erich Priebke also choose Argentina as a refugee.

Argentina has had an anti-discrimination law on the books since 1988 that covers such objects. Three years ago a Buenos Aires city court ordered a vendor of Nazi souvenirs and symbols to perform community service and take a course about the Holocaust.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Jewish Great-Grandson Has A Play On Terezin

SANDEE BRAWARSKY

J.R.R. Tolkien’s great-grandson Nicholas Tolkien.

Separated by three generations, one lived through war to create a magical world of fantasy, and one was blessed to know peace but writes about an unimaginably tragic chapter of history.

Playwright and director Nicholas Tolkien, who makes his Off-Broadway debut this month with “Terezin,” is the great-grandson of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of “The Lord of the Rings” epic and its predecessor, “The Hobbit.”

Nicholas, who keeps kosher and observes Shabbat, and his sister are the only Jewish descendants of J.R.R. Tolkien, as he tells The Jewish Week in an interview. He grew up in London, where his American-born mother and grandparents ran a vintage clothing business. Their shop, Steinberg & Tolkien, was a fashion landmark on King’s Road in Chelsea. Growing up, Nicholas spent a lot of time with his grandparents, Anne and Mark Steinberg, who lived above their store — that probably accounts for his mostly American accent.

J.R.R. Tolkien. Wikimedia Commons

Both of his parents are published authors — Simon Tolkien writes historical fiction and Tracy Tolkien writes about vintage fashion; his Steinberg grandmother is also a novelist and his grandfather worked in Hollywood. On the Tolkien side, he says, there are a lot of writers and folks interested in mythology. On both sides, he says, there is “massive creativity.”

“For a long period of time, I felt a great responsibility to be a novelist,” Tolkien, 27, says. “Now, theater provides a different avenue — it’s so much more interesting than sitting in a room. This play is very much like a novel, with 15 characters and 45 scenes.”

It was from Mark Steinberg that he first heard the stories of survivors of the Shoah. In Tolkien’s schooling at Westminster, the Holocaust was not part of the curriculum.

Written from a child’s perspective, “Terezin” is about the strength of children in the face of loss. With elements of theater as well as dance, this is the story of three girls sent to the Terezin concentration camp; one plays the violin beautifully. They survive through their friendship and get caught up in the making of a propaganda film by the Nazis.

The Steinberg & Tolkien store in NYC. Via pinterest.com

“I’m very interested in trying to give the audience a life experience of what people went through. To give a face and a story to the people we only know through statistics.”

Terezin, also known by the German name Theresienstadt, is 38 miles northwest of Prague. Many artists, musicians, composers and intellectuals were imprisoned there, and despite the horrific conditions, the inmates led performances, concerts and a children’s opera.

Tolkien was inspired to write “Terezin” by thinking about the experience of children during war, and by the book, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp.” He spent more than five years researching and reading accounts of people who had been there. The play is based in part on “The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich,” and Redlich, who was deported to Terezin in 1941 and in 1944 sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed, is a character in the play. His diary was found by Czech construction workers in 1967.

“It’s the responsibility of the living to tell the stories of the dead.” – Tolkien

Tolkien visited Terezin, and says that the site is completely preserved. “You hear the sounds of birds, of cars passing. It’s a place full of ghosts.

“I’m very interested in trying to give the audience a life experience of what people went through,” he says, “to give a face and a story to the people we only know through statistics.”

“It’s the responsibility of the living to tell the stories of the dead,” he adds.

recommended by:
Leon Rozenbaum

Among his generation, he says, “There’s a sense of Holocaust amnesia. People don’t want to think about it. Yet, there is genocide and the gassing of children still happening in the Syrian civil war.”

“One of my fondest memories is my dad reading all of ‘Lord of the Rings’ to me. My great-grandfather had read it to my dad. It felt like family stories being passed down.”
Tolkien, who now lives in Santa Barbara, Calif., had a bar mitzvah but no formal Jewish education to speak of. Largely self-taught, he embraces Judaism.

Growing up, kids in school used to call him Hobbit, and he liked it. He began writing poetry, then went on to screenwriting and says that theater is what he most wants to do.

“One of my fondest memories,” he recalls, “is my dad reading all of ‘Lord of the Rings’ to me. My great-grandfather had read it to my dad. It felt like family stories being passed down.”

The ensemble cast of “Terezin” is led by Macedonian actress Natasa Petrovic and Canadian actress Sasha K. Gordon, who recently played in the film “Natasha.” The third friend is played by Morgan Ashley Reichberg, a seventh grader from the Upper West Side, who is making her Off-Broadway debut.

Previews begin June 13, with performances through July 2, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 416 W. 42nd St.

Tel Aviv Pride Festival in full swing

ISRAEL21c Staff

This year’s Pride Festival will feature the first large-scale pride parade in the world dedicated to celebrating the bisexual community.

Israeli and gay pride at the 2016 Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. Photo by Guy Yechiely

At noon on Friday, June 9, Tel Aviv’s annual Pride Parade will step off from the Tel Aviv Gay Community Center in Meir Park, with the theme of “Bisexual Visibility.”
Marchers and floats will proceed along Bograshov Street, turning north on Yarkon Street, west on Frishman and eventually south onto the beach promenade toward Charles Clore Park, where thousands are expected to turn out for the biggest sunset beach party in the Middle East.

Participants in Tel Aviv’s 2016 Pride Parade. Photo by Guy Yechiely

According to the municipality, this will be the first large-scale pride parade in the world dedicated to celebrating the bisexual community. Tel Aviv was dubbed “the world’s gayest city” by The Boston Globe and “the gay capital of the Middle East” by Out Magazine.
Last year’s Pride Festival attracted 200,000 people including some 30,000 tourists from around the world.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai at the 2016 Pride Parade. Photo by Guy Yechiely

The parade is part of a weeklong Pride Festival sponsored by the municipality from June 4 to 10. A Pride 2017 tourist information truck is parked this week at Hilton Beach — the LGBT community’s second home throughout the year.

Among many events scheduled throughout the city are the TLVFest-LGBT Film Festival , Tel Aviv Pride Market at the trendy new Rothschild/Allenby Market, an inaugural LGBT Photography Conference & Exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a Pride History Walking Tour, a Fashion & Pride Walking Tour, an Urban Culture & Graffiti Tour, a Levinsky Market Tasting Tour and nightly parties.

Let It B: Tel Aviv Pride Parade 2017

Let It B: Tel Aviv Pride Parade 2017