Irving Roth speaks of the gates closed by democracies, especially the betrayal by the FDR administration, to rescue European Jewish men, women and children, six million of whom were murdered in unspeakable ways. He draws on his experience growing up in a small town in what became Fascist Slovakia after the appeasement by Britain and France at Munich in 1938 broke up what was pre-WWII Czechoslovakia. First it was No Jews allowed in the town parks, no bathing in the beach on the River, then no Jews allowed to attend school. Then after the Final Solution Nazi Wannsee Conference in Berlin in January 1942, 1,800 of the town’s 2,000 Jews were marched to the synagogue, locked inside and “resettled” -meaning sent to one of the six Nazi killing center. He and his family were among the 200 Jews left behind.
He tells of the loss of his family's lumber business through “aryanization” and betrayal by Christian friends in his community in Slovakia. The family escape in 1943 to a small village in Hungary in 1943 here they have relatives, while his parents move on to find work in Budapest. That haven ended in 1944, when the Horthy and Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross party capitulated to German occupation and Eichmann began transports to Auschwitz – Birkenau.
Beyond the Matrix 12FEB2020 - PODCAST