“Do you ever pinch yourself and wonder how you got here?”

That’s the question “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon asked American conductor Gilbert Levine in 2001.

“Every day,” Levine replied. “Every single day.”

At the time, Levine had just been bestowed with a Vatican knighthood by Pope John Paul II. It was the first time a musician had been knighted by a pope since Mozart. Aired in 2001 on “60 Minutes,” this is the story of how an unlikely friendship between a pope and a “nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn” helped changed relations between Jews and Christians forever.

And if that’s not enough, there’s also a pope joke in this piece– as told by the Pope himself. Here at “60 Minutes Overtime,” we’ve decided to use the holiday season as an excuse to post this wonderful old piece online. This is one story that shouldn’t be buried in the CBS archives.

Tuesday, 07 February 2012

TORONTO – Irving Roth was a starving 15-year-old imprisoned at Buchenwald when American Army Combat Engineer Frederick (Rick) Goss Carrier literally blew the locks off the concentration camp’s gate. Roth doesn’t know if he met Carrier on April 11, 1945, the day the camp was liberated by the Americans, but it was “an emotional

” Roth told the Jewish Tribune in a telephone interview. “Without him, if they had tarried another two or three weeks, I may not be alive.”ly charged moment” when the two men shook hands recently at an event hosted by the March of the Living.

Carrier was an assault reconnaissance combat engineer attached to General Patton’s Third Army during World War II. He was following the advancing American infantry in the German city of Weimar on April 10, 1945, tasked with finding and securing engineering equipment, vehicles such as trucks and cement mixers, and road- and bridge-building supplies left behind by the Nazis. He had to find the materials, map them and get the information to his superiors.

Churches were always a good place to go for information, Carrier had learned, so when he spotted the spire of a cathedral, he “drove over the rubble to find that church,” he told the Tribune. People at the church told him about a stone quarry and lumber mill at the site of a prison camp nearby and offered to take him there.

One of them told Carrier that Russian prisoners had overpowered camp guards following the evacuation, just a few weeks earlier, of thousands of Jewish prisoners who were taken on a forced death march to Auschwitz.

Prisoners who were left behind were deemed too sick to move and many had already died of typhus, he was told.

Nothing they told him could have prepared Carrier for what he witnessed when they arrived at Buchenwald. It was his 20th birthday.

“I left my teenaged years and became a man that day,” said Carrier. “The barbed wire fences were covered by [living] skeletons: they were so starved they looked like zombies. They were staring through the barbed wire.”

Carrier and his guides heard gunfire nearby and saw prisoners trying to squeeze through a small gap at the bottom of the fence. Carrier acted instinctively. “I turned, grabbed my wire cutters and cut an oval out of the barbed wire fence, and the people started coming through.” Their striped prison uniforms were torn and some of the pri
The danger of contracting typhus from the sick prisoners or of being caught in the gunfire between the Russians and Nazis was too great, so Carrier and his companions retreated to his jeep and returned to the town. He radioed his commanding officer and was told they would send troops, including medics, the next day to take over the camp.soners’ arms were covered with open sores. “Some were on their hands and knees and groaning.”

Carrier spent part of the night at the church in Weimer, then returned to Buchenwald and took refuge high in a guard tower at the edge of the camp where he waited until morning, “watching for dawn.”

He met the US armoured guard at the gate. He wrapped explosives around the heavy padlock and chain, ignited it, and opened the gate. More horrible discoveries awaited them inside the campgrounds. Carrier had served under Patton on D-Day and “was used to seeing corpses lying around but never people who had been tormented and starved to death. The look in their eyes! When I first saw it I upchucked; I couldn’t handle it.”

Thanks to Carrier’s discovery and actions, Buchenwald was liberated by the Americans the day after his 20th birthday.

“The war was fought for a purpose and we achieved that purpose: we defeated the Nazis.”

This year, Carrier will be one of a delegation of from 80 to 100 WWII liberators who will join the 25th annual March of the Living, to walk and bear witness together with about 100 Holocaust survivors. “I’m 87 years old and I’m only too happy to be a part of this whole mission,” said Carrier.
Roth, now 82, has been on the march several times and will participate again this year. He gives his survivor testimony before tens of thousands of people each year through programs offered by March of the Living, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and other organizations. He said it is important for him personally as a survivor, and for young people who are learning about the Holocaust, to hear the “validating” testimony of liberators.

“In a sense, I have another corroborating eyewitness to what I’m saying, someone who saw it from the outside in,” said Roth. “You have two people: one was on the inside and one was on the outside.”

More than 150,000 young people have taken part in the March of the Living over the past 25 years, according to Eli Rubinstein, education director for the International March of the Living and director of March of the Living Canada. This number includes many non-Jewish people from diverse backgrounds. Of the 12,000 expected to participate this year, about 30 per cent will be non-Jewish. There is a deepening sense of urgency to the march because “this is really the last generation to learn directly about the Holocaust from those who went through it.”

High school students from around the world will spend a week in Poland, where they will meet Polish students and righteous Polish gentiles. On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, they will march from the German Nazi death camps of Auschwitz to Birkenau in memory of all victims of the Holocaust. Their stay in Poland will be followed by a week in Israel, where they will mark Yom Ha’aztmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, by walking through Jerusalem.

“They are taking a journey that many people who perished in the Holocaust would have loved to take,” said Rubinstein. “We are taking the steps for them.”

Their visit to the Jewish homeland “is such an important part of our trip. We go from the tragedy of our past, which is the Shoah, to the hope of our future, which is Israel.”

Dr. David Machlis, vice-chairman, March of the Living, said the organization is gathering archival material and testimonies from liberators and will create a documentary from footage they will film during this year’s trip.

“It is imperative to establish this incontrovertible and everlasting testament to the truth,” said Machlis.

Rubinstein said they are actively seeking participants from among Canadian veterans of WWII “who took part in any part of the campaign in Europe. We’d be very honoured if they would come with us. Besides the survivors, there are no greater heroes than those who liberated Europe from Nazi tyranny. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude and we are hoping to get as many as possible to come on the trip so we can say thank you.”

For more information, or to donate to the “Adopt-A-Liberator” program, visit www.motl.org.
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 February 2012 )

http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/index2.php?option=com_content&task=emailform&id=5500&itemid=53

“On the March, standing in Auschwitz and Birkenau, hearing survivors speak
while standing in their old barracks, the words, ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ gained a
whole new meaning.” Ron Prosor, Israel Ambassador to the UN
(Reflecting on the lasting imprint that the March of the Living left on him)

“ The March of Living is an expression of always remember and never
forget. Those who do not remember the past are destined to repeat it.”

Click here for full feature 
Shlomo Grofman, Vice Chairman , March of the Living International

“We have a special obligation to remind [the children], to educate them, to teach them.
And the best teacher is experience, is having them walk that walk, visit the camps, and
stand in Auschwitz-Birkenau… There is nothing that can compare with [the March of
the Living], no lecture, no movie, that gives them that feeling, that instruction. You can
make all the difference by making it possible for young people to participate [in the
March of the Living]. I think this is the obligation of this generation, our obligation to
our grandparents and our grandchildren…” Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice
Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations

Click here for full feature 

Visit our page on 1000memories.com - http://1000memories.com/march-of-the-living

We’re All Human president and chief founder Joseph Rothstein, second from left, with vice-presidents, from left, Chris Phillips, Myles Resnick and Dylan Johnston

TORONTO — Joseph Rothstein, a Grade 12 student at York Mills Collegiate Institute, credits his participation in last April’s March of the Living for motivating him to start a group called “We’re All Human.”

“The entire message of the trip was to do something afterward,” said Rothstein, 17, the chief founder and president of the group.

He said it was “very tough” visiting concentration camps and mass graves in Poland before he and fellow participants headed to Israel to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. “I learned from that.”

On his return home, Rothstein, who has worked at Camp Walden and is a baseball umpire for 10-to-15-year-olds, asked himself what he could do to help his community “and stop this from happening again.”

He decided to start We’re All Human to educate young teens about racism and the importance of “embracing our differences.

“We talk about how racism has affected us in the past 100 years – we give examples of different genocides and atrocities, such as the holocaust in Rwanda and Darfur.”

As well, a PowerPoint presentation details how genocides start. “There’s a joke or a racist comment, and it escalates from there. We explain how they can stop it.

“We really try to get [students] to get involved and try to inspire them like I was inspired.”

His friends and classmates Miles Resnick, Chris Phillips and Dylan Johnston work with him, and all of them take part in presentations. As well, they post frequently on the group’s Facebook page.

Recently, they spoke to 170 Grade 9 students at Windfields Junior High School.

Since the group’s initial presentation at York Mills, We’re All Human has made presentations to a dozen classes at three schools.

Rothstein, who wants to study commerce in university next year, would like to continue his involvement with We’re All Human after he graduates from high school.

“Right now, I’m focusing on promoting this while I’m still in Toronto. I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen to it next year. It’s not just going to dissolve.”

For more information, go to facebook.com/wereallhuman.

Out Of The Depths: The Story Of A Child Of  Buchenwald Who Returned Home At Last

In his recent book, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau tells the miraculous story of his rescue from the Holocaust as a young child, and his subsequent aliyah to the land of Israel. Arriving as an eight-year-old orphan refugee in Palestine in 1945, without any parents, and virtually no formal schooling, Rabbi Lau eventually attains the position of Chief Rabbi of Israel.

Through his eyes and his own moving story, we also learn about the major events that shaped Israel since the founding of the state in 1948.

The March of the Living figures prominently in the book. As one of Israel’s youngest Holocaust survivors and most outspoken Orthodox Zionist leaders, Rabbi Lau is convinced of the value of the March of the Living with regard to strengthening one’s commitment to Zionism and Jewish identity.

In his words, “From my experience and observation, the Jews who come from other countries around the world to participate in the March of the Living return from it with a deeper commitment to Israel, while the Israelis go home more conscious of their Jewish identity.”

To Order Book, Click Here

To read excerpts from the book about the March of the Living and other parts of his heroic story, see below:

Pages 356 to 360 – Rabbi Lau discusses his participation in the March of the Living and the impact the program continues to have on young people in Israel and around the world. 

In 1988, Abraham Hirschson of the General Federation of Labor (Histadrut) and Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, a former student of mine from moshav Chemed, asked me to lead the first March of the Living. participants in the march walk the 1..8 miles (three kilometers) from Auschwitz to Birkenau,and then stand near the bombed-out barracks, where a memorial ceremony for the Holocaust martyrs is held. The goal is to demonstrate to ourselves and the entire world what is written in “Zog Nit Keynmol,”or the partisans’ anthem : ” Beneathe our tread the earth shall tremble we are here ! ” This is not a declaration of a desire to live in Poland but rather a statement to emphasize our Jewish stubbornness, perseverance and power of survival in that very location. Precisely in that place, we must demonstrate that Am Yisrael Chai -the Jewish nation lives – and it has a future.

Of course, I agreed to Hirschon’s request. Seven hundred youngsters from Israel and the Diaspora participated,along with a delegation of adults. Among those representing Israel were minister of education and culture Yizchak Navon and
Knesset members who were also Holocaust survivors. Writer Elie Wiesel came from New York, together with the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu. We planned to hold the memorial ceremony in the crematorium area, accompanied by speeches and torch-lighting. Cantor Benjamin Muller of Antwerp, who has a remarkable voice would conduct the ceremony and chant El Maleh Rachamim, the memorial prayer. But at the last minute, I felt we needed something else. Someone suggested that we add a musical piece, and all agreed, but we had no idea who would be available to play at such short notice.

A feverish search soon bore fruit. The night before the ceremony, someone brought to my room a Warsaw youth of about fifteen, a talented violinist. Some suggested he might be of Jewish ancestry. We asked him to play something appropriate for Jews. He put his bow to the strings, but none of the melodies he played was
appropriate.

We had almost given up hope when I asked him if that was all he knew how to play. The boy replied that at that very moment he remembered one other tune he had heard as a child from his grandmother, who used to sing it softly to him. When the notes of the violin again filled the room, we all shook with emotion : it was the tune to the well-known Yiddish song “Es Brent ” (“Brothers, Our Town Is Burning”). The sound of the Polish youth’s violin pierced our hearts. The four people in the room sa agape. Slowly, we joined in, singing the words in Yiddish : Es brent ! Briderlekh, Es brent !

But the boy knew not one word of the song, only the melody. After hearing his playing we realized that his soul must have a Jewish spark. He told us that his grandmother was Jewish. He added that as a child in Communist Poland, he had heard her singing this melody very quietly, in secret, and he had remembered it. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I asked him to play this melody the next day, on the scorched earth of Birkenau. In my mind’s eye , I could see the hundreds of youth marching up with their backpacks on their backs, looking as if they were on a school trip. But when the boy would stand up to play this familiar melody, he would create the right mood and focus their attention. And this is indeed what happened : at the sound of his violin, there was no need for the usual shouts into the microphone of : “Quiet, quiet.”

Seven hundred youth from all over the world, accompanied by adults, began their tour of the Auschwitz museum. This was the first time in their lives they had seen the suitcases, hair, and prayer shawls that had belonged to the living human beings who were butchered on that soil. Dr. Alvin Schiff, director of the New York Board of  Jewish Education, blew the shofar under the sign reading ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work brings freedom), and then the march began.

Arms linked, without a word, the youngsters and adults marched, wearing sky-blue jackets with white Stars of David on their backs, down the train tracks that had led the trains to Auschwitz. From there we continued to the crematorium of Birkenau, carrying eighteen Israeli flags the whole way. I had objected to the idea that each delegation should march with its own flag. I thought it more appropriate for all of us to walk in unison behind the Israeli flag ; it gave a place like Auschwitz a special meaning from our unique perspective. I sensed that we came to this place to demonstrate that the Jewish nation has its own flag -blue and white, like the colors of the tallis, with a Magen David (Star of David) in the center-and there is no other. The delegation accepted my suggestion.

I marched at the head of the line until we reached the ramp across from the place where the accursed Josef Mengele had carried out his selections. All that remained there was a single hut. Someone had affixed to it a photograph of Jewish prisoners standing in line in front of Mengele, his thumb outstretched toward them. That thumb had determined the human fates, signaling who would go to the right and who to the left, who to life and who to death. Then the sound of the violin pierced the air, and all fell silent. Softly, the marchers joined in, singing the words to the song along with the melody of the violin :

It is burning, brothers, it is burning.
Our poor little town, a pity, burns !
Furious winds blow,
Breaking, burning, and scattering,
And you stand there
With folded arms.
Oh, you stand and look
While our town burns.

The voice of the violin shook the souls of all those who were present. The violinist, who did not even know the words of the song he was playing, the one his Jewish grandmother had sung to him in childhood, was wearing a blue kippah on top of his mane of blond hair. From the top of the ramp, I watched the line as it marched along the barbed wire fence .

All together, we numbered about a thousand people, all wearing blue and white youngsters, adults, and elderly Holocaust survivors, including Yechiel Reichman, of Montevideo, a witness at the Demjanjuk trial, and Chaim Basok, a partisan and fighter in the Vilna ghetto.

In one row,I saw a young man wrapped in his tallis, and as he came closer, I saw that it was yellowed with age. I signaled for him to approach, and asked for his name and hometown. “I’m Mendle Kaplan,from Capetown, South Africa,” he answered. Later he became chairman of the World Jewish Congress. I asked why he had wrapped himself in that tallis. “My father was born in Lithuania,” he replied,”not far from here. My father left me with nothing but this tallis and his tefillin.

He told me, ‘No matter where you go, don’t forget that you are a Jew.’ This is not the proper time of day to lay teffilin, but I feel an obligation to my father to wrap myself in his tallis in this awful place. I have the feeling that my father is proud, that he knows that with this tallis, I am demonstrating the continuity of Jewish existence.

We arrived in Auschwitz on Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), 27 Nisan 5748 (April 14, 1988). Snow was falling. Just as we heard the blast of the shofar at the entrance gate, the snow stopped falling and the sun peeked out.
When Benjamin Muller began the ceremony by chanting El Maleh Rachamim, the snow began to fall once more. Sunshine and snow mingled together, as though the sky were weeping along with us. I went up to the microphone and read from
Psalms : I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the lord. God has chastised me, but He has not delivered me to death… For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before
the Lord in the land of the living.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed some eleventh grade girls taking head coverings and scarves out of their backpacks and covering their heads. They sensed that this was a prayer and thought they were doing the right thing by donning a head covering. Since they were not yet married, this obligation did not apply to them, but I appreciated the emotional power of their spontaneous gesture.

Elie Wiesel led the afternoon service in the Vizhnitz style, as he had learned growing up in Sighet (present-day Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania). We lit six torches in memory of the victims and ended the ceremony by singing the traditional Ani Ma’amin (“I believe in the coming of the Messiah”) prayer and “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national Anthem.

Since then, I have participated and led several Marches of the Living. I always speak about the place where we stand as the Jewish people’s largest cemetery. I remind the youth that the duration of the March of the Living continues through Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and its Independence Day. When we return to Jerusalem, I tell them to kiss the ground. Those who go on to Israel from Poland no longer have any doubt in their minds about our right to our own homeland. As we sing in Lecha Dodi, Arise, Leave from then midst of the turmoil / Long enough have you sat in the valley of tears. From my experience and observation, the Jews who come from other countries around the world to participate in the March of the Living return from it with a deeper commitment to Israel, while the Israelis go home more conscious of their Jewish identity.

Pages 71-72 describe Rabbis Lau’s famous experience with an American solider shortly after his liberation.

After the liberation of the camp, I stayed in Buchenwald for a while. Buchenwald was in the suburbs of the city of Weimar, the home of Goethe and Schiller. Ironically, the concentration camp was just a ten minute walk from the German national theater, a bastion of German culture. After the liberation, General Patton decided to invite the residents of Weimar to the camp insisting that they view the horrors with their own eyes.

I was wandering around the camp, free and fearless, when I saw the Weimar residents, mostly women and elderly men. Suddenly, a command car stopped suddenly next to me, and a giant American soldier lifted me . Gripping my heels in one hand and my shoulder with the other, he raised me high in the air and shouted in German to the Weimar residents :
“Do you see this little boy ? This is who you have been fighting for the past six years. Because of him you started a world war. He is the enemy of national Socialism, the Nazis’ archenemy. A little Polish boy ! You murdered his father and mother, and you almost murdered him as well ! You followed the Fuhrer- for this? You followed him in blind faith – for this?! ”

The women sobbed, but I was filled with pride. The American soldier who lifted me up made his passionate exhortation to the Germans, whom I hated with all my soul. He spoke on behalf of me, my parents, and, indeed, the entire Jewish people.

Sunday December 11, 2011
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Congregation Habonim,
5 Glen Park Avenue (one block north of Bathurst & Glencairn)
Admission: $10.00
Everyone welcome.
Limited seating

The Heart of Auschwitz is a book made in the shape of a heart by Auschwitz inmates. It was presented on December 12, 1944 to celebrate the 20th birthday of fellow Auschwitz prisoner Fania Feiner, at a time when the women were unsure they would celebrate any birthdays ever again. The book contains the wishes of its 20 authors who risked their lives to present this gift. In the heart of evil, these women committed a crime of humanity. Through a remarkable journey around the world to fi nd the authors, the fi lmmaker brings the women’s beautiful gesture back to life.

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