William K. Langfan
Palm Beach, FL
Sweet Revenge
Kudos to Harvey Rachlin for “My Nazi Revenge” (op-ed, Oct. 30). He described perfectly the feelings of so many of us who at one time or another have fantasized about the horrendous torture we would inflict on Hitler and other Nazis if we only could.
We all go about our daily business as mature, composed adults who would never admit to thinking about how we’d slowly and savagely kill someone like Hitler – but of course if we didn’t have such thoughts we wouldn’t be human.
Ellen Greene
(Via E-Mail)
More On ‘A Titanic Jewish Love Story’
I would like to sincerely thank Ms. Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society in Smithtown, NY, for taking the time to contact me about my Oct. 30 Jewish Press front-page essay, “A Titanic Jewish Love Story.”
With appreciation to Ms. Adler, permit me to note the following corrections to the article – and also to make one interesting addition:
In one sentence, I inadvertently omitted an important word, and should have written “Jesse, later the American ambassador to France . . . ” In fact, Isidor Straus’s son, Jesse, did not serve as ambassador to France until 1932, two decades after the Titanic sank. Moreover, when Jesse sent the ice warning to his parents, he was on the ship Amerika heading to France, and not from it as I had erroneously written.
Furthermore, I relied upon an erroneous source when I reported that Isidor met Ida while working with her at the National Council on Jewish Women. In fact, they had actually met much earlier and that organization was not founded until 1893, well over a decade later.
Finally, after my article was published, I came upon an additional fact about the Straus family, one of those incredible and unexpected historical coincidences that I love to feature in my Jewish Press articles. It turns out that Nathan Straus’s son recommended his roommate and close friend, a young scholar at Heidelberg University, to his father, who invited him to come to New York to work at Macy’s. The friend, who gratefully accepted the position (1908) but had to return to Germany a year later when his father died, was none other than Otto Frank.
In April 1941, shortly before he took his entire family into hiding in the now-famous Amsterdam attic, Otto wrote letters to Nathan, Jr. seeking his help in getting out of Nazi-controlled Holland. In one letter, referring to daughters Margot and Anne, he wrote: “Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for.” Nathan Jr. tried, but failed, to use his significant contacts with the Roosevelt administration to secure visas for the Franks, and the rest, as they say, is history.
For more on this incredible story, see Ms. Adler’s 2013 book, For the Sake of the Children: The Letters Between Otto Frank and Nathan Straus Jr.
Saul Jay Singer
(Via E-Mail)