Tag Archives: Nazi

Jews of the Week: Vladka Meed & Viktor Frankl

Feigele Peltel (1921-2012) was born in Warsaw, Poland. At 21 she joined the Jewish Combat Organization. Using her “Aryan” looks and fluency in Polish, she was able to pose as a Pole and come in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Through this, she smuggled weapons and supplies in, while saving countless children (and adults) by bringing them out of the ghetto. Her code name was ‘Vladka’, which she later adopted as her legal name. She also worked as a recruiting agent to bring more people into the resistance. One of these was Benjamin Meed, whom she would later marry in the U.S. Together they were among the key organizers of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Vladka wrote a popular book about her experiences, and along with her husband, continued to work in Holocaust education for the rest of her life.

Meanwhile, Viktor Emil Frankl (1905-1997) was a distinguished psychiatrist and neurologist in Austria. He showed a talent for psychology at an early age, and provided psychoanalysis for high school students free of charge while in med school. He later worked in the dreaded “Suicide Pavilion” where he treated over 30,000 women at risk for suicide. After the Nazi takeover, Frankl was first demoted, then imprisoned, and spent three years in concentration camps. He used these experiences to develop a new philosophy of psychology, described in his world-famous book Man’s Search for Meaning (originally titled Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything). Frankl founded logotherapy, based on the belief that the central motivating force in humans is to find meaning in life, and most problems stem from this deficiency. Frankl revolutionized the field of psychology, wrote several highly-acclaimed books, and won multiple prestigious awards. Interestingly, he proposed that just as there is a Statue of Liberty on the East Coast, there should be a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. Plans are now in the works to build such a statue.

Words of the Week

Don’t argue with an idiot – they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
– Mark Twain

Jew of the Week: Léon Blum

Prime Minister of France

Leon Blum, Three-Time Prime Minister of France

Few can claim having lived a rollercoaster life like that of Andre Léon Blum (1872-1950). In his youth, he was inspired to join France’s socialist community while studying at the Sarbonne and living through the infamous Dreyfus affair. Writing for a popular journal and rising through the ranks, he became a well-known champion for the little guy. It eventually won him the role of prime minister of France – no less than three times! This, in an era of open Jew-hatred. In fact, before becoming PM he was dragged out of his car and nearly beaten to death by a royalist anti-Semite band known as the Camelots du Roi. When Blum was elected, an opposition leader had this to say: “Your coming to power is undoubtedly a historic event. For the first time this old Gallo-Roman country will be governed by a Jew. I dare say out loud what the country is thinking, deep inside: it is preferable for this country to be led by a man whose origins belong to his soil… than by a cunning Talmudist.” With the start of World War II, Blum chose bravely not to flee and stayed in his country. He was arrested and imprisoned, first in Vichy, then in Germany. At his trial in 1942, he argued so eloquently that it embarrassed the entire Nazi regime and the Germans called off the trial! Unfortunately it did not save him from the concentration camps. Blum suffered first in Buchenwald, then in Dachau. He only survived thanks to local authorities who disobeyed orders to kill him. Incredibly, after surviving all of these ordeals, he became prime minister of France yet again after the war. A wonderful writer, Blum penned many gems about life: “When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he makes her young again.”

Words of the Week

Light attracts. Where a lantern is placed, those who seek light gather around.
– Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch (1880-1950)

Jews of the Week: Siegfried Marcus, Emil & Mercedes Jellinek

Car Inventors

Siegfried Marcus – Car Inventor

In 1870, German-Austrian Jew Siegfried Marcus (1831-1898) had the bright idea of putting a combustion engine on a handcart, creating the first-ever self-propelling vehicle powered by gasoline. In 1883, Marcus received the patent for the ignition system, leading to the first official automobile as we know it, called the “Second Marcus Car”. Thus was born the automobile industry, the internet of its day that immeasurably revolutionized the world. Meanwhile, fellow (non-Jewish) Germans Daimler and Maybach created the first car for market.

Son of a rabbi, Emil Jellinek made it happen

However, they could not sell their version until Emil Jellinek (1853-1918), the son of Hungarian-Czech Rabbi Aaron Jellinek, took over the business. He convinced Maybach to build a new and improved car, to be called Mercedes, named after his daughter Mercedes Jellinek. (“Mercedes” is a Spanish name that was given to the girl by her French-Sephardic mother, whom Emil Jellinek married during his time in France.) The Mercedes quickly shattered all records, going 60 km/h and easily winning the competitive Nice races. It was branded “the car of tomorrow” and took the world by storm. In the 1930s, the Nazi Ministry for Propaganda attempted to rewrite history by expunging any evidence of Marcus being the inventor of the car and giving credit to Daimler and Benz.

This is Mercedes – Jellinek that is

First Marcus Car of 1870

Words of the Week

No two cities have counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion, philosophy and art have been the main guiding light in modern faith and culture. Personally, I have always been on the side of both…
– Winston Churchill

Second Marcus Car of 1888