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From UN Exhibitions: "A Monument of Good Deeds: Dreams and Hopes of Children During the Holocaust," an interview with Guylain Sitbon on Moshe Flinker's diary

Moshe Flinker

Moshe Flinker

"I have begun studying Arabic… I have begun," says Moshe Flinker in his diary, "and truly desire to finish studying this language since a great many residents of Eretz Israel and their neighbors speak this language… is it not obvious, that first and foremost, we will have to live in peace with our brethren the Ishmaelites, since they, too, are descended from Abraham."

Moshe was born in The Hague to Mindel and Eliezer. After the Germans occupied Holland, Moshe was forced to leave school.

In 1942, as the deportations of Jews increased, the family fled to Brussels where they lived under forged papers. Moshe began his diary in Hebrew, describing his difficulties, fears and hopes. He wrote confidently that God would save him and his family and redeem the entire Jewish people. Moshe's vision of the future was to be a political leader in the future Jewish State. He began studying Arabic for this goal, to add to his knowledge of Dutch, Hebrew, Yiddish, French, English, German and classical Latin and Greek.

Maha Fayek spoke to Guylain Sitbon, who is currently translating Moshe’s diary into French.

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Holocaust teenager film goes global

A documentary film celebrating the life of the late Jewish prodigy, Petr Ginz, murdered during the Holocaust, will soon go global.

Using Petr’s art and writings, The Last Flight of Petr Ginz will help teach teenagers worldwide about how destructive hatred and prejudice are.

Nazism led to the extermination of 6 million Jews in concentration camps between 1993 and 1945.

More than a million and a half were children. The film highlights a novel Petr wrote at 12, an allegory about the Nazi party.

At 16, he died in a gas chamber in Aushwitz, the largest of the German concentration camps.

The film’s producer, Sandra Dickson spoke to Dianne Penn about his life and his legacy.

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Interview with holocaust survivor Nelly Toll and her family

Nelly Toll

Nelly Toll

Nelly was born in Lwów, Poland, to Rose and Zygmunt. After the Germans occupied Lwów in 1941, she was deported with her family to the ghetto. After Rose’s and Nelly’s attempt to escape in 1943 to Hungary failed, they managed to find a hiding place with a Christian family in Lwów.

Rose and Nelly hid in the house for 13 months, during which the mother encouraged Nelly to draw, write a diary and compose short stories. Nelly wrote The Lucky Incident and illustrated it with a series of paintings.

Nelly's illustrations combined fairy tale figures with pre-war memories in an ideal, enchanted world where children played freely, in contrast to her one-room prison. After liberation, they found out that Zygmunt had been murdered. Nelly and her mother immigrated to the USA in 1951.

“In those dark hours, behind the locked doors, on the other side of the world, my mother tried to ease my fear and loneliness. She became my girlfriend and my teacher.”

Fantasy: The story about the Lucky Incident deals with a little girl, kind of Cinderella, who had a wicked stepmother and she ran away… She found a palace with a nice princess. She was invited to stay in the princess’ home. She lived happy after that lucky incident for many years. That’s about all…

Reality: The furniture, piano, French doors and blue room were drawn from memory from our apartment in Lwow. We lived a comfortable life in the city. My father owned several apartment houses and savings [in the] Swiss bank He was a wholesale merchant. The blue dress was also “real” from my memory. Hope this will at least basis for this little story…

Producer: Maha Fayek

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Interview with Holocaust survivor Františka Quastler

Franti?ka Quastler

Františka Quastler

Františka was born in Bratislava, Slovakia to Olga and Mordechai. During the German occupation, the family survived under forged papers until they were discovered in 1944. Františka, her mother, and her aunt were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then to Ravensbruck, where Františka lied about her age in order to join the adult women as workers in the Siemens plant in the camp.

In the evenings, after returning from the plant, the women prisoners used to gather together to eat their bread rations as they reminisced about splendid meals they had prepared at home. Every evening the women would exchange recipes as a way of fleeing into an imaginary world, Františka kept a diary on paper she would steal from the Siemens factory, so she could record the recipes with a pencil she found and concealed with the diary inside her mattress.

Františka and her mother survived the war after being assigned to the group of women transferred to Sweden by Count Folke Bernadotte. When the war was over, they found that Mordechai was still alive. The three returned to Bratislava, and in 1950 immigrated to Israel.

Producer: Maha Fayek

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