Solly ganor remembrance quotes

Sadam Hussein who threatened to burn down Israel was hanged without fulfilling his wish. The main reason why he hated Israel was the fact that in we thwarted his plans to build an atomic bomb. A squadron of Israeli fighter-bombers took care of that threat. Secretary of State Mr. James A Baker was furious solly ganor remembrance quotes Israel and threatened us with sanctions.

However, in during the first Iraqi war president Bush, the father, was very grateful for what we had done ten years earlier. It is doubtful that the coalition forces would have dared to attack Sadam Hussein if he possessed nuclear weapons. Israel prevented such a catastrophe. However, with Sadam gone we are faced with another threat, Iran, whose leaders proclaim day and night that they will wipe Israel off the map.

The majority of Holocaust survivors and their descendents live in Israel and the new threat evokes in us old nightmares of Dachau and Auschwitz, Babi Yar and Ponar. Are we going to face this new threat once again alone with the whole world standing silently by as it did during the last Holocaust? How serious are the threats coming from Iran?

Considering that the Islamic death cult is the prevailing philosophy among the Islamic terrorists, it is very serious. It becomes even more serious when you see on Iranian television thousands of young people signing up to become suicide bombers for Allah, not to mention the same thing happening in dozens of other Islamic countries. Would they use their nuclear weapons against Israel once developed?

We think that it is more than likely. However, there is a small difference between the last Holocaust and the looming one ahead. The chief of the Israeli air force is the son of Holocaust survivors. The only Israeli cosmonaut, IIlan Ramon, who unfortunately perished in the Columbia space shuttle crash, was one of the pilots who bombed and destroyed the Iraqi atomic bomb effort in He too was a son of Holocaust survivors.

There are many more high-ranking officers in the Israeli army and air force that are children of Holocaust survivors and are very sensitive to Holocaust issues. I am sure that there are those in Israel who are working on the problem right now, and if necessary, will deal with the Iranians the way Iraqis were dealt with in Those who doubt do not understand what the Holocaust means to us survivors, our children, grand children, and all of Israel.

I suggest that not only the Iranians should take notice, but Western countries as well. If they think that Israel will sit quietly and allow it to be wiped off the map they should better think twice. I remember a conversation I had with two young Germans in Frankfurt a few years ago. After the lecture the two young Germans explained to me why they thought that Israel was the most dangerous country in the world.

Naturally, I was outraged.

Solly ganor remembrance quotes: He gently touched me on the

Their argument was as follows:. I was getting a really annoyed with them and answered sharply:. If Europe is effected by that, too bad. Your continent is soaked with Jewish blood anyway. Perhaps it could do with some cleansing. It had been snowing the whole night and the surrounding fields were covered with snow. Clarence and his three buddies were driving in a signal command car, chasing after the retreating German army when they noticed some clumps in the snow.

Upon closer inspection they realized that those were human beings lying there. I was one of the clumps they saw. On May 2, I was among a group of prisoners on a forced death march from Dachau to the Tyrol Mountains. We were, frozen and starving, at the end of our endurance.

Solly ganor remembrance quotes: "No man has a good

At night we dropped on the frozen ground and soon were covered by a blanket of snow. Some of us froze to death, but a few like myself somehow survived. The American Army was very near when the SS guards got their orders to shoot us. Hearing the Americans approach, they began shooting into the snow mounds and then fled in panic. I was on the verge of death when Clarence lifted me up from the snow.

At first I thought that the Germans came to finish us off and I closed my eyes waiting for the bullet to end my suffering. Then I heard him speak English to me. That smile will follow me till the end of my life. Clarence then wrapped me in a blanket and gave me something to eat. His quick action brought me back to life. Fifty years later, Clarence Matsomura found me again, this time in Jerusalem.

It was the emotional catharsis of that meeting that brought about the profound change in me. It was time to confront the past. In a way, it was like my second liberation. The sixteen-year-old boy whom I had buried in my subconscious after my liberation emerged into the light. My life hasn't been the same ever since. I started on the long road to remembrance.

Solly ganor remembrance quotes: Interview Summary: Solly Ganor discusses

Solly Ganor. Forty-seven years after he was found half-dead in the snow, following a death march from Dachau, Solly Ganor again came face to face with his rescuer Clarence Matsumura at a reunion of Holocaust survivors and their American liberators. That meeting proved a catharsis, enabling Ganor to confront for the first time the catalogue of horrors he experienced during the Second World War.

Beginning in prewar Lithuania, Light One Candle tells of the ominous changes that took place once Hitler came to power inof Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who wrote thousands of exit visas for Jews fleeing the Nazi onslaught, of the brutal conditions in the Kaunas ghetto where Ganor spent most of the war, and of Stutthoff and Dachau, the concentration camps he was shuttled to and from in the last, desperate days of the war.

In summer,the Soviets formally annexed Lithuania. The Jews were desperate to get exit visas to leave the country, and in July Sugihara was awakened by a crowd of hundreds of Jewish refugees standing outside the consulate. Sugihara wired Japan three times asking for permission to issue transit visas for the Jews.

Solly ganor remembrance quotes: We were traumatized to

A transit visa would allow the Jews to travel through Japan on their way somewhere else. Three times he was told not to issue the visas unless they had also visas to go to another country. Chiune Sugihara issued some 4, transit visas. Image supplied to exhibition by the Bluman family. I know I should follow my conscience. From July 31 to September 4, Sugihara began writing visas by hand at a rate of per day.

He even made arrangements for the Soviets to transport them via the Trans-Siberian Railroad albeit at five times the normal price. The refugees began to arrive by the thousands begging for visas. When some began to scale the walls of the consulate, Sugihara came out and promised them he would not abandon them. When he was forced to leave Kaunas before the consulate was closed, Sugihara spent the entire night before writing visas.

Eyewitnesses said that he continued to write them on the train, tossing them out of the windows as he completed them. In the end, he simply signed and sealed blank visas to be filled in later. I cannot write any more. I wish you the best. No one knows exactly how many visas Sugihara wrote. Not all were used; some people waited until it was too late to leave.

Others were for heads of households, so several people would travel under a single visa. Today, somewhere between 40, and 80, people are descendants of the Jews saved by Sugihara.