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Annual Commemoration reveals stories of life and near-death in Nazi Germany
Illustration by Jonathon Waters: Graphics Manager
Dylan Dohner Contributing Writer Dohner.6@wright.edu “Through the years I’ve hesitated to speak on this particular thing, because it’s a little bit emotional and very personal,” said Renate Frydman, founder of the Dayton Holocaust Resource Center (DHRC) and the member of a family shaken during an attack by German Nazis. She spoke of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a series of organized attacks that occurred through the streets of many German and Austrian towns on November 9 and 10, 1938. During a commemorative event held in the Creative Arts Center on Nov. 5 marking 75 years since Kristallnacht, Fryd-
man said that her family was very fortunate to escape Nazi Germany. “It was a watershed event,” Frydman said. “However, for me, it was a second birthday.” In 1938, Nazis in Germany torched and destroyed various synagogues, schools, businesses and homes, killing nearly 100 Jews. In its aftermath, around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to prisons and concentration camps. “We went to Holland and stayed with relatives for a brief time, then went to England, where my father found out his only brother had been arrested,” said Frydman. She explained how her father took the small amount of money he had and ransomed her uncle out of prison. “My uncle lived to be 96 years
old and never knew my father had helped release him.” She said he found out about ten years ago. Frydman noted that during the attacks, none of the German authorities acted; rather, they looked on and even assisted in the rioting at times. Kristallnacht would later be described as the violent ignition to Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” and the shift of Nazi policies from nonviolence to something significantly more terrifying. Another speaker during the Kristallnacht 75th Commemoration, author Gina Roitman, described her own experiences. “So much of who I am as a Jew has to do with remembrance,” Roitman said, “but it’s not something I willingly embraced at an early age.” Roitman described how her
mother told her dark stories about the war, including one regarding Gina’s birth and how she had saved her daughter’s life in Germany. Steeped in disbelief, Roitman gathered a camera crew and travelled to Passau, a German town Roitman’s mother associated with a deep paranoia and where a midwife had been rumored to have killed fifty two newborn Jewish babies. One of those babies, Roitman’s mother had told her, would have been Gina herself. In Passau and the surrounding areas, Roitman discovered that her mother had been right. There had indeed been a midwife, a Nazi, who had pushed in soft spots on the heads of more than fifty newborn babies and killed them. Fearing the worst, her mother gave birth in anoth-
er Passau hospital. Roitman’s findings have since been composited into a documentary called, “My Mother, the Nazi Midwife, and Me.” It won a Make a Difference Award at the 8th annual COMMFFEST in Toronto. “People in discussion ask me if I hold any bad feelings for the German people,” said Frydman, “and I say… I can’t have any bad feelings about it.” “If you live with hate in your heart, it affects you,” Frydman said. “The devastation of the Holocaust goes beyond anything that has ever happened in human history, so we commemorate and think about it. We hopefully try to do something in our lives to make a better world.”
rently resting above her goal. Jessica Blair, President of the English Club, said she thinks community is an important aspect of NaNoWriMo, providing support and motivation for writers who might be struggling to hit their daily word quota. Blair said she believes NaNoWriMo is an effective way to improve as a writer, with its ability to produce a daily writing habit and the tendency for writers to sharpen their skills through-
out the experience. WriterCon - Wednesday Nov. 13 from 12:20 p.m. - 1:15p.m. in 286 Millett Hall. WriterCon is question-and-answer session with a panel of three published WSU faculty: Erin Flanagan, Ph.D., Byron Crews, and Brady Allen. Meeting: Friday Nov. 15 from 5 to 7 in one of the TBA conference rooms for anyone that wants to write with a group of people. More information can be found on the English Club’s Facebook page.
NaNoWriMo: a month of writing Adam Ramsey Features Writer ramsey.55@wright.edu
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tudents readied their quills on Nov. 1 to begin National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), during which writers across the nation make their best attempt at writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. NaNoWriMo has a website where users can log on, track their novel writing progress and reach out to other writers
for help or encouragement, according to Hyatt Hammad, sophomore creative writing and French major. There are also a few events put together by the English club in order to foster a similar sense of community in person at Wright State. Hyatt Hammad said NaNoWriMo provides motivation for students that have difficulty finding spare time for writing. “I’m taking a lot of credit hours and I have a part-time job and it feels like I never facebook.com/theguardianonline
have time to write,” said Hammad. “Sometimes the best way to get yourself to write is to tell yourself that you have to write. Otherwise, it simply will not get done.” NaNoWriMo is proving to other students to be an easier beast to tame the second time around. Freshman English major Juliana Crask is writing a young adult fantasy novel. She said she participated in NaNoWriMo last year and had a lot of difficulty but found more success this year, with her word count cur@wsuguardian
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November 13, 2013
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