The-Ave.US

Five and a half years after my father’s death, my brother Hugh Schwartz and his co-executor Martin Miasserian, still refuse to allow my father’s pictures to be preserved and made public. The pictures, as described elsewhere on THE Ave, were made when then Captain Robert Schwartz, along with other Americans, discovered Buchenwald ..three days before the official events described below in the website Holocaust Timeline.

My Dad returned to Boston after the war, to a neighborhood that was still so anti-Semitic that the sisters teaching catechism got my school mates to stone me for murdering their God, Jesus. My Dad fought that antisemitism too by being a great family doctor and a hero to many of the poor Irish and Italian Catholic families he helped.

Now I have nightmares, not over the stoning but over my brother’s cruelty. He has even filed an affidavit in court accusing me, my son and daughter of theft. He has called my step sister a “thief” and a “witch”. My step sister, who cared for my Dad for the last ten years of Robert’s very frail old age, deserves all of our gratitude.

While Hugh behaves in this hateful way, abetted by Mr. Miasserian who has his own ethical issues, the images are dying because my Dad never had the chemicals to properly finish his processing in a make shift darkroom. As a result, Hugh’s own daughter .. recently bat mtizvahed, may never see her grandfather’s amazing heritage.

This vendetta is shameful. It dishonors not only my Dad, but the remaining soldiers and inmates who still survive. Even if he hates me, why should he hurt them?

Now he is demanding that I stop posting on this subject. I have offered, instead, to give him the chance to answer for himself or, if he wishes, to correct any false statements I have made.

The only response has been more hate filled emails, hundreds of them, directed at me, my children and even my attorney. They only stopped sending these to me when I threatened to publish their mails on the web.

I think Hugh is too caught up in hate to do the right thing.

American soldiers escort children              survivors of Buchenwald out of the main gate of the camp. Among the children              pictured is future Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel (fourth child in              the left column).                 Young survivors behind a barbed              wire fence in Buchenwald.                 American soldiers view a pile              of human remains outside the crematorium in Buchenwald.                 Crematoria ovens in Buchenwald              concentration camp.                 An American soldier sorts through              crates of silverware taken from prisoners in Buchenwald. The crates were              hidden in a nearby cave along with other boxes of confiscated belongings.                 An exhibit of human remains and              artifacts retrieved by the U.S. Army from a pathology laboratory run by              the SS in Buchenwald. These items were used as evidence of SS atrocities.              The items include tattooed skin taken from executed prisoners, a lampshade              made of human skin, and two shrunken heads from Polish prisoners who were              recaptured after escaping from the camp and executed.