Memories Of A Previous Eclipse
All the talk about the upcoming August 21 solar eclipse brings back memories of a friend of mine whose family was saved from the Shoah.
In the summer of 1936, my friend’s relative Ira Freeman, professor of physics at Princeton University, traveled to Germany to witness a solar eclipse. He was so disturbed by the depth of Nazi anti-Jewish hatred he witnessed that when he returned to the U.S. he urged his family to save relatives back in Germany.
Ultimately, some were rescued, including my friend.
Lenore Richter
New York, NY
Irwin Cohen’s Home Run
Irwin Cohen’s Aug. 11 Baseball Insider column, “1942: Jewish Ballplayers Go To War,” was a home run.
It reminded me of how we learn a great deal from history. Remember the Brooklyn Dodgers, Ebbets Field, and Hank Greenberg? It was a time working- and middle-class men and woman of all ages, races, and religions commingled in the stands rooting for Jackie Robinson and his teammates.
Ordinary Brooklyn natives rode the bus, trolley, and subway to Ebbets Field to see their beloved Dodgers. Everyone could afford a bleacher, general admission, reserve, or box seat. Food, drink, and souvenirs were reasonably priced.
Just as Jackie Robinson fought racism in the late 1940s and ‘50s, the Detroit Tigers’ Hank Greenberg and other Jewish baseball players had to do the same with anti-Semitism in their time.
The history of Robinson and Greenberg attests to the long-lasting relationship between African Americans and Jewish sports fans who stood together for decades in support of each other.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, NY
Not Surprised At Gillibrand
Your editorial regarding Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s about-face concerning Israel is disturbing, but I don’t find myself surprised. My gut feeling is that when one countenances immorality in one sphere, one is likely to do so in other spheres as well.
To what do I refer? Gillibrand was an early advocate of same-sex marriage and played a pivotal role in its legalization in New York. The passage of the New York law helped create the domino effect that resulted in the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage on a national basis.
Immorality leads to immorality; Gillibrand’s actions help prove it.
Avi Goldstein
Far Rockaway, NY
She Saw The End Of Hitler
When Helen Diamant died in her Jesup, Georgia home of 18 years on June 4, 2016, it was less than 24 hours after the death of Muhammad Ali. While her obituary appeared in her local Jesup newspaper (the Press-Sentinel), the story of Ali’s life and death was reported on thousands of front pages and read by millions of people around the world.
Ali’s fame had begun when, as a 22-year-old boxer named Cassius Clay, he defeated the 7-1 favorite, heavyweight champion Sonny Liston.
But I would argue that my tiny mother-in-law, in her own quiet way, had previously defeated an even more formidable foe than Liston ever was – namely, Adolf Hitler. And here’s the rest of that story:
When Helen Diamant was 22-year-old Chella Wildenberg in 1939 Poland, Hitler invaded her country. By the time Cassius Clay was born in 1942, Helen (or Chella) had already been suffering at the hands of Hitler’s Nazis for several years.
There came a day when she learned that all the workers in the labor camp where she was imprisoned would soon be sent to the Treblinka concentration camp to be murdered in its gas chambers, but she somehow managed to escape.
She was also able to rescue her younger brother from another work camp; but after weeks of running, hiding, freezing, and starving, he finally told her he wanted them to give themselves up – knowing they would be shot to death but also that their fear, hunger, and suffering would finally come to an end.
He believed that their continuing survival was an impossibility, but Helen told him “No, I won’t do that. I HAVE TO SEE THE END OF HITLER and I just know he’s going to have a bad end.”
She later said that belief was part of what “kept me going.”
Unfortunately, she and her brother eventually were separated, and before the end of the war he, their older brother and sister, their parents, and two dozen other relatives were all killed. Except Helen, who had kept her promise to herself to “live to see the end of Hitler.”
When Hitler ignominiously killed himself at age 56 in 1945, Helen, who had eventually escaped to relative safety in – of all places – Germany, was working as a maid. She was then 28 years old, half Hitler’s age, but she was to live on long past the 56 years he was allotted on earth. She lived into 2016, until the age of 99, surviving Hitler’s death by 71 long and fruitful years.
When Hitler killed himself inside his underground bunker, he died in defeat, surrounded mainly by people who feared him. When “Miss Helen” died inside her Jesup home in 2016, she died with dignity, surrounded by people who loved her.
Just the year after Hitler’s suicide, Helen and her husband, Howard, were blessed with the birth of their daughter, Laura. They then had three sons, and Helen continues to live on today through Laura and two of her brothers: “Dr. Bob” Diamant and “Dr. Mike” Diamant, Wayne Memorial Hospital’s chief anesthesiologists these past two decades.
Helen Diamant has often been called a Holocaust “survivor” but she was also both a “striver” and a “thriver.” The dictionary entries for “striver” (“one who exerts much energy and effort, one who struggles to succeed”) and “thriver” (“one who grows vigorously, makes steady progress, prospers and flourishes”) could both be illustrated with pictures of my mother-in-law.
As her cemetery headstone says:
Helen Wildenberg Diamant
Holocaust Survivor
Beloved Mother, Sister and Grandmommy
Born January 19, 1917 (in) Kozienice, Poland
Passed June 4, 2016 (in Jesup, Georgia)
SHE GAVE ALL TO HER CHILDREN
Richard Siegelman
Plainview, NY