by Joachim Neander, PhD
Dear Mrs. Yeager, on January 24, 2010, you published, at the Revisionist blog Inconvenient History, a critical look on my analysis of Irene Weisberg Zisblatt’s memoir The Fifth Diamond,[1] published here on the Holocaust Controversies blog on January 9, 2010.[2] I feel your essay deserves a response, and I have chosen for it the form of an “open letter.”
Showing posts with label Irene Zisblatt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irene Zisblatt. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Yeager vs. Neander
Dr. Neander will probably have something to say about this reaction to his Zisblatt critique by the neo-Nazi scum Carolyn Yeager when he returns from vacation. I will only note that Yeager shows her idiotic paranoid mindset once again:
And Yeager, of course, is not a very attentive reader, to put it mildly:
She writes:
Carolyn Yeager is a dumb neo-Nazi liar, pure and simple.
The rest I leave to Dr. Neander.
Update: here's his response.
However, probably for the reason that he seems to have been assigned this project by some well-known Holocaust defenders (Kenneth Waltzer, Chairman of the Jewish Studies Dept. at the University of Michigan, who provided him with the Seigelstein documents, for one)...Let me assure you, Yeager, that Dr. Neander doesn't lie when he writes "independent scholar". He is not assigned to anything by anyone, and particularly not concerning this essay, and I say this as someone who knows the story behind it.
And Yeager, of course, is not a very attentive reader, to put it mildly:
In the first paragraph, Neander writes that she “had her first name changed to Irene” when she obtained a visa in 1947 for emigration to New York. That can be understood either as ‘someone else changed her first name’ or ‘she herself had it changed’ - leaving the interpretation up to the reader. In fact, she claims in her book (but not in her testimony) that her name was Chana (by which she called herself up to that point), and this name was changed, much to her surprise, by an immigration official because he (or someone) thought the “American” name of Irene would be better for her. Taking such prerogatives is and was simply not done by immigration officials, and adds to the farcical quality of the book.And here's what Dr. Neander writes later in the essay:
The first thing we learn from the documents, by the way, is that Mrs. Zisblatt was "Irene" already at Auschwitz, that she did not receive this first name just on immigration, as she relates: "I panicked. ‘This is not my name ... Irene ... I have never heard of that name,' I cried" (TFD:103). It is, however, possible that she had "Chana" as an additional, Jewish, first name.So Dr. Neander recounts enough of this episode for the reader to understand that she supposedly received this "new" name against her will. And that first mention Yeager cites was the initial short recounting of her story (Neuengamme and all) which Dr. Neander later deconstructs.
She writes:
The reason Neander gives for telling the truth about dishonest holocaust survivors is not a regard for truth itself, but is because students who today are gullible enough to believe it, might, when they grow up, “reach for a scholarly book” and, discovering they were lied to, reject the entire Holocaust story.But here's what Dr. Neander wrote:
It is not sufficient to defend the historical truth about the Holocaust only against distortions from the deniers' side. Distortions from the side of exaggerators, mythmakers, and self-aggrandizers must equally be rejected. A matter as serious as the Holocaust demands serious, honest, and accurate treatment. Not least with regard to the dignity and the memory of those who perished.She is also not very bright and doesn't even get dry sarcasm (cf. the "feces ingestion" episode).
Carolyn Yeager is a dumb neo-Nazi liar, pure and simple.
The rest I leave to Dr. Neander.
Update: here's his response.
Monday, January 11, 2010
CODOH's "Inconvenient History" blog - just another antisemitic outlet
From the "Purpose" page of the blog in question:
In discussing the controversial issues brought forth by historical revisionism, we will always strive to take the moral high ground. This means that we will abstain from ad hominem attacks and other forms of unfair argumentation. Rather than involving ourselves in polemics, we will calmly present our arguments and then let the facts speak for themselves.From Carolyn Yeager's critique of Irene Zisblatt from that same blog, which the IC team is "proud to present":
Middle school, the two to three years between grade school and high school, is when Holocaust studies are most heavily force-fed to American school children because of laws passed in many state legislatures by craven politicians hungry for Jewish votes and money, or fearful of Jewish media power.Who's Carolyn Yeager?
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Irene Zisblatt, the "Diamond Girl" - Fact or Fiction?
by Joachim Neander, PhD, independent scholar
(Last revised: 10.01.2010; 2 typos corrected: 04.02.2010)
[Today our guest blogger is Dr. Joachim Neander from Cracow, Poland. Dr. Neander has degrees in mathematics (Saarbrücken University, 1962) and history (Göttingen and Bremen Universities, 1997). He is the author of Mathematik und Ideologie, München 1974, Das Konzentrationslager Mittelbau in der Endphase der NS-Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1997, 4th ed. 2001, Gardelegen 1945, Magdeburg 1998, “Hat in Europa kein annäherndes Beispiel” ... Mittelbau-Dora, ein KZ für Hitlers Krieg, Berlin 2000.
He is a contributor to PRO MEMORIA (Oświęcim, Poland), Informationen des Studienkreises Deutscher Widerstand (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), German Studies Review (Carleton College, USA), Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem, Israel), Newsletter des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), theologie.geschichte (Saarland University, Germany) and other scholarly publications. In 2001-2002 he had a Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Guest bloggers' opinions are not necessarily shared by the HC team, nor do we endorse each and every argument made by our guests.
This item is placed here solely to facilitate further discussion.]
Irene Zisblatt, the "Diamond Girl" - Fact or Fiction?
An Amazing Story of Survival in the Holocaust
Irene Zisblatt, a petite (5ft. 1")[1] blonde, energetic lady nearing her eighties, is a remarkable personality. Her life-story, as told by her in her memoir The Fifth Diamond,[2] begins in Polena,[3] a small spa town in Subcarpathian Ruthenia,[4] where she grew up as Chana Seigelstein.[5] From her memoir and newspaper reports, we must conclude that she was born in 1931.[6] She survived ghettoization in Hungary, deportation to Auschwitz, transfer to concentration camp Neuengamme, she says, slave labor in a munitions factory, and a months-long death march that led her into Czechoslovakia, where she eventually was liberated on the eve of VE Day by soldiers of the U.S. Third Army. After recovering from typhus in a U.S. Army hospital near Pilsen, she claims, she went to a DP camp in Austria, waiting for an opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. She obtained a visa in 1947, had her first name changed to Irene, and went to New York, where she was heartily welcomed by family members who had emigrated already before World War II. She settled there, married twice, and gave birth to two children.
She never talked to anybody about her wartime experience until 1994, when she attended a screening of Schindler's List. Since that time, she has been traveling across the U.S., sharing her experience with high school and college students, always receiving broad coverage in the local media. According to The Press of Atlantic City NJ from April 28, 2009, she "is booked twice a day between two and five times a week," and until the end of 2009 she "will have shared her story of surviving the Holocaust with about as many people as Jewish lives were claimed during World War II," i.e. "six million" listeners and viewers.[7] In addition, since 1994 she has been a regular participant in the March of the Living in Poland. In October 1995, she was interviewed for Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.[8] She was one of the five Holocaust survivors that were chosen to tell their story in the award-winning documentary movie The Last Days,[9] released in 1998. Finally, in 2008 her memoir The Fifth Diamond appeared in print.
(Last revised: 10.01.2010; 2 typos corrected: 04.02.2010)
[Today our guest blogger is Dr. Joachim Neander from Cracow, Poland. Dr. Neander has degrees in mathematics (Saarbrücken University, 1962) and history (Göttingen and Bremen Universities, 1997). He is the author of Mathematik und Ideologie, München 1974, Das Konzentrationslager Mittelbau in der Endphase der NS-Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1997, 4th ed. 2001, Gardelegen 1945, Magdeburg 1998, “Hat in Europa kein annäherndes Beispiel” ... Mittelbau-Dora, ein KZ für Hitlers Krieg, Berlin 2000.
He is a contributor to PRO MEMORIA (Oświęcim, Poland), Informationen des Studienkreises Deutscher Widerstand (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), German Studies Review (Carleton College, USA), Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem, Israel), Newsletter des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), theologie.geschichte (Saarland University, Germany) and other scholarly publications. In 2001-2002 he had a Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Guest bloggers' opinions are not necessarily shared by the HC team, nor do we endorse each and every argument made by our guests.
This item is placed here solely to facilitate further discussion.]
An Amazing Story of Survival in the Holocaust
Irene Zisblatt, a petite (5ft. 1")[1] blonde, energetic lady nearing her eighties, is a remarkable personality. Her life-story, as told by her in her memoir The Fifth Diamond,[2] begins in Polena,[3] a small spa town in Subcarpathian Ruthenia,[4] where she grew up as Chana Seigelstein.[5] From her memoir and newspaper reports, we must conclude that she was born in 1931.[6] She survived ghettoization in Hungary, deportation to Auschwitz, transfer to concentration camp Neuengamme, she says, slave labor in a munitions factory, and a months-long death march that led her into Czechoslovakia, where she eventually was liberated on the eve of VE Day by soldiers of the U.S. Third Army. After recovering from typhus in a U.S. Army hospital near Pilsen, she claims, she went to a DP camp in Austria, waiting for an opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. She obtained a visa in 1947, had her first name changed to Irene, and went to New York, where she was heartily welcomed by family members who had emigrated already before World War II. She settled there, married twice, and gave birth to two children.
She never talked to anybody about her wartime experience until 1994, when she attended a screening of Schindler's List. Since that time, she has been traveling across the U.S., sharing her experience with high school and college students, always receiving broad coverage in the local media. According to The Press of Atlantic City NJ from April 28, 2009, she "is booked twice a day between two and five times a week," and until the end of 2009 she "will have shared her story of surviving the Holocaust with about as many people as Jewish lives were claimed during World War II," i.e. "six million" listeners and viewers.[7] In addition, since 1994 she has been a regular participant in the March of the Living in Poland. In October 1995, she was interviewed for Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.[8] She was one of the five Holocaust survivors that were chosen to tell their story in the award-winning documentary movie The Last Days,[9] released in 1998. Finally, in 2008 her memoir The Fifth Diamond appeared in print.
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