(Zorastrian New Year) comes exactly one month before the liberation of Buchenwald.
The date is especially important to me for two reasons.
First, Nowruz has significance most Jews do not know about. When we went into exile in Babylon, the state religion of Babylon was Zorastrianism. Many aspects of modern Judaism came from that experience … Purim, the idea of angels, and not mixing milk and meat! Later, after Islam, Jews and Zoroastrians suffered equally as tolerated minorities within the Umma, the community of the universal religion of Islam.
Second, my brother has just threatened to allow my father’s own heritage from the liberation … his photographs and letters written during the liberation of Buchenwald … to rot. Hugh’s anger at me is sadly all too similar to the attitude of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Commemorating Nowruz, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the “Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened.”
For his part, Israeli President Shimon Peres expressed the feeling most Jews have toward Iran. The President reached out appealing for Israel and the Islamic Republic to “forget war and threatening” and have a year of “silence and peace”.
Khamenei’s rhetoric came after Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani was quoted by CNN as condemning the Holocaust. Iranian media later accused CNN of fabricating Rouhani’s comments. Rouhini’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, called the Holocaust a “horrifying tragedy” in an interview with a German television station late last month. This too led Islamic hardliners in Iran’s parliament to summon the Minister.
I wish on this Nowruz that Hugh would take a lesson from President Peres. Surely, these pictures should be made available to all, including Khamenei and other deniers. The letters and pictures in that safe in Boston should be seen by the survivors who still live. Hopefully, they will remember our father, Robert Schwartz, Captain in the US Army Medical Corps.
A warning to the reader: The author of this blog makes statements on this blog that are frequently misleading and sometimes fiction. For example, he writes here that “my brother has just threatened to allow my father’s own heritage from the liberation .. his photographs and letters written during the liberation of Buchenwald .. to rot.” Indeed, it is SMS, the author of this misstatement, who has held up the donation of their father’s estate’s WWII photos and other memorabilia to a major University by (a) withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle — despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) failing to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.
Dr, Quick has been a frequent troll here and is my brother in law. In addition to heis own name, I believe he has posted under the names “Bob Raymond” and “Roberta Flack.”
Bill has been invited to send me a more cogent post explaining Hugh’ stand. I have offered to post his viewpoint it completely as long as it has no comment that is overtly obscene or otherwise in violation of reasonable principles of civil discourse.
For the record, the university he refers to is Hugh’s alma matter, Brandeis. Although I prefer a more appropriate venue devoted to the issues of the Holocaust, and did not participate in Hugh’s choice, Brandeis subscribes to the normal open access policies practiced by mots American Universities. These policies would make the materials freely available for pubic use. A gift to Brandeis, therefore, would fulfill the concerns expressed in this other and other posts about Buchenwald. I have agreed to Brandies’ policies, Hugh and Bill’s wife, my sister Stephanie, have refused unless they have control over the access. In the meantime, the materials, poorly processed photographs and negatives now 70 years old, continue (in his brother words) to “rot” in his lawyer’s safe.
Again, if Bill or Hugh want to explain their point of view on THE Ave, they are free to do so.
Why do you consider it appropriate to discuss details of your “family feud” — which is clearly a private matter — in public?
I have responded already. The reason that Buchenwald is a public matter is that Hugh’s vendetta has blocked the availability of our father’s heritage for almost six years. For all that time he has been intransigent, expressing his hatred for me or asserting that my father hated me as justification or this horrid behavior.
This post about Nawruz illustrates just one reason Hugh’s actions anf your support for him are a dreadful thing. Keeping these pictures rotting in his lawyer’s safe while the survivors die is a terrible act I would protest even if Hugh were not my brother.
I do not think using the comments thread to litigate the matter makes sense, however since I have made the issue public, again, I have offered you the opportunity to present some other view as a formal post.
SMS blithely ignores the facts I mentioned above: (a) he is withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle — despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) it is him who is failing to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.
As I have said, litigation by comment thread is not a good idea. That si the job of courts available to all parties to resolve charges and counter charges. Suffice it to say that I did agree to a gift under Brandeis’ normal terms. If Dr. Quick. or Hugh. wishes to do so, they are free to write a cogent post stating their views.
The reason for the “family feud” is amply demonstrated above: SMS continually misstates facts and changes the subject when he doesn’t want to answer a question. The simple facts are (1) SMS is holding some of his father’s WWII materials at his residence in Seattle and is refusing to return them despite his signing an agreement in which he agreed to do so, and (2) he and his attorney have made all sorts of inappropriate demands (such as the Estate, rather than the recipient organization, paying for preservation of the WWII materials) before being willing to sign a Deed of Gift.
Also, the reader should be aware that SMS has a rather misleading statement above (“the university he refers to is Hugh’s alma matter”). In addition to Hugh attending Brandeis, SMS’s spouse did also, and their father went to Middlesex, which later was incorporated into Brandeis.
Just to be correct, Middlesex was not “incorporated” into Brandeis.” The AMA’s Flexner report characterized Middlesex as not being up to the standards of American medical schools and required it to either close or revamp. It closed. Brandeis bought the property and created the present campus on that site. From my talks with Brandeis, they do have some interest in Middlesex mainly because many young Jewish students went to Middlesex during the depression to avoid the huge fees of traditional medical schools (Middle sex did not require a college degree). This was my father’s reason. While, like most Jews, he was very proud of Brandeis, his efforts to promote medicine were at my own medical school alma matter, Boston University, where Robert Schwartz played an important role in creating the Dept. Of Family Medicine and in working with local phusicans of high quality to place their patient in BU’s Univesrity Hospital.
Unfortunately, Brandeis does not have a collection devoted to the Jews of Boston from that period and they recommended that I make inquiries on that topic with the Jewish Historical Society. The University does have a very limited collection, largely of student records and some photography from the era of Middlesex. My impression is that Hugh’ status as an alum and this connection to MIddlesex, rather than the story of the holocaust, is Brandeis major reason for being interested in the Buchenwald materials.
As for my wife Barbara, she lived in a former Middlesex anatomy building as her dorm and we dated there. The dorm was all female but when guys visited the uirnals in the mens’ room were decorated with flowers!
Despite this affectionate memory, Barbara and I would both prefer the materials go to someplace with better resources to display them either in the context of the Holocaust (The Holocaust Memorial Museum). WWII (The WWII military museum). the Buchenwald experience including the kibbutz movement (Yad Vashem), or the National Jewish Museum in Philadelphia. None of these were ever discussed. Hugh made this decision without consulting with us. Given his history of anger, we acquiesced simply to get the materials to a safe and public place.
Other details of Bill’s comment belong to the world of litigation and I will not respond here.
“Other details of Bill’s comment belong to the world of litigation and I will not respond here.” does not, of course, answer the simple questions I (and his sibs) have repeatedly asked: (a) why is he withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle — despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) why does he fail to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.
Negotiating with SMS is impossible, as he pulls this carnard out of his hat repeatedly. Indeed his attorney has made it clear that SMS wants to litigate: “Here are our options: Accept what Stephen has proposed to end this saga or I will initiate two court actions.”
In conclusion, there is no way to end this saga except to await SMS’s eventual demise. He obviously gets a perverse kick out of making outrageous statements about his sibs — see his comments about his brother above and elsewhere (e.g., “His problem is one of severe sibling jealousy, probably at a level of neurosis. Oddly he has created a story that my Dad hated me. This relates to m lot of fantasies about me that approach the level of delusions. Some of the interactions he claims to remember would have had to occur when we were living as far apart as possible .. me on the West Coast and Hugh in Boston! These delusions do not reach the level of schizophrenia, but they have enough of a paranoid flavor to be frightening””) and his sister’s residence in South Carolina: “The cradle of the confederacy, remains almost incredibly foreign to any place I have lived. Teen births, gun abuse, anti union laws, racism, … I have relatives who chose to live there but I doubt I would ever want to visit their home.”
Long comment here.
Does Bill really think my comments on South Carolina are unfair?
Yes, Steve’s comments about SC are unfair.
But the main concern with his latest comment is simply that he is again trying to divert the reader’s attention from the basic question that he has (thus far) completely refused to answer:
(a) why he is withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle — despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) why he unwilling to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.