Share your thoughts
These are some of the wonderful comments I have received. Please add your thoughts!
Dov Yair (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia)
This book is an amazing piece of history…. These photos bring back a lost world that will never return…along with Roman Vishniac’s collection of photographs.
Audrey Friedman Marcus (Denver, Colorado)
The images are beautiful, moving, sad, thought-provoking, significant, and somehow even uplifting. These treasured reminders of family and friends, and of a normal life that was forever destroyed, are a testimony to the human cost of the Nazi atrocities in a way that the more familiar, explicit photos of heaps of dead bodies can never be.
Alfred Nicolisi (Penns Grove, NJ)
While many books about the Holocaust focus on broken remnants of the victims’ physical existence, Weiss’s extraordinary album restores to them their smiles, laughter and songs. With painstaking research and dedication…, Weiss learned their names and family histories. The result is nothing less than a miracle: a restoration to the world of the living, in spirit at least, of these beautiful people of Bendin whose dreams were shattered by events that seem incomprehensible to us today. In one especially touching photo, Artur Huppert holds his twenty-month-old son, Peterle, on his shoulder for the boy’s grandparents with the inscription, “Healthy and strong to the age of 120. Radiant as the moon.” The rest would be silence if it were not for Weiss’s project of remembrance.
From Devorah Lourie
My mother told me about your book. My father is from Sosnowiec. Most of his family was killed in Auschwitz. Years ago I heard a story about a man who ran out into the street shortly after the war was over, yelling, “I took revenge on Hitler!”
He was asked how.
His answer: “My wife just had a baby.”
You, too, are “taking revenge” by bring to life some of what was destroyed by the Nazis through all your work.
From Alan Adelson, Executive Director, Jewish Heritage
Dear Ann,
I’ve been lost for a while in The Last Album. I thought I’d better pull myself away to write before I become lost again in the book for a long while, which is what I intend to do. As you know better than anyone else, these photographs prompt the sort of contemplation about ourselves and those we have so cruelly lost.
From Richelle Budd Caplan, Coordinator for Overseas Programming
International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
M.G. brought me a copy of your book. That night I read every word and looked at every picture from cover to cover. I was fully immersed in the book. Thank you for bringing these pictures to so many people.
From Lori Orchow Haney
My family comes from the Ukraine. My grandfather was a shochet. Thank you for publishing your book. Somehow looking at people in the pictures makes the entire hell of the Holocaust even less believable, simply because it puts faces to names, and I cannot fathom how anyone could be so devoid of human feeling.
From Ronald Hallett
Hi Ann, If the world had a fraction of the passion you posses,their would be no evil.You did a wonderful presentation tonight.
Debbie Kopel Kintish
Hello Ann
I met you tonight at the Hillel evening event, I am still enjoying the inspiration you passed on.You remind me of a pebble being dropped in a calm body of water…….your voice, your stories are the ripples that
reach to the ends of the earth. You have a calm but powerful affect of everyone’s life you touch.Thank you for the sacrifices you have made in you life to make this happen
Posted in Public Comments |
July 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 am
Madame Weiss,
Tout d’abord pardon de vous écrire en Français mais je m’exprime très mal en Anglais. J’espère que vous parlez français.
Hier, je me promenais rue des Rosiers à Paris, j’adore cette rue, les gens y sont chaleureux et j’aime les odeurs de cuisines juives qui sortent des restaurants. Je dois vous dire que je ne suis pas de concession juive.
Donc en me promenant dans cette belle rue, je me suis arrêté dans une librairie (juive) et sur une table dehors il y avait un livre, votre livre « The last album », je ne sais pas pourquoi j’ai décidé de l’acheter, une foi chez moi, je me suis plongé dans l’album, une émotion, des larmes, de la souffrance, de l’amour pour tous ses gens.
Alors pour eux pour moi, je voulais vous remercier, grâce à vous j’ai eu l’impression hier que ses gens, ses frères, ses sœurs, ses parents, ses amis étaient vivants, étaient heureux le temps de ma lecture.
Je ne suis qu’une goutte d’eau dans cet océan humain, mais je veux sauver la mémoire de ses gens en n’oubliant pas qu’un jour de juillet 2007 un livre m’a ému aux larmes.
Votre « album » restera dans ma bibliothèque à la vue de tous, pour qu’un jour, un moment, un ami, un frère, une sœur, mon fils ou ma fille le prenne et fasse revivre la mémoire de ses gens la.
Cordialement
Luc
This note arrived in July 2007, just after I finished paricipating in a Genocide conference in Sarajevo.
This French letter has been loosely translated with help from my cousin, Ruben Fuks, MD, of former Yugoslavia. Following the translation of letter received from Paris July 2007 via web site/Share Your Thoughts, is a short reply, with digging back in memory from high school French–Apologies to those who speak French. Ann
Madame Weiss,
Before anything else, pardon my writing to you in French because I am expressing myself very badly in English. I hope you speak French.
Yesterday I tool a walk on the Rue de Rosiers in Paris. I love this street.
People there with their warmth and I love the odors of Jewsih kitchens which come out of the restaurants.
I ought to tell you that I am not Jewish.
While I was walking through that nice street, I stopped at one [Jewish] bookstore and on one table, they had your book The Last Album. I don’t know why, I decided to buy it.
When I came to my home, I dived/submerged into the album. In emotion, in tears, in suffering, the love for all these people.
Alors/Well, for them, and for me, I would like to thank you.
Due to you, I have had the impression yesterday of these people–their brothers, their sisters, their parents, their friends–have been alive, have been happy at the time of my reading.
I am not more than a drop of water in that human ocean but I want to save the memory of those people and not to forget that one day in July 2007, when a book provoked my tears.
Your album is going to stay in my library so that everyone can see it because one day, one moment, one friend, one brother, one sister, my son or my daughter, is going to take it and revive (or re-live) the memory of these people there.
Cordially,
Luc
Mon ami Luc,
Merci beaucoup pour votre mots merveilleux.
Vous avea exprime’ poetiquement tous que je voulais provoke’ avec mon livre, La Derniere Album.
Je suis desolee que mon francaise peut pas parer votre puissance extraordinaries.
En Anglais, je finirerai.
Ann
[Translation of Ann's response]
My friend Luc,
Thank you very much for your marvelous words.
You have expressed poetically all that I wanted to provoke/stimulate with my book, The Last Album.
I am desolate that my French is so inadequate compared to your extraordinary eloquence.
I will continue in English.
Luc, too often people think of the victims of genocide as simply “bodies”
and bodies that have nothing to do with them. Your comments, your reaction, and your taking the time to write to me are all appreciated more than I can express. And the fact that you can feel the humanity of these people through the cherished photos they brought to Auschwitz fills me with enormous gratitude.
As Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel has often said, “TO forget them is to kill them once again.” In your remembering, in your keeping the book in case a friend or your children or someone else will one day see it, and then look in these faces as you have done–Luc, you have made it possible with your caring, and with your heart and eyes wide open, that these Eyes from the Ashes” shall be remembered.
And as long as you care, they ‘live’ a little bit more.
Thank you–both for the beautiful words you expressed, and even more for the beautiful sentiments that moved you to write. I am so very grateful. Ann
April 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Hi Anne,
I was at your talk at a Haddasah function a little while ago. Your book has had an unbelievable effect on me - I look at it often. As I told you, I am from South Africa and have seen a lot of injustice done. Thank you for what you have done.
Mandy Goldin
Narberth, PA
May 7th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Hi Anne,
I am the grandson of one of the photographers whose company name was found on the back of 5 photos (Bracia Altman). After I bought your book, I purchased also “Before they perished” where the 2400 are shown. A combination of the 2 books is a treasure. Last year I visited Auschwitz and I felt that the exposure of the pictures is a present for the past end next generations.
Robert Altman
June 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Dear Ann, At a recent booksigning of my book about his life, Holocaust Survivor Hugo Schillerof Myrtle Beach shouted, “Hitler is dead, but my three grandsons are here! That is my answer to him.” As you know Hugo’s parents were murdered at Auschwitz but Hugo was rescued by the Quaker Refugee Relief Organization. I keep asking him whether I was on the ship when he came into the harbor at Baltimore. I was born July 24, 1942, the day Hugo arrived in the US. My Father was in Baltimore that same week to sign up to join the Army and go fight in the Battle of the Bulge where my uncle was in the Army. My uncle still lives in NC.
Peace.Keep up the good work.
Arielle Aaron(Joy)
———————————————–
Dear Arielle,
Thank you so much for writing to me and for sharing Hugo’s inspiring thoughts. He’s right, of course, Hugo is here–as are his grandsons–and Hitler is not. And although we cannot do anything to undo the devastation wrought by Hitler and all those who perpetrated his brutality (as well as those who remained silent), what we can do, with a vengeance, is to celebrate life–each life, including Hugo’s grandsons, and to make life better–to the full extent of our capacity–for those who are living today.
Again, thanks Arielle for sharing your thoughts, and allowing me to share mine with you. Ann
January 15th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Dear Ann,
I am a student at CVCC-Phenix City, AL. and I’m studing Humanities-101, “Holocaust studies”. As a 41yr old African American I can relate to the evil acts that have been implicted on one race of people, but find it difficult to maintain my objectivity about soceity as a whole. How do you continue to press forward and continue your devotion to educate and enlightnen all mankind about our past sins, without total desparity and solace?
———————————————————————
Dear Loretta,
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking and challenging question. You asked how to maintain objectivity about society as a whole, and also how I continue to press forward to educate mankind about past sins, without total despair?
In truth, sometimes it is so very discouraging, and I feel despair–not so much about the people I directly educate, but about the dire situation in the world as a whole. Take now, for example, there are so many problems in so many quadrants of the world–wars, economic collapse, crises domestically and abroad, and of course, the interior problems with which each of us grapples, that there are times, I hardly know where to begin or what to do–but these are exactly the times not to give up.
I feel that, when things are at their worst, that’s the time to try to find the best that is within us. And if your best connects to my best connects to his best and her best–then we better able to make a difference.
Loretta, I’ll admit something to you–and I can sense that you are feeling it too with your study of the Holocaust:
The more I learn about the Holocaust–and what evil people are capapble of perpetrating upon other people–the less I understand. However, together with the horror, I have been blessed to see the greatness of individuals as well.
The world might have, as a whole, remained silent when we needed action (with minor exceptions), but together with the evil–or silence–that made the horror possible, I have also been blessed to meet many individuals who remained human in the face of such gross inhumanity. In future postings, I’ll write about some of these people–not just for you, but for me as well–to help us remember the goodness in the world.
Thank you so much for writing to me, and for giving me a chance to talk about why I’m doing what I’m doing. I look forward to hearing from you again. And remember, there are a lot of people who feel despair at our difficult (collective and individual) history–yet, we must not give up, or let the despair overtake us. It’s imperative that we keep struggling to make things better, and that we try to connect with others who understand what’s impotant in life, so the struggle is not always a solitary one.
Again, thanks again for sharing your thoughts with me, Loretta, and for letting me share mine with you. Ann
January 19th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
DEAR:ANN,
I’am impressed about the interesting photos you came upon.It’s so amazing on how you were able to come across artifacts with such true meaning.The photos being in black and white and how the people in the photos look although they were going through alot of hard times they still seemed to be holding on.