MARY BURKETT ART

It’s difficult for us to imagine the Europe that existed in 1939. The Spanish civil war had begun in 1936 and on January 26, 1939, Franco’s troops took Barcelona. In the three weeks that followed 475,000 people fled across the border into France! All these people had to be housed somewhere, so dozens of camps and former military bases became internment camps. One of these was Camp Joffre in Rivesaltes. The camp could hold 8,000, but was quickly overflowing. You may note that

Once upon a time in Iran… It was over 100 degrees that August day in 1942 when the first of what would eventually be 1,000 kids arrived in Tehran. They were Jewish kids, mostly Polish, escaping Nazi persecution and hopefully on their way to a new and peaceful life. What they found on arrival was paradise: mown lawns, colorful flowerbeds, shops full of everything one could want, even chocolate! There were no bombed out buildings, no bread lines, no persecution. In fact, just t

It was a time in Hungary when children worked as servants for wealthy families. Such was the case for 13-year-old Erzsebet (Elizabeth), who began working as a caretaker for Zsuzsanna and Ivan Abonyi in 1931. She could never have imagined how the next 13 years of her young life would unfold. The year of 1944 found Erzsebet and the Abonyis in Budapest as the Nazis invaded their homeland. Being Jewish, the family members were required to wear the yellow star and their house was

In the fall of 1941, Julia McWilliams was 29 years old, bright, well-educated, and like many young women of her generation working as a secretary. She had no particular interests and wrote of herself, "I am sadly an ordinary person… with talents I do not use." Her seemingly mundane typing skills, however, would lead her down quite an unexpected path. With almost everyone expecting that the U.S. would enter the war in Europe, she decided to volunteer with the Pasadena Chapter

The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were meant to showcase Aryan superiority to the world, but the German planners had not anticipated one Jesse Owens, a young African American man from Oakville, Alabama. He brilliantly won four gold medals in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter, 4 X 100-meter relay, and the long jump. Jesse’s closest competitor in the long jump was Luz Long, a young German, who would win the silver medal. He was the first to congratulate Jesse and walked around the st

Gino Bartali was a two-time Tour de France winner in 1938 and 1948 – quite an amazing feat to win cycling’s greatest prize with a ten-year gap in between, but that was not to be his greatest accomplishment. You see, Germany occupied Gino’s native Italy in 1943. His fame as a Tour winner meant the Nazis allowed him to cycle freely through the countryside wearing his familiar Italian racing jersey. He conceived a plan to use his training regimen to aid the Underground as he cyc

1928 was a banner year for women’s gymnastics. You see it was the first time that female gymnasts were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games. Gymnastics was very popular in Holland, the host country that year, and tryouts were held for the brand-new national team. Lea Nordheim was one of those chosen for the 10-member team, which included coaches and alternates. Her smiling face is second from the left on the front row in the team’s photo. Olympic glory awaited these young

There were 30 Olympians killed in the Holocaust – amazing athletes who, in another life, had reached the pinnacle of their sports. Here is the story of just one… He was one of those people found only in newspapers and newsreels in the 1930s. Bronislaw Czech was young, good-looking, a three-time Olympian, the kind of guy who flashed down mountains in exotic locations like St. Moritz and Lake Placid and Garmisch. That all ended when the Nazis invaded his homeland of Poland in S

The Salomons were bakers in Cologne, Germany, descended from five generations of a proud German family. Young Arthur Salomon was a talented swimmer, one of Germany’s best, a contemporary of Johnny Weissmuller, who would go on to fame as Tarzan. But Arthur’s dreams of gold in the Berlin Olympics evaporated when Jews were banned from competition. Two years later in 1938, Arthur was a young husband and father, strolling along the banks of the river on an early fall evening. From

Someone wrote to me recently saying we have no idea how we would react in terrible circumstances like the Holocaust. That is entirely true, of course. We are, however, influenced by what we see and hear and read about the behavior of others. That’s the reason I write stories of bravery and heroism. I tuck them away somewhere in my own heart and draw on them in the circumstances of my own life. I’ve done it all my life, and now, there is a wellspring of hope and inspiration in

It was July 15, 1942, a hot day during a hot week in Paris. Theo Larue found out that a roundup of Jews was scheduled for the next day. He immediately alerted the eight Jewish families in his building and set to work getting false papers for his neighbors, the Lictensztajns. Theo’s information was correct. The following day, the French police, on orders of the Nazi occupiers, rounded up 7,000 Jews, 4,000 of whom were children, and held them in an indoor bicycle stadium, the V

Israel Baline was only five, a little guy living in Tyumen, a village in Siberia. An anti-Jewish mob attacked the town, and the Baline family fled their ruined home and eventually made the long, arduous journey to New York’s Lower East Side. Just three years later, when he was eight, little Israel’s father died, and he went to work. The years marched on, and "Izzy", as he was known, taught himself to play the piano and found he had a knack for songwriting. As he grew to manho