MARY BURKETT ART

I recently read a book about a group of young college students in Utrecht in the Netherlands who saved 400 Jewish children from death during the Holocaust. These students, when quite elderly, were asked why they acted as they did. Keep in mind that only one-tenth of one percent of the Dutch population was directly involved in rescue efforts, so these were true heroes. They identified the following: They were taught right from wrong from an early age. They were taught to recog

It happened this way… a most improbable series of events: The tiny newborn baby, blond-haired and blue-eyed, was hidden, bundled inside a fur coat, with jewelry and cash. A local woman, hired to sort belongings, found the baby, and longing for a child of her own, made the split-second decision to take her. The little girl, Lila she was named, grew up, loved, coddled, Hungarian. Years passed, and Lila grew into an accomplished young woman. She became a pediatric surgeon, marri

This is the story of 800 Romani children, who were gassed at Auschwitz on January 29, 1944. We don’t know their names or their families, but we do know how and why they arrived at this fateful day, and theirs is a tale worthy of consideration. The roundup of Gypsies had begun in Germany in 1937, supposedly for purposes of identification and research. These particular children had previously been detained in camps and children’s homes as subjects of genetic research by Dr. Rob

Be sure reads parts one and two of Luba's story: Read part one Read part two Bergen Belsen was liberated by the British on April 15, 1945, and although it was not an extermination camp, starvation, disease, and overwork took their toll. What the British troops found on that day were 60,000 half-dead prisoners and 13,000 corpses littering the ground. Imagine their utter shock when they searched the barracks and in one of them discovered 94 children being cared for by none othe

How did 46 little Dutch children come to be abandoned in the dark at Bergen Belsen one fateful night? It happened this way… In the spring of 1940, a flourishing diamond trade had existed in Amsterdam for hundreds of years. What a prize for the Nazi occupiers who planned to take over and become diamond traders themselves! There are some necessities, however, in such a trade. A source of diamonds is required, and at the time, that source was primarily South Africa. And that, of

They were once a normal family, Hersch and Luba and little 3-year-old Isaac, Russian Jews surviving the war years as best they could. And then came 1943, the year in which they were arrested and sent to Auschwitz. In a selection there, Isaac was torn, screaming and crying, from Luba’s arms and taken to the gas chamber, and Hersch was shot soon after. Why had she lived, Luba wondered? What now was the purpose of life? Her answers would be found the following year when she was

"To fight the unbeatable foe…" The Jews of Warsaw and surrounding areas were forced into a ghetto created in the fall of 1940. At its height, more than 400,000 Jewish people lived in the ghetto and were allotted 180 calories per person per day. (This while Germans in Warsaw were allotted 2,600 daily.) As a result, starvation was a leading cause of death before deportations ever began. There are countless individual stories of life in the Ghetto, and today we meet Anna Braude-

“Today, 24 February, is my birthday; I am 17 years old today. Here, in the city of Balta, Kozianshna Street, the house is strange to me. Without my father, without my brother – only my mother. My room has been reduced to just one corner But when its window is lit, The sunlight Doesn't reach us at all. The sun refuses to light our way And isn't prepared to wipe our tears The tears that have been streaming from our eyes for the past three years. Despite everything, we hope and

He was one of those people you would have seen only in newspapers and newsreels if you lived in the 1930s. His name was Bronislaw Czech, a young, good-looking, three-time Olympian, the kind of guy who flashed down mountains in exotic locations like St. Moritz and Lake Placid. The charmed life he had known ended abruptly when the Nazis invaded his Polish homeland. He spent that winter of 1939 skiing just as he had in years past, but this time not as an Olympian, but as a couri

Near the village of Ver-sur-Mer in France, one can find the British Normandy Memorial. Inscribed on it are 22,442 names of those who lost their lives under British command during the invasion of Normandy in June of 1944. Two of those names are of women: Dorothy Field and Mollie Evershed. Dorothy and Molly were serving with Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Auxiliary on the ship, SS Amsterdam. The Amsterdam had carried U.S. Rangers to Omaha Beach on D-Day and then converted t

Thank you everyone for your lovely well wishes yesterday! Last nights Anne Frank Awards gala was truly wonderful. I’ll share more later, but here is the introduction of Beloved by Dr. Ted Rosengarten, U.S. National Book Award winner: “As the artist, Mary looks these ill-starred children in the eye and rescues them from the oblivion the Nazis had prepared. Her weapons are pencil and paper, her hand, and her eye for what can and cannot be seen. The result is a style of drawin

She was a young woman from Montreal, raised in a big, boisterous Irish Catholic family. (Is there any other kind?) Early in life she felt called to serve her fellow man and so took her vows as a nun with the Order of the Sacred Heart. Her destiny awaited in Japan where she became a teacher in a girl’s school. Sister Regina loved her work there and devoted herself to her young charges. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, of course, everything changed. She and her fellow sisters