I watched this wonderful film—They Survived Together—on public television by happenstance. It is absorbing.
It is the story of a family that managed to escape the Warsaw ghetto just as the Nazis began to eliminate the Jews who lived there. They encountered the face of evil, they looked down the barrel of the gun pointed at them by the Butcher of Krakow. They endured unimaginable hardships. The story is told by the family, mostly through the eyes of children.
Watching the film is an excellent way to learn about the Holocaust and to see heroism, courage, persistence, luck, and the kindness of strangers, all of which made this story of survival possible.
I strongly urge you to see it and to ask your children to watch as well. It will be shown again on December 12 and will be streaming.
The film was made possible by a GoFundMe campaign. It includes a dazzling array of archival footage, from prewar Poland and wartime.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for this post, Diane. I viewed the films. And thank you, PBS.
Horrors! I sure hope our young and others are able to view this awfulness.
I have sent the link to others.
Thanks, Diane. This film is magnificent.
Off topic, but leaving this year, in case anyone cares.
It is very sad, FLERP, but I understand why the city does not want youth who are vaccinated to wrestle the unvaccinated. Why aren’t they all required to provide proof of vaccination to compete? Most restaurants in NYC require proof, why not wrestling tournaments?
Yes, it is sad. It could change tomorrow if enough people wanted it to.
Note that NYC student athletes are all vaccinated, but must wear masks during competition. (What sentient person thinks that it is safer to wrestle masked than unmasked, regardless of vaccination status?) Meanwhile adults who are vaccinated are free to eat and drink and scream at concerts and sporting events in Madison Square Garden without masks.
FLERP, you stated “(What sentient person thinks that it is safer to wrestle masked than unmasked, regardless of vaccination status?)”
Me!
Why would it be less safe with a mask?
I agree, Duane. Best of all would be to require all who wrestle in school sports to get vaccinated.
Flerp, I know you are very concerned about the impact of Covid restrictions on your son. I would be, too, but my kids are old enough to have their own kids now. I stressed out over various battles they had growing up especially when they reached high school and even into college. I suspect, as with mine, your son will be perfectly fine, and most of the angst will in retrospect seem irrelevant. I truly believe that those in charge of pandemic mitigation who are trying to follow the best of medical advice really have the public good as a central focus even if they blow it on occasion. It is so darn complicated! I care what you are thinking, and I think I understand where you are coming from. It’s just that we all are looking at the problems through our own experience. From my own old lady perspective, I want those young men and women protected. Masks help keep us safe. Vaccinations help keep us safe. I don’t care what the “Joneses” are doing or allowed to do. I don’t understand why it is safe to sit at a concert and scream. That sounds a little bit like the argument my own kids used about “Everybody is doing it!” Sometimes I caved and sometimes I countered with, “If they jumped off a cliff, would you do it?”
My son will be ok, he has many advantages these kids and so many others do not.
There have been so many genocides in human history. They all come with these great stories. Somehow the Holocaust is more moving than the rest, even the more recent. I am more moved by them. I wonder why; indeed I have wondered why for years. I have come to think that Holocaust stories are more moving because of the power distance between the victims of the depredations and the German military. In the face of a power that might have ruled the world, the 11 million seem so powerless.
Genocides all occur when power is concentrated in the group that commits the genocide. This was true in all the European genocides that took place from the Age of Discovery through the age of Imperialism. Even when the occasional local population procured equal arms, they rarely did so to produce a comparable ability to use them. I think the stories that come out of those incidents more closely fit into the idea of tragedy than do the stories of other things that are just evil. Tragedy is arguably the best genre of stories. We remember the histories and the comedies, but the tragedies are in the front of our minds. Hamlet trumps Midsummer Night’s Dream every time.
Genocide is a tragedy played out in society when the personality of evil always present in that society grows somehow to dominate the organs of government. This character flaw produces the action in the story. Evil, the protagonist, moves the story to its tragic end.
Only it is real.
Buckle up. We have already begun the fascist period of the history of the United States. Though still in its toddlerhood (intellectually, it stays there), this monster grows fast. And I suspect that Linda is correct about this: when the fascists gain complete control here in 2024, it will march under a funhouse mirror distortion of a Christian banner. Fascism and religion work well together because they both fervently believe in eliminating the competition outright. Christians have a long history of killing heretics, apostates, and pagans by the tribeload. You know, heretics, like those who deny the Christian Math that 1 plus 1 plus one equals 1 and think, instead, that it equals 3.
Oooo! Questioning the concept of trinity? Who do you think you are? Isaac Newton?
I think, Roy, that CRT put these crazy notions into my head.
This last is not, of course, a matter of truly great import like whether one should break an egg at the little end or the large end, but such like has been sufficient justification throughout history, for the Christian Church to carry out a good old-fashioned genocide.
How, exactly, genocide squares with the teachings of the Jewish preacher born a little over 2,000 years ago that Christians worship is difficult to understand. A mystery, I suppose, like the Trinity or like how Donald Trump functions without a brain.
Maybe disparity between divine teaching and human interpretation?
Maybe one of the ancient mythological systems that managed to persist because it was an inheritor of not only the Roman language but, importantly, Roman organizational structure/bureaucratic systems and had the official imprimatur of the founder of the Eastern Roman Empire?
Under Diocletian (reigned 284 to 305), Christianity was almost totally purged from the Empire, which had traditionally shown enormous tolerance of other religions and even adopted many elements of them into its own eclectic practice. Then came Constantine’s conversion before the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Having moved the capital to Constantinople and promoted the Christian religion throughout the Empire, C died in 337. By the reign of Theodosius (379 to 395), 42+ years later, 80-90 percent of the citizens of the Empire were Christian. So, because of Constantine’s momentous conversion, this cult went from a tiny, persecuted cult to THE primary religion overnight, historically speaking.
Maybe disparity between divine teaching and human interpretation?
An interesting question you raise, though. As with everything else in Christianity, there have been endless debates (and wars) about what the correct interpretation of the “divine teaching” was, of course. There’s the OT admonition that there is but ONE god (though there are references to His sons), and then there are the passages in the NT that suggest that Jesus is God. So, this presented a problem, which the doctrine of the Trinity attempted to resolve: 1 + 1 + 1 = 1.
But I suspect that but for this one guy, Constantine, today we might be worshipping Minerva and Isis and Cybele and have little shrines to Neptune down by the sea.
Bob, maybe it’s better to have lots of gods. Maybe that promotes tolerance of everyone’s gods. No one was conquered by the sword to force them to worship one of the many Greek or Roman gods.
https://www.theonion.com/ra-wins-westminster-god-show-1822961049
And Trump might have issued coins with his picture on one side and a picture of Sol Invictus on the other.
That estimate of the percentage of the citizenry that became Christian might be high, but it was certainly the case that the adoption of Christianity happened very quickly. It became the official religion of Rome in 380, only 67 years after Constantine promulgated tolerance of Christianity via the Edict of Milan.