Ann Levy,The Final Story

Little hut black tar paper no lights. They moved in.
And the owner of the lumber yard suspected they were Jewish but looked the other way.
He definitely did. As they had false papers. Her parents never changed their name. The last name was Skoreki. Which was a very Polish name. Yet the name was known in lumber business. Her father's family was known for lumber, and somebody evidently questioned him. Why do you have this man Skoreki? He did. He looked the other way. Not till after the war did her father know that this man knew.
Unexplainable. Makes you think why us? Why not somebody else? You just can't explain some of these things.


Her parents saved her but in a sense she and Lila saved them, because they gave them a reason to continue struggling. But they had a reason through all this horrible things time they went. All the decisions. They were just one step ahead of them getting caught. It's true. They had an incentive. They had a reason to go on. Not give up.

So finally the war comes to an end. The Soviet Army arrives. The Germans flee to the west. And her mother goes to register after the war. Well, she went back to Lodz to see. First of all to register but when registered people would come in and see who survived, put your name on list and people everyday come by and check the list. When she went to register, she said, I had a husband and two children. They looked at her like she was mad. The Germans killed million half children. There were no children.

Her sister and her were an oddity. She actually had to bring them to office and prove that we were her children. Can imagine what that felt like? They survived. They could be free and admit. And people didn't believe. After the war she lived a number of years in a German village, ironically, and then in 1949 she came to New Orleans. In Poland she had been persecuted because of religion, and in New Orleans she could ride in the front of the bus because of her white skin.

She never thought of herself as a superior class and yet here she was, they called themselves New Americans. She worked at this time and was riding buses back and forth and the little plaque that said colored only, people would get on the bus much older and she was brought up to give elders your seat. You're the young one. Someone older comes in, and you're supposed to be polite. She couldn't do it. It was impossibly hard. She could sit anywhere. But as long as that sign was there, no matter how many empty seats were behind her, the blacks could not sit there.


Question, You had developed a sensitivity to people that those born here perhaps did not have. I wonder, coming from a world that was destroyed, what message you have for people here in this world which often seems to be on the verge racial destruction?
AL It really hurts, and my only contribution is, knowing what it feels like to be persecuted for being Jewish, the same thing goes for black, to teach the younger people, to teach in schools, what tolerance is all about. You have to embrace, and be willing to listen to the other side. I mean, we're all the same. And it's a matter of teaching the younger people to be tolerant. Just because you believe in a different God, just because your skin is black or white, if we could ever, ever come to the point that we would judge a person who they are, rather than look, or what God they believe in.
- END -

Old Horrors, Why Are We Still At It?

I started this blog because the atrocities that we do to each other are so horrifying, yet with time the images and stories grow dim in our minds. Or we were not born, and think they are just stories in a History lesson. I am posting these pictures and they are graphic, not to scare you or give you something to point at and say " oh how awful". I am posting these because they are what war is. Death and disfigurement, lives destroyed, because essentially two governments disagree on something that in all reality should not be worth innocent lives. People who are no different than us, in that they have their beliefs and customs who just happen to be different than ours. Really, who are we as humans in this world to judge? Can we judge because we don't have the same religious beliefs as another Nation? Who are they to judge us? These are my opinions and I am sure some may disagree. After all war has gone on for centuries. But does that make it right?

These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008.

Ann's Story Part III

Warsaw Ghetto Line

As a child during the war she never thought of God. In her later years now she looks at it as, her mother talked to God all the time, and she really believed in talking to God and she believed that that's what brought her through, what helped her survive and deal with. Now at her age what she looks at was a miracle. Things did happen for a reason. And the only way you could explain it was God was watching over them.
And then the final liquidation of the ghetto commences and in January 1943, her father through his connections, namely a Polish non-Jewish military officer, arranges for them all to be taken out of the ghetto hidden in a garbage truck. And suddenly she’s on the Aryan side of the ghetto, outside ghetto. And he arranged to find lodging with a Polish Christian family.

This mother and daughter must have been in their twenties took them in. They didn't have a very large place. But there was enough room for them to move in. They made an excuse to their neighbors that family was from the countryside. That would explain why they were there. The problem was they were to live as Catholic Christians . Live like the two women. Ann had an olive complexion. She had dark curly hair. Her Sister was fair. Still is. Lighter hair. She looked very Polish. Ann looked Jewish. So there was a problem, if people would notice her she would give everyone away. The Poles would be killed as they would.

That was the Nazi penalty. Giving shelter to a Jew invited death for you and your family.
That was the ultimate crime that you could commit. So her mother would take her sister out, her father found a job and he went to work. Mother take sister and make believe. They did go to church and go shopping. With her, she stayed inside. If company came, she would have to hide in a single door armoire and sit in there until company left.

They tried to even dye her hair. They took some old bark off tree. Boiled it real hot, and tried to dye her hair. Well, it didn't work. Her mother was feeling sorry for her. Not getting fresh air, not getting out. Night when it was dark. She would put a babushka on her head. She would put her on the balcony. She did this a few nights. One day the woman across the street noticed that she was sitting out there only at night.
She went to the janitor. Told him. She said they must be hiding Jews, and that unless they reported them, she would. And of course her father came from work and heard the news. Panic set in. They would all be killed, Poles as well. But because of his golden hands' and such a good worker. He went to his boss who owned a lumber yard and explained to him that they no longer stay in apartment because other family members were coming. And would he allow him to put us in lumber yard. Build a shed that was in the back. He also would be able to be a watchman. And this what he did. The boss did let them move in.

Early Days Of A Monster

Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler review SS troops during Reich Party Day ceremonies.




German men and youth pose beneath an anti-Jewish banner that reads, "Help liberate Germany from Jewish capital. Don't buy at Jewish stores."
Photo credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives



One way the Nazis cleansed the country of "un-German" thoughts was through censorship. A "brown shirt" (member of the SA) throws some more fuel--"un-German" books-- into a roaring fire on the Opernplatz in Berlin. May 10, 1933.
Photo credit: USHMM Photo Archives

Ghetto walls
Photo credit: Meczenstwo Walka, Zaglada Zydów Polsce 1939-1945. Poland. No. 75.
Deportation in Warsaw
Photo credit: Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives.