Loss and Legacy

25/01/2024

McConnell Casts Doubt on Border Deal, Saying Trump Opposition May Sink It

Pretty much the end of when a non-elected strongman browbeats elected legislators into submission.

The minority leader privately told Republicans that the former president had put his party “in a quandary,” casting further doubt on the deal’s chances and the fate of Ukraine aid that the G.O.P. has tied to it.

09/11/2023

85 Years ago Samuel Gronner, a successful Jewish businessman in Ilmenau, Germany, , was taken into "protective custody" on the night of November 9, 1938. His detention on what came to be known as "Kristallnacht", was a foreshadowing of the massive rounding up of Europe's Jews for mass extermination by the N**i regime.

In a thought-provoking commentary, writer Meryl Ain, author of two post-Holocaust-themed novels, asks hypothetically if the outcome would have been different if social media existed at the time to shape public opinion around the world as it is doing today about Israel's response to the horrific Hamas massacre last month.

The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by …

13/10/2023

What Hamas propaganda euphemistically calls "resistance."

The book "Loss & Legacy" recounts how ten-year-old Jochen (later John) Gronner first encounters anti-Semitic hatred. Having later recognized the consequences of N**i propaganda in fueling the Holocaust (including the kil...

19/06/2023

(Photo: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collections, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA )

19/03/2023

Second generation sons and daughters of witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust are keenly aware that time has run out for those born in the 1920s. The last of four siblings of this family has just died, along with her first-person testimony of childhood memories of N**i hatred in Germany. The story-telling is now relegated to the generations that follow.

Those who follow this blog are keenly aware of the steady loss of the witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust era through the passage of time. Among the generation born in the 1920s, the last remnants are reaching the ...

25/12/2022

A seven-decade friendship extinguished by death, but the shared memories of childhood are preserved in the memoir, "Loss & Legacy."

In a chapter of his memoir Loss & Legacy titled, "My Sabra Childhood", Sam A. Gronner describes how his mother Vera chronicled his early life in a now-tattered photo album. She meticulously tracked his early childhood de...

12/09/2022

In advance of the Thursday premiere of Ken Burns' new three-part documentary, "The US and the Holocaust," some thoughts about the frailty of democracy in contemporary America.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has just published a blockbuster report analyzing membership data of the extremist Oath Keepers organization. The findings should convince Americans of good will -- irrespective of politi...

07/06/2022

In commemoration of the 80th anniversary of mass Jewish deportations by the N**i regime, the German state of Thuringia has coordinated a series of memorials described on a special-purpose website.
https://www.juedisches-leben-thueringen.de/
The events begin on May 9 in Erfurt, the date in 1942 when hundreds of Jews, including the merchant Samuel Gronner and his wife, Helene Sandler Gronner, were ordered to report for a forced "move to the east." As related in the book, "Loss & Legacy," there is no record of their arrival at the purported destination, the Bełżyce ghetto. Margarete Rabow, an artist, has developed a commemorative action in which volunteers will participate. The names of the victims of the Shoah will be inscribed
in chalk throughout the city's public spaces. Tellingly, the project includes participation of the memorial site of Erfurt's former Topf & Sons crematoria manufacturer, which is referenced in the book authored by Sam A. Gronner.

Im Rahmen des Themenjahres Neun Jahrhunderte Jüdisches Leben in Thüringen (1.10.2020–30.9.2021) bietet das Themenportal Menora | Jüdisches Leben in Thüringen einen interaktiven Zugang zum vielfältigen jüdischen Erbe und der gelebten jüdischen Kultur der Gegenwart. Zentrales Element i...

15/05/2022

As noted in this space before, when it comes to and there is nothing new under the sun. Unchallenged words of hate lead to acts of hate: ADL Says Buffalo Shooter Latest in A Long Line of White Supremacist Terrorists Who Embraced Racist, Antisemitic "Great Replacement Theory".

/PRNewswire/ -- The alleged white supremacist who opened fire in a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, killing 10 and injuring three, is the latest in a long line of...

13/03/2022

An ode to the children of by an and

06/03/2022

A key takeaway from Loss & Legacy is that there's nothing new under the sun.

"But perhaps the most striking and frightening aspect of the German flight from reality is the habit of treating facts as though they were mere opinions." From "The Aftermath of N**i Rule - Report from Germany" in the journal "Commentary," authored by Hannah Arendt, 1950.

Photo: Hannah Arendt in her Manhattan apartment, New York City, April 21, 1972. Tyrone Dukes/New York Times Co./Getty Images.

22/02/2022

A question to ponder after reading today's headlines about

Credit: Bundesarchiv

15/02/2022

An important and timely upcoming discussion about the frailty of democracy in times of unease (i.e. pandemic), when the soil is most ripe for sprouting .

Join the Museum for a presentation by Sam Mihara, who was a child prisoner at the Heart Mountain Wyoming Japanese internment camp.

04/02/2022

Use the Episode as a Teaching Moment

had some constructive advice for many who are castigating Whoopi Goldberg for her televised remark on the ABC show "The View." On Twitter and elsewhere, she has apologized for stating that the wasn't abou...

30/01/2022

There's nothing new about revisionism. John Gronner saw it at work immediately after the Second World War.

Jan Grabowski, a professor of history at the University of Ottawa, contributed a New York Times opinion piece in which he points to a twist in remembrances that are designed to deflect from the underlying anti...

17/01/2022

An uplifting tribute to diversity and shared experience in America.

Soul to Soul, the electrifying and emotionally captivating theatrical concert that explores the parallels of African American and Jewish history takes to our virtual stage this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend

09/11/2021

November 9, 1938. Germans no longer use the euphemistic "Night of Broken Glass." The persecution of Jews and their institutions is now referred to as "Reichspogromnacht" , the night of the national pogrom of the German Reich.

17/10/2021

Sam A. Gronner, author of "Loss & Legacy," returned to his parents' final resting place this week to spruce up their joint headstone which has been exposed to the New England elements for nearly a decade.

10/10/2021

October 10. On this date in 1944, Joachim Gronner, serving with the British Army Royal Engineers, and Vera Bakel, like him an emigrant from N**i Germany, were wed in Tel Aviv. From the groom's side, only members of his maternal Sandler kin who had safely made the journey from Germany to Palestine were in attendance. It was not until the following year that he learned that his parents, Helene and Samuel Gronner, had been deported from his home town Ilmenau, Thuringia, and were presumed dead. "In Loss & Legacy," Sam A. Gronner reports the details of his grandparents' deportation and the half-century quest his father pursued to successfully reclaim the property stolen by the N**is as his birthright.

27/07/2021

Sixteen-year-old Jochen Gronner was in Berlin on August 1, 1936 to attend a course to prepare for his emigration to Palestine later that year. Fortuitously he spent 2 Reichsmark to buy a commemorative sheet of first-day postmarked stamps marking the opening day of the XI . While his parents, who remained in Germany, perished in the Holocaust, this collection of memorabilia from the historic Olympic Games survived with him in Israel, and is now in possession of his son Sam Gronner, author of the memoir, "Loss & Legacy."

10/06/2021

The anti-Jewish boycott in 1930s Germany presaged a government pogrom designed to literally eliminate the country's Jewish population. This week in the port of Oakland, Calif. anti-Israel organizers enlisted unionized A...

21/05/2021

“I didn’t want our past to become our children’s future.” - Roman Kent ז"ל

Words of inspiration to read and retell the story of John Gronner, "Loss & Legacy: The Half-Century Quest to Reclaim a Birthright Stolen by the N**is."

He galvanized survivors into a movement to memorialize the Holocaust and spoke often of his experience. “I didn’t want our past to become our children’s future,” he said.