Holocaust Survivor Talking to the England Team

[Macmoish]

Telegraph – Henry Winters

Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper will tell England players the importance of speaking out against intolerance

England players must speak out against intolerance in society, says the Holocaust survivor who will talk to them before they visit Auschwitz. Zigi Shipper, who settled in London after the War, now spends his life giving lectures on the Holocaust and Auschwitz, which is close to England's Euro 2012 base in Krakow.

“It means a lot to me to speak to the England players,’’ said Shipper, 82. “I’m going next Thursday to speak to them at The Grove and on the Friday, I hope to take my grandkids to Wembley to watch training.
“Players are role models. They have to understand what happened at Auschwitz and to speak out against intolerance. Look what happened to them in Spain in 2004 when they were abused. We have to stop that. People listen to footballers.

“People do deny the Holocaust. Anti-semites. Racists. They deny it. That’s why I give talks. That’s why I keep travelling and speaking. I owe it to the people that did not survive Auschwitz.
“Whole families were slaughtered. It’s like they never existed. There’s nobody there to tell their story. I get five phone-calls a day from the Holocaust Educational Trust to go here or there.
“I will tell the players my story of what happened to me as a child. I was in the ghetto in Lodz. I was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. I was lucky. We were one of the few transports arriving on a ‘named’ list. We were going to work in a factory.

“The other people on the train weren’t named and they went to ‘selection.’ Ninety per cent of them went to the right – women, old people, disabled. Sometimes the guards came over and asked the women to put their child down. Mothers wouldn’t. So the guards tried to rip the children out of their arms. If they didn’t succeed, they shot the woman or the child or both.

“I ask myself the question every day: ‘How can a human being do that? Killing babies in the daytime and then in the evening sitting down with his wife and children, have dinner, listen to music, what kind of people are they? If I called them animals, I’d be insulting animals.
“We found out about the gas chambers a few days later. We got told by the Jewish people on the Kommando, doing all the dirty work, taking the people to the chambers. After every six months they themselves were put in the gas chambers. When you are a child you can’t take it all in.

“When I think today of the people running Auschwitz, we are talking about educated people, doctors, like Josef Mengele. You can’t say they were hooligans or thugs. They had university degrees.
“I’m a happy man. But there are scenes I can never forget. I can still see five young men, early twenties, who were caught stealing cigarettes. They were hung in front of us. They kicked the stools away themselves so they wouldn’t give the Germans the chance to do it. I can see the fathers who watched helpless as their children were taken away to be slaughtered.

“I was starving every day for almost five years. Occasionally, I managed to steal carrots or potatoes when I worked on a railway station. How did I survive? Maybe I should say ‘God’ because at my age I have to be friends with him. But 95 per cent was pure luck. I jumped off a lorry. If the guards had seen me they would have shot me. They never shouted ‘stop or I’ll shoot’. They just shot everybody.
“If I hadn’t had friends in Auschwitz, I wouldn’t be alive today. At the end, the camp went on a death march. You either walked or they killed you. I couldn’t walk. I had typhus. How did I survive? I can’t ask a priest or a rabbi that because their answer is, ‘God didn’t want you to die’. I survived seven days, no water, no food, no medication, having typhus.’’ Friends helped him.

His own resilience too. When Shipper suffered a heart attack in 1981, the doctors told his wife Jeannette of their deep concerns about his chances of survival. “The Germans tried five years to kill him and failed,’’ she said, “so don’t worry about it.”
Shipper feels no anger towards Germans. He was at Wembley at Euro 96, watching England lose to Germany, but would never mix emotions about war and sport.

“Students ask me, ‘Do you hate the German people?’ I say ‘No, why should I hate people?’ It’s not their fault that their great grandfather committed a crime. We can’t blame every German generation otherwise there will never be peace. And remember that even during the war, there were German families that hid Jewish children.’’
Seeing suffering anywhere angers him. “I was at No 10, talking to Gordon Brown and I told him that when I watch TV and I see a child with an empty bowl I feel bad. If that bowl had been full the child would have been alive. He said: ‘We do what we can.’ I feel ashamed when I eat knowing that in 2012 there are children dying of starvation. How can we allow that? We are civilised, aren’t we?’’
Shipper is looking forward to meeting the players. “I’m really into sport, especially football. I’m an Arsenal fan by pure accident. The girl I used to go out with lived in Highbury. So I thought I’ll go to the football on Saturday afternoon and then afterwards pick her up.’’
Shipper is remarkably positive, talking proudly of his grandchildren and his love of Britain, his voice faltering really only when discussing what happened to his father. “I tried in all the archives, in Washington, Yad Vashem, the Imperial War Museum but I couldn’t find anything. It was like he never existed. People talk about Auschwitz-Birkenau. That wasn’t the only camp. There were many camps. Dachau, Belsen, Sobibor. For one reason. Just to kill people.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/england/9286111/Holocaust-survivor-Zigi-Shipper-will-tell-England-players-the-importance-of-speaking-out-against-intolerance.html

[kempton ranger]

Very very moving in fact reading that brings me close to tears.

I for one have been to the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and you walk away from there a changed person.

On my life.

[londonranger]

For another comprehensive look at entire holocaust, watch the film Shoah, filmed with many involved participants, or watch on You tube, about, 70 episodes. getting through it is not easy.

[Macmoish]

BBC - Avram Grant's Annual Trip to Auschwitz

'And now, we go to hell' - Avram Grant

Dan Walker | Monday, 28 May 2012
You can hear Avram's Journey on BBC Radio 5 Live from 20:00 BST on Tuesday, 29 May.

Avram Grant's story is an incredible one. We know him as the quietly spoken man who took Chelsea to within a John Terry penalty of the Champions League title in 2008.

We know him as the boss at West Ham and the man who gave the passionate speech to Portsmouth fans on the brink of relegation and administration in 2010.
His own story - the son of a Polish Jew who married the daughter of an influential Iraqi lawyer who was forced to flee to Israel - is remarkable, but the history of his family is as rich as it is tragic, as heart-warming as it is heart-breaking and as inspiring as it is dark.
Grant was aware his father had survived the Holocaust, but knew very little of his previous life until an unforgettable night as a teenager in Tel Aviv.

Avram Grant sitting on a bench outside his grandfather's house
"I'd never heard a scream like it," Grant tells me at our Warsaw hotel. He was 15 years old and on the balcony of the family home with friends. His father was asleep inside but weeping and wailing from his bed.
"I rushed to his room to see what was wrong. For once my mother was not there to calm him down. For the first time my father told me what really happened in his childhood, why he screamed each night in his sleep. Since that night I have always needed to know more."
Meir Granat had been born in the town of Mlawa, one of three million Jews living in Poland before the beginning of World War II.
In 1937, Meir's father, Avram, fearing something bad was going to happen, decided that the family had to leave Mlawa. He took his wife and nine of his 10 children on a three-year trek that would take them across Poland, via the Warsaw ghetto, and eventually to the remote region of Komi in Russia.
"I always wanted to ask my grandfather why he left here," Grant explains as we sit in the major's office in Mlawa waiting for the arrival of some family documents. "What did he see that others missed? What did he see that [then Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain didn't? He went to great lengths to protect his family".
One child, Hertsel, was hidden in a monastery. Rachel and Estera were placed in an orphanage. The rest were hassled and harried around Eastern Europe. On one occasion the train they were on was stopped and two more of Grant's father's siblings - Koppel & Hannah - were taken away and never seen again.
"They both died in Auschwitz," Grant says with a heavy heart. "The Germans took the rest of my father's family, and many other Jews, to Russia. The train stopped again, but this time, when everybody got off, it just left them behind in temperatures as low as -40. They were all meant to die." Many did.
The former Chelsea boss continues: "They were forced to live in the forest. Each day my father would see new bodies on the floor - he was there for almost four years."

Grant's aunt Sarah, 15 at the time, was the first to die from eating poisonous mushrooms in a desperate search for food in October 1940.
"My father buried his sister with his own hands," he says. One by one the family passed away - crippled by the cold and hunger. "In total, my father dug a grave for his father, his mother and five other members of his family - all with his own hands. Imagine that? What was going through his head? I've been to this place, I had to go.
"People can get lost in the numbers. Six million killed seems incredible - too many to contemplate - but what fascinates me is how they survived day to day.
"What did they think about in the morning when they got up? How did they get by on a quarter of a potato every other day? How did they not just give up when they had no idea when it would end?"

That is what strikes you about Avram Grant - the need to know. There are huge sections of his family history that remain blank, but with each document he finds the past is being pieced together.
On his first trip back to Mlawa in 2000 he found the house where his father grew up. This time, as we were handed the papers by the town hall media officer, there was another discovery.

"My grandfather had a twin brother? This is incredible. I can't believe it," Grant bows his head and covers his eyes with his hands for a moment. "Last time I came here I cried like a baby but I'm stronger now. I need to ring my sister."
This has been the pattern for many years. With each discovery of a birth certificate, an address, a new relative, Grant rings his sister, then his last surviving uncle, then Avi - the son of his father's sister Estera, who is one 150,000 people buried in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.
"We now know where your grandfather lived. I can take you if you like," says Magda from the town hall.

On the way, she explains that the house remains unchanged from the 1930s. In fact, of all the houses we saw in Mlawa, only three are as they were 75 years ago - Grant's grandfather's house, his dad's house and the one next door. "It's almost like they were waiting for me," Grant says, as he fills a carrier bag of soil from his father's old backyard. "I will sprinkle this on his grave - it's Jewish tradition."
Walking through the house, Grant remembers everything from his father's description. "This is where my grandfather worked on making leather," he says, pointing at a shed. "And this is where I like to think my father played football, but I don't know for sure," he chuckled. "I'm the only one in my family who likes football."
Before we left Mlawa, there was one final poignant reminder of the family's grim past. In the town hall, we'd learnt that Grant's grandfather had another brother called Bunem, who had decided to stay in the town rather than leave in the late 1930s.

In the car he receives a phone call. "That's why my grandfather left," he exclaims as he finished the call. Bunem had been rounded up by the Germans. He, his wife, and their five children had all been taken to Auschwitz and been gassed. "My grandfather's plan was a crazy one, but at least some survived. My father had to bury more than half his family, but if they hadn't left Mlawa I would not be here today."
The following day we travelled to Auschwitz ourselves. Grant could have flown but chose to go by train. He continues: "It's a journey I feel I had to make. The last time members of my family were on a train to Auschwitz it was very different - crammed into a carriage and certainly no cup of coffee." As we step off the train he breathes deeply and whispers to me: "And now, we go to hell."

What strikes you about Auschwitz is the size of the place and the silence, almost as though it's designed to make you stop and think. There are no birds in the sky - almost no noise at all. Nearby Birkenau was simply a killing machine - home to four giant gas chambers, each of which was brutally efficient and could asphyxiate 2,000 people at a time. Their business was death.
The Nazis destroyed much of the camp as they fled, but the train line that delivered over one million people from all over Europe to their death is still in place. As you stare at the barbed wire and watchtowers that stretch as far as you can see, you can't help but be stunned by the scale of the crime.

As we stand by gas chamber two, Grant ruminates: "I wonder how they did it? How do you murder others and then go home to your family? How do you burn someone alive or clean up the bodies of children and then go back to your own children and tell them what you did that day?"
Many Holocaust survivors ask the same question. He continues: "My father grew up an orthodox Jew, but lost his faith during the war because of what he went through. I think it's easy to understand why. It's impossible to bury half your family and remain unchanged.
"I spoke to Roy [Hodgson] recently and I told him that when England come to Auschwitz during Euro 2012 I would love to be part of it and take them around. The players need to know what happened. We all need to remember, otherwise we'll soon forget the scale of the horror. No-one leaves here the same person. You can't.

"I first came here in 1988 when I was manager of Hapoel Petah Tikva. The next day one of my team, the left-back, was unable to play. After standing in the gas chamber, he said 'boss, I can't do it'. I will never forget that. Thankfully the others were inspired and we won 3-0."
Each year he returns to Auschwitz with Holocaust survivors for the 'March of the Living', but his father has never gone back to Poland. "He couldn't face it," says Grant. "Too many bad memories."
Despite everything, Meir Granat remained a calm and gracious man until his death in October 2009. "He never hated anyone," Grant explains, almost in disbelief: "He always told me there were good people as well as the bad. He never held a grudge, never wanted revenge.

"To see him during the day you'd never know what he went through. I know because of the screaming in the night. I know because I knew my father. I can still hear him screaming sometimes. There are no words to describe the sound."
Grant puffs out his cheeks and a broad grin crosses his face. "You know these last few days have changed things - I know so much more than I did. I will never stop searching but I feel more peaceful about it all," he adds.

As we walk under the infamous Auschwitz gates that read 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work Brings Freedom), he again becomes emotional: "My own son, Daniel, came here last year. He called me from this point and asked what his grandfather would want him to do."
With tears in his eyes, Grant recalls: "I told him to look at the sky in this horrible place and smile. That's what he did. My father was always smiling, always seeing the best in people, always positive, always optimistic. I could never understand how."
That's what I will take from my trip to Poland with Avram Grant. I'll never forget the look on his face when he saw the birth certificates in Mlawa or the smile when he walked around the garden his grandfather played in as a child.

The images and silence of Auschwitz will stay with me forever but my enduring memory will be Grant's father, a man I never met but now feel I know so much about. If Meir Granat could be optimistic with all that he saw, surely we all can.
Avram Grant asked that any fees for the programme would be donated to a charity for Holocaust survivors.

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/danwalker/2012/05/avram_grants_story_is_an.html

[CookesPie&Mash]

Yawn ..........someone needs to talk to them thats for sure !!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Deleted]

I hope all the team meet him, very humbling thats for sure, how could any of us even begin to imagine what those people went through in those camps.

[Macmoish]

Audio of the BBC Programme with Avram Grant
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01j8lcc/5_live_Sport_Avrams_Journey/

[ozzh00p]

'I can see the fathers who watched helpless as their children were taken away to be slaughtered.'

That rammed it home for me.Imagine watching your kids being led away to be killed.No really try and imagine it .
My Sister and Mum visited Auschwitz a couple of years ago.She was bubbling up telling me about it a year later..


Read more: qprreport.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=31671&page=1#263014#ixzz1wLDIsq00

[scubahoop]

Primo Levi's 'If this is a Man' is a brilliant starting point if you want to find out more about the Holocaust. Also, some excellent documentaries on BBC History - 'Grandchild of the Holocuast' in particular. Just google it and you will find it.

[Macmoish]

AFP
www.thelocal.de/national/20120604-42939.html

Jewish leader slams Auschwitz visit

Published: 4 Jun 12

The president of Germany's Council of Jews has accused the German Football Association (DFB) of "colossal insensitivity" for only sending three players to take part in Friday's Auschwitz visit.

The delegation included just three players from the national team – captain Philipp Lahm and Polish-born veterans Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski – as well as head coach Joachim Löw, team manager Oliver Bierhoff and DFB president Wolfgang Niersbach.

But Graumann, speaking on Sunday at the community day of the Central Council in Hamburg, accused Bierhoff of "colossal insensitivity and tastelessness." He condemned the failure to organise a visit by the whole squad, as the England team has done.

According to Monday's edition of Die Welt newspaper, Bierhoff, a former international player whose current role involves overseeing the team's public relations, rationalised the small size of the visiting party as an effort to avoid a media circus.

The DFB was keen for Friday’s visit to remain low-key, with the footballing group instructed not to speak to the press, instead leaving a short note in the museum’s visitors book. "For football too Auschwitz represents both a silent tribute and, above all, an obligation to speak," they wrote.

But this effort to downplay the tribute angered Graumann, who lamented a missed chance to "reach out to hundreds of thousands of young people." Particular scorn was reserved for Bierhoff, who Graumann said was guilty of "untold damage."

The controversy is merely the latest episode in a long dispute between Graumann and the DFB.

The Euro 2012 tournament in Poland and Ukraine, which begins on Friday, is the first edition of the continental showpiece to be held in eastern Europe, and has provoked uncomfortable questions for the German football hierarchy over how best to acknowledge the country’s troubled history.

In March Graumann said the DFB would "send a deadly signal to the world" if the German visit to Poland and Ukraine passed without a public act of remembrance.

This angered Bierhoff, who felt that Graumann’s decision to publicly air his grievances had denied the German team the opportunity to be seen to make their own decisions.

"A visit was already under consideration," he retorted. "Of course we will deal with the topic of the Holocaust with the players, whether it be through a lecture or a Kamingespräch (fireside chat)."

That disagreement led Graumann to interpret the modest delegation as an act of "brutal retaliation" by Bierhoff against his earlier criticisms. He also condemned the use of the term Kamingespräch as "intolerable," saying it evoked memories of the giant crematoria used at the concentration camp.

As well as Germany and England, the teams from the Netherlands and Italy are also planning to visit the memorial at Auschwitz during the tournament. The latter three teams are all based in Krakow, 50 kilometres from the modern-day town of Oswiecim, which Auschwitz is named after.

The German football team was not the only sporting institution to attract Graumann’s ire during his Sunday address. He also reproached the International Olympic Committee, who recently announced that there would be no minute’s silence during the opening ceremony of the London Games for the Israeli athetes murdered during the Munich Olympics 40 years ago.

AFP/The Local/jpg

www.thelocal.de/national/20120604-42939.html

[Macmoish]

Guardian

Euro 2012: England players to visit Auschwitz and Schindler's factory

• Joe Hart and Wayne Rooney among those going to Auschwitz
• Steven Gerrard to lead group going to Schindler's factory

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 June 2012 18.01 EDT

Roy Hodgson will join a group of England players on Friday afternoon in breaking away from preparations for their opening group game against France to pay what is sure to be an emotional visit to nearby Auschwitz.

The trip, which has been organised in conjunction with the Holocaust Educational Trust, comes after two Holocaust survivors addressed the squad before their departure for Poland. The striker Wayne Rooney and the goalkeeper Joe Hart are among the six members of the playing staff expected to attend, with the Football Association chairman, David Bernstein, and other executives also to travel to the site, some 30 miles outside Krakow, where an estimated 1.3m people were murdered between 1940 and 1945.

Other players are due to visit the former factory in Krakow of Oskar Schindler, who was credited with saving more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust, with those in the squad having been deeply moved by the first-hand testimonies offered by Zigi Shipper and Ben Helfgott. "You could hear a pin drop when they spoke to us," said Hart. "I've never known a room so silent and intense as they spoke, with people hanging off their every word as they spoke about what had happened to them, what they did and what was their message now.

"There was no hate. They weren't angry. They just had that message about how you can always be a better person. I couldn't get over them – they were amazing. They spoke about what roles we have as footballers: that a lot of people look up to you, even though we were looking up to them at the time; and how you should treat people as you meet them. It got me. They were two amazing people. Really, really impressive.

"I asked to be one of the players who will go to Auschwitz. Ever since Krakow was chosen as our base, my dad had told me I needed to go and experience this. It's hard to talk about – I'm not being sick or perverse – but you need to see these things to appreciate them. It's talked about and you hear people chuck words out like 'Holocaust', but you need to know what they are. It gives you more of a feeling of the history of this world."

England have been to Auschwitz before, when Glenn Hoddle was manager in the late 1990s, but the FA is keen for members of the current squad who have not been before to visit the concentration camp, with the trip sure to offer a sense of perspective. More players than it will be possible to accommodate on what is intended to be a discreet visit had requested to attend, with Rooney and Hart likely to be joined by Theo Walcott, Jack Butland, Leighton Baines and Phil Jagielka, whose family hail from Poland. The captain, Steven Gerrard, who has visited Auschwitz in the past, is expected to lead the delegation to Schindler's factory.

www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jun/07/euro-2012-england-players-auschwitz?newsfeed=true

[cpr]

Not sure a visit there is a good idea for players prior to a tournament of this nature.

That place messes with your head far too much.

[londonranger]

If you want to see what happened go to YOUtube and watch SHOAH, about 60-70 episodes.