Gerta Freeman

Gerta was born on October 8th, 1915 in Vienna and later moved to Prague where she would meet her future husband, Albert.  In 1937-38, discrimination against the Jews grew worse and Gerta immigrated to the United States with Albert’s sister as her sponsor.  Making her home in Washington D.C., she worked for the Herald Tribune, a job that would prove fortunate – a secretary at the newspaper became a sponsor for her mother’s immigration to the US.  Eventually, Gerta’s brother, Fred, along with Fred’s girlfriend and her own brother were able to come to the United States.

 

 “Anti-Semitism”

By Gerta Freeman

Austria is the pace of my birth
To me, the most beautiful place on earth
The snow covered alps, the Danube, the lakes
The Vienna pastries and chocolate cakes.
Something is very wrong there and you will find
It's the Austrians hateful and narrow mind.

That's all I will try to express in poetic shape. It's absolutely impossible to describe to you the terrible conditions in that country, long before they decided to do away with Jews and other second rate citizens by sending them into gas chambers to a horrible death.

We encountered their hatred from early on in life. To be a good successful student was difficult with anti-Semitic teachers. They simply would not pass us to next grade unless we were very well prepared with our studies.

When I had decided to become a language teacher and had passed my examination with excellent results, it was absolutely impossible to obtain employment in any of our middle schools. To earn a living I had to give private lessons and wore out my shoes getting from one student to the next. Many adults wanted to learn English in preparation of their emigration to either England or America. The desire was inevitable after Adolf Hitler had overrun our borders. He and his henchmen Goebbels and Goehring proclaimed daily that the Jews were the source of all evil. They had all the money in the world etc. They were a wonderful scapegoat and had to be eliminated once and for all.

We were forced to wear yellow armbands at all times to be recognized immediately; we were not permitted to sit on a park bench. Luckily, the only direct attack on me did not hurt me physically. A man sitting next to me in a bus turned to me and said in a loud voice, "I will not sit next to a Jewish sow." That was shortly before I left Austria for good. Not to mention that I had to go to the Gestapo office and ask for an exit permit. They gave me one under the condition never to come back. I gladly signed this piece of paper. As a good bye present they took my passport and added the name "Sarah" for my name so that the foreign country would be aware of my faith.

Arriving in Washington D.C. in 1938 we tried to find an apartment and were told that they do not rent to Jews.

We came a long way to find similar conditions here.

Be aware of my faith.

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Mar21

As the sun sets, marking the end of the daily fast during Ramadan, and the culmination of the Fast of Esther in the Jewish tradition, we invite you to break bread with members of different faith communities in a spirit of unity, understanding, and friendship. This unique event aims to foster a sense of togetherness, promote dialogue, and celebrate the rich tapestry of religious traditions that contribute to the mosaic of our community. A vegetarian, Kosher and Halal dinner will be served.

Please register here for Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMldu-hpzsoHdRk-Nq3UNqkiEAMqrCeVj_O

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMldu-hpzsoHdRk-Nq3UNqkiEAMqrCeVj_O

Wolf Gruner, Ph.D., discusses the subject of his book Resisters: How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler's Germany (Yale University Press, 2023), which features the life stories of five Jewish men and women who resisted in different ways against persecution in Nazi Germany. By discussing their courageous acts, the book demonstrates the wide range of Jewish resistance in Nazi Germany, challenges the myth of Jewish passivity and illuminates individual Jewish agency during the Holocaust.

Wolf Gruner, Ph.D., holds the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and founding director of the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He received his Ph.D. in History from the Technical University Berlin and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, Yad Vashem Jerusalem, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Women's Christian University Tokyo, among others. Gruner is the author of o books on the Holocaust, including Jewish Forced Labor under the Nazis: Economic Needs and Nazi Racial Aims. His 2016 prizewinning German book was published in English as The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses. He co-edited four books, including Resisting Persecution: Jews and Their Petitions during the Holocaust and New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison. He is an appointed member of the Academic Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Genocide Research, among others.

Azeem Ibrahim's compelling lecture delves into the root causes and motivations of the harrowing Rohingya genocide, shedding light on the historical context, human rights violations, and geopolitical complexities surrounding this tragic crisis.

Azeem Ibrahim, Ph.D., is a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, and a director at the Center for Global Policy in Washington, D.C. Over the years, he has advised numerous world leaders on strategy and policy development. Ibrahim is also the author of the seminal books Rohingya: Inside Myanmar's Genocide (Hurst, 2016) and Radical Origins: Why We are Losing the Battle against Islamic Extremism (Pegasus, 2017). He is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and his writing has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Times (UK), Chicago Tribune, Newsweek and many others. Outside academia, Ibrahim has been a reservist in the IV Battalion Parachute Regiment and an award-winning entrepreneur. He was ranked as a Top 100 Global Thinker by the European Social Think Tank and named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, after which he completed fellowships at Oxford and Harvard. In 2019, he received the International Association of Genocide Scholars Engaged Scholar Prize for his research on the Rohingya genocide. In 2022, Ibrahim was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, on the recommendation of the prime minister, for his services to foreign policy.

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