American Democracy at risk ....MSM, BLM, CRT, ...

Since Biden took office, I feel like we are living in a Communist dictatorship. 

Instead of unity, Biden labeled Trump fans deplorables, white supremacists and targeted them for harsh punishment. Trump fans who attended the 1/6 protest at the Capital, many who were ushered in by capital police, were apprehended for trespassing and locked up in jail cells with bail revoked.

According to Tucker Carlson, westernjournal.com/tucker-drops-fbi-bombshell-jan-6-organizers-almost-certainly-working-fbi   FBI operatives were instigators of 1/6.  We don’t know who shot Ashli Babbitt, the unarmed woman who was killed during the incursion. We still haven’t seen what Carlson said was “more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6."     Why aren’t alleged organizers and instigators being charged when people who seem to have been little more than tourists are facing years in prison?

According to Mark Levin of Life, Liberty and Levin, our government is rounding up these political opponents. Just the word "round-ups" strikes terror in my heart. Along with rampant propaganda and censorship, this is what makes up a Totalitarian government. These round-up operations are secretive. This article describes how FBI agents targeted a couple in Alaska, just one example of these round-ups.

During the May 2020 insurrection in Minnesota, BLM Antifa thugs burned a police station to the ground. Those thugs don’t need to worry, Kamala has funded their bail. Antifa and BLM violence is sanctioned by our administration. It is part of their plan to instill chaos in our cities, while defunding the police. Like Greg Kelley says, BLM and MSM only care when a black life is taken by a white cop…. in order to perpetuate their systemic racism and anti-police agenda.

To make sense of what is happening in our country, I reached out to Professor Kyong (Keith) Chu, Chair of the History Department at Bergen Community College. Here is his response… “It's mind boggling to me that this is happening in our nation. The partisanship and hatred is really ruining our democracy. It seems to me that its always been there as a kind of pilot light just waiting for the right moment to ignite into something bigger …I just hope it doesn't take a catastrophic event for everyone to see the truth”

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

CRT is dangerous - it is based on Marxist ideology designed to divide us, and create a race war. If you are dark-skinned you are oppressed. If you are light-skinned you are labelled an oppressor. If my parents were alive today, they would be labelled oppressors, despite the fact that they were Holocaust survivors. What happened to the teachings of Martin Luther King? We should be judged based on our character, not our skin color. One of my favorite MLK quotes applies here, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Historical facts should be taught; slavery, the Holocaust, etc. Many students do not even know there was a Holocaust! Instead of teaching CRT’s hateful rhetoric, we should be teaching the Holocaust, not just 2 hours or a single day, but a full curriculum. 

I am heartened by the courageous, ferocious parents who stand up for their children against this hateful rhetoric…in front of their school boards.

• Check out this mom, Tatiana… on rumble.com...mom-blasts-critical-race-theory 
• this black father on dailywire.com/news 
• this 9-year old on rumble.com...there-should-be-no-blm

Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis directed his State Board of Education to stop CRT and the 1619 Project from becoming a part of their school’s curriculum. ”We do not want curriculum that is judging students based on their race and we do not want false history,” DeSantis wants to stop the whitewashing of the horrors committed by communist thugs like Mao Zedong & Che Guevara.  In addition, the bill mandates diversity of thought on college campuses, to prevent leftist indoctrination and intolerance of dissenting viewpoints.  Read article in Dailywire news.

FAKE NEWS - Mainstream Media (MSM) 

Our country has become so polarized. I can’t even discuss the issues with my colleagues on the left as they are ignorant of the facts. They only listen to and believe what the mainstream media is feeding them. MSM censors anything that does not fit their Democratic Socialist narrative of systemic racism. You have to seek out alternative news sites like OAN, NewsMaxx, Fox News, Daily Wire, Prager U, legalinsurrection.com etc. to get the full story and to hear the truth about Israel, election laws, CRT etc. MSM Stations like CBS, NBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC promote the far left, anti-Israel, anti-American viewpoint. They are the propaganda arm of the Democratic Socialist movement. 

If we don't speak up we are complicit. When I post on Facebook, however, I get attacked. 

Here is a typical example of stupidity after I exposed the truth about CRT on FB:

• NM (leftist):  Beverly you’re wrong that crt is either bad or Marxist. And it’s surely based on facts. Your argument is not. That’s some bs site, not real news. The facts are we have a history of systemic racism in our country, and we should teach that. The rest is you having a tantrum, I guess cuz you don’t want White children to learn racism exists
• ME: I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors, so I know what is happening here. I know what happened in the Gulags. It does not matter the site posted, the woman's speech went viral and you should listen to it. Some people can't tolerate a different viewpoint and choose to attack me instead. I think we should be teaching about how propaganda and censorship led to the Holocaust and now the Uighur genocide.
• NM: we do teach that. We should also be teaching systemic racism exists and that it leads to the killing of unarmed black people, hence the need for the BLM movement. Teaching about racism in schools is neither propaganda nor censorship. Now you’re like just making up words.
• ME: you should do some research on BLM. You will find that it an Anti-Semitic Marxist organization, that is embezzling funds.
• NM: You gotta stop w this racism, Beverly.

Media Campaign against Trump & Censorship

For the past four years  Trump was subjected to an incessant smear campaign from the leftist mainstream media (MSM). He was falsely accused of Russia collusion and relentlessly bullied. He was portrayed as a monster white-supremacist, because he put America first; never any acknowledgement of his monumental successes. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” developed a CoVid vaccine in 10 months, despite being told it was impossible. As mentioned in my prior post, his administration negotiated the historic Abraham Accords, achieving peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. December, 2019, he passed the new Anti-Semitism Definition  to protect Jewish college students. (Details saved  trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism ).  He hired Nikki Haley, the first Ambassador to the UN, to courageously stand up for Israel, against the anti-Israel bias in the UN. Haley also stood up against their pro-Hamas resolutions. She referred to her inaugural role as “the new sheriff in town”.  According to Mike Kelley of NewsMax –“ ISIS was born under Obama and obliterated by Trump… Trump brought ISIS down.”  No other president achieved what Trump and his administration did in just four years.  

Just like Obama, we only hear accolades for Biden regardless of his actions, from MSM.  Hannity described the media’s treatment of  Biden as their “candidate protection program”.  MSM is silent about the Biden family dealings with Communist China.   MSM Journalists no longer do any research. They only attack or silence their adversaries. They agitate and bully Trump and Republicans. In this video Rep. Ron DeSantis responds to an aggressive CNN reporter.

ANTIFA RIOTS

Back in June, 2020, after violent BLM/Antifa mobs burned down a Minneapolis Police Station, Kamala Harris responded with , “This is a movement…They are not going to stop and they should NOT”.  Antifa bombed and burned cities. Over 7 months of BLM/Antifa riots in Democratic cities, resulted in 45 innocent citizens killed, 700 police officers injured, small businesses looted and destroyed, 150 federal buildings damaged, defaced, burned.  Instead of outrage, Democrats empowered these thugs. Kamala funded their bail.  www.antifa.com is a redirect to Biden’s whitehouse.gov .

According to DailyTorch 1/21/2021 article “Exposing Democrat Hypocrisy over Political Violence”,  “Democrats who encouraged and funded the Antifa, BLM rioters for most of the past year, wasted no time exploiting the Capitol attack for political gain." In Biden’s inaugural address he characterized 75 million Trump fans as domestic terrorists, Neo-Nazis, & fascists.  Biden incited his fellow leftists to track down Trump supporters. This is not unity; this is the KGB.  

The CAPITAL 1/06/2021

They blamed Trump for inciting the handful of thugs who stormed the capital.  In his speech Trump called for “peaceful” protests. The media censored that video and Twitter & Facebook deleted his accounts, disconnecting him from his people: We the People.  Renowned lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, refers to this as McCarthyism. According to Mark Levin of “Life, Liberty, & Levin”, the FBI knew of the attack, days prior and did nothing. 

John Earle Sullivan, a radical self-described “revolutionary” who founded a group called “Insurgence USA,” was arrested and charged with planning and inciting a riot amid the heavy pro-Trump crowd at the U.S. Capitol.   He was one of many radical leftist and Antifa infiltrators who blended into the crowd. Sullivan was seen on video shouting to a crowd, over a microphone, “we about to burn this shit down,” “we got to rip Trump out of office".  Details can be found in this document.

Historical Parallels

The censorship and targeting of 75 million Trump fans, along with the shutdown of conservative voices on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, is a great big red flag.   Remember the historical parallels.  From 1927 – 1933 Germany went from Democracy to a 1-party Nazi system, censoring all dissenting political views.  Nazi Propaganda was everywhere. 

Isn’t that what is happening here, now?  Leftist propaganda as delivered by MSM, newspapers, social-ist media…Our MSM is the propaganda arm of the Democratic party.  According to Mike Pompeo “Censorship, wokeness, political correctness, it all points in one direction – authoritarianism, cloaked as moral righteousness."  Nikki Haley stated, “From college classrooms to corporate boardrooms, … liberal elites want to silence anyone who does not toe the far left line."  Freedom of speech has been compromised, replaced by fake news and censorship.

For historical perspective, these quotes come from USHMM article on Nazi-propaganda-and-censorship:

“When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the German constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press…The Nazis controlled all  forms of communication through censorship and propaganda… By the middle of 1933, the Nazi Party was the only political party, and nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.”

Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the MEDIA

Our television media and our social media have failed to protect the values of truth in journalism. I recently watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”. Facebook (FB) was portrayed as a powerful puppeteer, feeding into whatever view the user is leaning towards. If a FB user was leaning left, soon FB was feeding them radical leftist propaganda and conspiracy theories: Whatever strategies would hold the user as a captive audience, and gain the most “likes”. Truth has become irrelevant. We are living in George Orwell’s 1984. Your FB feed is bred by FB, to confirm your view of reality, not to challenge it.

 

FB, Google, YouTube and other social media platforms are silencing conservative voices and allowing hate speech and fake news to proliferate. Prager University videos have been banned for presenting a conservative perspective. Anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda have become mainstream, accepted, normalized. In a prior post from my blog, in May 2017, I wrote about the destructive forces of propaganda against Israel, perpetrated by the Palestinians and leftist media, bootupnow.blogspot.com/2017/05/anti-israel-propaganda-prevents-peace.html 

President Trump recently negotiated the Abraham accord, the first viable peace agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbors, in 30 years. Finally, a president who sees the Palestinian threat for what it is, slanderous to Israel’s reputation world-wide, run by the terrorist organization, Hamas. Pallywood, the Palestinian theatrical media, produces fake episodes portraying Israeli military (IDF) as violent aggressors. The media promotes this biased view as truth. Prior administrations have tried to appease the Palestinians, asking Israel to make concessions and give up their land in exchange for peace. These offers of land for peace were always refused by the Palestinians.  According to a recent Ben Shapiro Daily Wire article-"Relations between Jordan and Israel, between the UAE and Israel, between Sudan and Israel, between Egypt and Israel — none now hide behind the fig leaf of Palestinian demands to avoid peace."

Trump stands by Israel and the Jewish people.  When pro-Israel students are harassed on campus, there is no outrage. The media is silent. In Dec, 2019, President Trump's executive order declared anti-Zionism a form of anti-Semitism, and added Antisemitism to the list of discriminations prohibited by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

People ask me why I care so much about Israel. When Israel is slandered, I take it personally. Israel is the Jewish State, the Jewish homeland. If you criticize Israel’s policies and do NOT criticize Syria’s, Iran’s, or other fascists regimes in the MidEast, then your criticism is anti-Semitism. 

I deal with colleagues, professors at the community college I work at, who admit that they hate Zionists. When a close colleague told me this, I was very hurt. A Zionist is someone who loves Israel. Since when did Zionism become a dirty word? I blame the media for portraying Israel negatively by repeating these inciteful words: occupier, colonial, in reference to Israel. Israel is not an occupier, since Israel is, and always was, the historic Jewish homeland. The Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. The British Mandate of Palestine returned the land of Israel to the Jews, in a legal process. Any Arab Bedouins living on the land at that time, in 1948, were paid fairly for their property by the Zionists. 

My colleagues believe what the media and other academics have fed them. It’s not only what the media covers, it’s what the media refuses to cover. How many people know about the more than 2500 acres of farmland and 2700 acres of forest burned by fire bombs and incendiary balloons launched by the Palestinians from Gaza. What about the terror tunnels and murder of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas? As soon as Israel is accused of some alleged crime, it is all over the news. What about when Israel comes to our rescue, to help us fight fires in California? How often do you see media coverage of Israel in a positive light? 

The most righteous thing someone can do, is to speak up for someone else. The gentiles who risked their lives to defend my parents from the Nazis, there is nothing higher, more revered to me. Trump defending Israel and Zionist students on college campuses, deserves the same respect and admiration. Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from colleges promoting Anit-Israel hate propaganda. No other president has ever addressed it or tried to stop it. Hate coming from the right and neo-NAZIs, is readily disavowed. But not from the left. Anti-Semitism & Anti-Zionisn in the Democaratic party has proliferated and does not seem to abate. The Democratic Party remains  politically correct, refusing to disavow Anti-Semitism in their own party. 

Transcribing my Dad's Story from pencil...

Happy New Year 2020! On this blog I have often posted excerpts from my dad's story "In His Own Words." 

Sometime in the late 1990's, my dad completed writing his memoir, more than 150 pages handwritten in pencil.   When he first handed me his manuscript, he watched as I inspected it.  One of the entries in his Table of Contents was "experience".  I turned to the page and began reading. I was not expecting that "experience" referred to his first sexual experience, his visit to a brothel! 

I knew I needed to preserve his story, electronically on my computer. So I began the process of transcribing and entering his words into Word Perfect.   I did some wordsmithing and editing to tweak his English.  In one chapter he describes the increasingly threatening conditions in Paris 1942 as "titanium".  It took me a while to realize he was referring to the state of chaos, or "pandemonium."

To this day I refer back to details in his story to help me track our family tree.  My dad diligently  detailed names of cousins, their occupations, locations in Poland, street addresses in Paris.  The street addresses were a key clue in connecting a name in a database as a cousin.

My dad wrote that cousins Albert and Maurice Binstock moved into his parents' apartment on Rue Fessart.  For many years I tried to track down these two cousins in documents online. During my 2011 visit to the USHMM research floor I copied all ITS records for Binstock of Bedzin or Paris.  Finally I discovered a Mordka Binstock with the same address listed for Rue Fessart & immediately I knew I had found my "Maurice."  It wasn't till 2014 that I connected with his living descendant, Remy, through Twitter.

I could write an entire miniseries just from the stories that were passed down. The survivor witnesses, each with their own unique story of survival: my mom, my aunts, my uncle, my cousins.

My next step is to get my dad's story published in a book, to share with the world.   My dad would want his name as the writer. I can put my name as editor. Not sure how to begin the process.

Cousin Nathalie's story....as told to me during my visit with her Aug 2018

I met my cousin Simonne Nathalie Szbrenic Chuteau  during my visit with cousin Lilianne in France last August. I initially discovered Nathalie after I discovered her nephew Remy Binsztok had followed me on Twitter, 2015.  Here I share the family stories she shared with me.

Nathalie's Family - branch of my tree

Nathalie's dad - David Szbrenic

At the beginning of the war, 1940,  David enlisted in the French army & was imprisoned in Germany. When his rank was captured, the German commandant instructed all Jewish prisoners to step out of line. David complied. The German officer approached him and told him to "Stop fooling around". David's Aryan looks had saved him. 

Nathalie's mom - Chaja Sura (Helen) Srebrnik (born Binsztok):

During the day Helen was working at M. Strausberg's atelier. October 1943, the French police came in the night to capture Helen, who tried to escape and ran downstairs into the street, but she could not fight with the policemen who sent her to Drancy, and Auschwitz. Upon her arrival, she was chosen to work.  April 1945, Helen returned in very bad shape, but alive.  She had survived Auschwitz, liberated by American soldiers.

Nathalie's sister - Rose

A couple of days before Nathalie's mom's capture, her sister Rosette (born 1937) had been taken away by a gentile woman, Madeleine Gallois living in a small village, Grisy les Platres.  Nathalie's maternal uncle Albert Binsztok knew Madelaine because he had sent his daughter Nicole to spend holiday with her in Grizy... (near Pontoise, near Paris).  Fortunately, Madeline Gallois' daughter rescued Rose two days after La Rafle and just one day before her mom's capture.  Madeline's mother was a nurse and already had cousins Fanny and Lucienne Lerner to take care.  Thanks to the Gallois', Nathalie's sister remained alive.

Unfortunately, Fanny and Lucienne were deported in August 1942, shortly after their mother Madelaine, returned for them. She could not bear to be without them.  Fanny was sent on convoy 16 August 7, 1942, and Lucienne on convoy 24, August 26, 1942 along with cousin Robert Binzstock. The three small children were murdered in the gas chambers.

 

 

Visiting the Strausbergs in France

This past August I visited my newly discovered cousins in France. Liliane Strausberg invited me for holiday with her and her daughter Catherine, in a small port town near Nantes (Pornic) France. It was a vacation and also a genealogical mission.    

I brought the FamilyTree DNA kit for Catherine to take... to help her track down her dad's half-sibling. Back in March 2015 I had relayed the story my mom told me about Catherine's paternal grandma, Jeanette Karetchsky Sztrausberg.  Jeanette came to France from England when she was unwed and pregnant.  My dad's parents helped Jeanette put the baby up for adoption in Paris & kept it a secret. I am hoping that the DNA results from Catherine's sample could connect us to this lost child's family, who may not be aware of their Jewish heritage.  

Lilianne's Story:
I videotaped Lilianne sharing testimony from her childhood during the Holocaust.  Her father had been taken by the French police and never returned, leaving Lilianne as a toddler,  alone with her mother in Paris. One day the French police came for them. "Madame you must come with us". Lilianne's mom Sonia Linderman Konkowksi told them "I need more time, I will give you all my money". They took the money and warned that they would return. Sonia took little Liliane to hide in the cellar for the whole day. At night Sonia ventured back to the apartment to get some food. She overheard voices in her apartment, speaking Flemish. Her Uncle Menachem Konkowski, her mothers brother, had sent them to smuggle Liliane and her mom out of France, to safety in Belgium.  Liliane survived the Shoah in Belgium in hiding with her three cousins: Henriette 7, Rene 5, Claudine 3.

Lilianne knew my parents and my Aunt Claire. She retold the terrifying ordeal my Aunt shared of getting stuck under a train during her clandestine escape across the border at the Vierzon train station in 1942.  The train began to roll as my Aunt was left frozen in place lying between the rails and train wheels.

Lilianne also shared her concern that her granddaughter Justine was disconnected from her Jewish heritage.  Justine did not consider herself Jewish and was trying to hide it. I felt that if she knew her family's story, she would not be ashamed.  Her grandmother's uncle,  Menachem Konkowski was the hero of her family and also a nationally recognized hero of Belgium.  His brigade committed many acts of sabotage against the Nazis in Belgium.  He also saved many Jewish family members and children, including Liliane, with his factory as a front.  I showed Justine a Facebook post of the
commendation letter from President Eisenhower to Konkowski.  I also showed her the family tree. The Shoah and what happened to her family should not be a source of shame.

Lilianne and I also went to meet Simonne Nathalie Sebrenick.  I had connected with Nathalie late 2014.  It was quite amazing that I discovered Nathalie through Remy, her nephew. He followed me on Twitter. I don't know how he found me or why he followed me. I believe it to be beshert, fate.  I had been searching for family on my dad's side and they found me online; first Yael on JewishGen and then Remy. Remy was not even looking for me.

Nathalie lives in a medieval chateau in Huile, France, about 2 hours from Catherine, near Angers. For someone going through chemotherapy she looked amazing, young.  She loves classical music, her 3 dogs and her 3 horses.  Her dogs are named after classical music/ musicians: Amadeus the beagle, Fantasia the Labrador, Barcarole the Schnauzer. Since her husband Claude Chuteau died she lives in this big chateaux alone with her dogs.

Nathalie's Story:
She shared some old photos and heart-wrenching stories. The violin story stands out: Nathalie wanted to play the piano since she was 4 years old.  But her parents were against it, wanting her to focus on your schooling.  One day she told a teacher that she could not have a piano. The teacher suggested a smaller instrument. When Nathalie found a broken violin in her basement she showed her father to ask to play.  He was enraged.  It turned out the violin belonged to her young cousins Fanny & Lucienne Lerner, the sisters were music child prodigies. They were deported from Paris and sent to the gas chambers; The loss of those precious children and their musical gifts never shared with the world. The murder of these children were now more real and tragic.  I discovered their picture on the Serge Klarsfeld site. 

Finding the Strausbergs – confirming cousins through chance conversations

In Sept., 2011, I connected with Diane Davison through JewishGen. We were both searching our Binsztok from Bedzin, Polish roots.  According to the Bedzin census there were four Binsztok families living there in 1939. Diane shared with me that her Great Grandma was Marja Bienstock Konkowski.  Most of her family settled in Brussels. She also had cousins in  Paris and Canada. Whatever she knew was based on conversations she had with her mom’s two cousins, daughters of Marja and Josek Zelman Konkowski: Lilianne in Paris and Renee in Canada.
 
We did not know how we connected. When I connected with Marilyn, I was able to confirm we were cousins with the Y-DNA test, because we shared the Bienstock surname through our fathers. My brother Claude matched Marilyn’s father with a distance of 0. That meant that Marilyn and I were related within 4 generations. With Diane the connection was on her mother’s side.

Diane and I shared and compared  old family photos.  I had a photo from 1920 of my dad’s Aunt Sheindle with her family.  On the back my dad wrote “all killed in the Holocaust”.  Diane was convinced that this was a photo of her great grandparents,  Josek and Marja (Bienstock) Konkowski. The older boy was her grandfather Menachem (Maurice), the younger boy her great uncle Adolphe, and the girl was her great aunt Sonya. Sonya’s daughter, Lilianne, was living in France. The resemblance was undeniable.

Diane posted a photo of her ancestor Josek Konkowski.  Again, he looked like Sheindle’s husband.  All photo clues pointed to my Sheindl Bienstock as a match with Diane’s Marja Bienstock Konkowski . In my 2^nd vinatge photo, my ggma Screnca (ggpa Alexander’s wife) appears as a match to Marja’s mother: Hana Malka Szajndel Kownkowski.

Images compared on TwinsorNot.net website

My Screnca on left matches Diane's Malka on right

After more than a year of research, including Jewishgen,  Facebook and email discussions,  a chance conversation with my brother Claude in early January 2013 gave us the key to our connection.  Claude randomly mentioned that he visited cousin Adolf Konkowski in Montreal Canada in 1974.  Adolf had also visited us when we lived in Paterson.  As Diane relied on her older cousins for advice, I relied on my brother. Claude was 11 years older and had a good memory for details of family names and dates.

This solidified that we were related. Diane and I connected our family trees on MyHeritage. She had done extensive research on our tree, so connecting with her provided me with a goldmine of data.  By end of 2013 Diane was able to identify her connection with Marilyn, through CRARG, Czestochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group (www.crarg.org), Szczekociny records.   We still could not figure out how my grandpa David matched on the tree, because for some unknown reason, according to his immigration records, he was born in Poltava Ukraine while all the other Binstoks were born in Bedzin area.

It was 2 years later, 2/26/2015, that I had a conversation with Diane about her mom’s first cousin, Lilianne. Diane told me that Liliane remembered my Aunt Clara, my dad Jacques, and their father David!  Lilianne had met my family in 1970.  Lilianne told her my gpa David was first cousins with her mother Sonia, Diane’s Gpa Maurice, & his brother Adolfe! 

I dug deeper into Diane’s tree, and discovered that Liliane was a Stzrausberg!    I knew that surname well. That was the cousin my dad often spoke about.  I shared two pictures of Jean Strausberg from my dad’s photo album.  Lilianne confirmed that she was the woman in that photo with her husband Jean. Jean was the 15-yr-old boy who hid in Ceyroux with his father Max, from 1942 until liberation.

In my dad’s memoire, he writes ….  

CEYROUX Chapter:  My father’s cousin Jeannette, originally from London, was married to Max Strausberg, my father’s business partner, in the early 1930's.  In August 1942 they left Paris for Ceyroux with their 15 year old son Jean.  Unfortunately as they were crossing the demarcation line into the free zone, the Germans spotted them.  They ran as fast as they could.  Jean and his father made it, but Jeanette did not.  They caught her and she was never seen again.  It was a terrible thing.  Mr. Strausberg and his son found a room to rent in Ceyroux.  Later they received some work from Paris and were able to survive the rest of the war.  Occasionally Marie worked for Max as a seamstress.

When my niece Danielle visited Ceyroux to meet the farmers who rescued our family, she spoke with someone who remembered Max and Jean having dinner at the restaurant in Ceyroux.   

I posted & tagged the Strauzberg photos with Lilianne, and her daughters Val & Catherine on FaceBook.  After many interactions in email, online and by phone, I finally met Diane and her mother Claudine in-person in April 2015.  This August, 2018, I will be traveling to France to finally meet Lilianne and her daughter Catherine. 

Honoring My Family's Heroes of the Holocaust, Then and Now

Heroes who saved my family during Holocaust

1. My dad, Jack Bienstock - It was his ego, so humiliated by having to wear the "Juif" star, he insisted on leaving Paris immediately, within days of the edict.   Timing was key, since the final solution -"la grande rafle - the big roundups", had begun June/ July 1942. My dad, left Paris just days before his 21st birthday on July 1, 1942. It was my dad who convinced the rest of the family to follow him to Ceyroux.  "Mon pere etait le hero de ma famille parce que c'etait lui qui dit les mots, l'address de Ceyroux."  Hear him tell his story on youtube.com/bevmargo.
2. The cheminot from Vierzon - This hero lived and worked in Vierzon, one of the largest railroad stations, strategically located on the boundary between zones. He gave his life for the lives of desperate Jewish families. He smuggled my dad, my mom, my aunt, & countless others onto coal trains headed south to the Free zone, "la zone libre".  My dad did not know this hero's name & often referred to him as the "cheminot",  French for railroad worker. 
3. French resistance fighter, Albert Mayne. He provided the house in Ceyroux Les Brisseau, where my parents and grandparents lived in hiding for two years. My dad did not know who owned the house he was renting. Mayne's daughter Bernadette, who I met at the Yad Vashem ceremony 12/4/2017, still lives there today.
4. Parcelier and Simonnet families - farmers also members of the resistance.  Alice Meillassoux was a bicycle courier for the Maqui, the resistance of the woods. These families also provided an occupation on the farm and made Ceyroux-Les Brisseaux home for them for two years.
5. Mayor Leon Daquet - provided my dad with a new Identity card to disguise his Jewish identity, changing his name from "Jacob Joseph" to Jacques and his occupation from printer to cultivateur, farmer.

Some heroes of today:

• Nicki Haley - Ambassador to the UN - fights for Israel
• Alan Dershowitz - speaks up against Anti-Israel hate groups
• Ben Shapiro - outspoken journalist
• Brigitte Gabriel - Lebanese author of "Because They Hate"
• Ryan Bellerose- Native American who fights for the indigenous rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.