Mail was allowed to be sent from the concentration camps under strict censorship. It had to be written in the German language and the number of lines was limited. Only simple information about health and daily life was allowed. The Blockführer had to read and sign the mail and then it went to the censorship office. Jews were forced to write that they were in a labour camp to reassure those left behind. This mail was collected in bulk and sent to Berlin.
Meier Vieijra was born on 26 December 1918 in Nieuwe Kerkstraat in Amsterdam. He was the son of Jacob Vieijra and Rachel Simons and had two brothers, Joop (Joseph) and Piet (Louis), and three sisters Elisabeth, Clara and Branca. Like his father and his brothers, Meier was a tailor by trade. They all worked together in his father’s company.
• On 9 August 1939, he married Blanche Nabarro. • On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a convoy of German trucks arrived near Waterlooplein. Meier was one of the men who were arrested during the raid in Amsterdam. • On 28 February 1941, he arrived in Buchenwald (prisoner no. 4754). • Then he was deported to Mauthausen on 22 May 1941.
Meier sent six letters and postcards to his wife Blanche from Buchenwald.
Below is the translated text of one of those letters
31 August 1941
Dear Blanche,
Thank you for your letters and money orders. Today I have the opportunity to write to you. Blanche, please thank Aunt Aggelen for the money order. You ask in your letter if you can send me 15 RM weekly. It is probably allowed. Blanche, if it will be a boy, name him Jacob Ben Meier. If it is a girl, name her Rachel…
Please send regards to the entire family and especially to Clara and Chellie, and consider yourself warmly greeted and kissed by your loving Meier Vieijra.
Dear Parents and Mother-in-Law! How are you? Well, I hope. Please write to me sometimes.
Regards, Meier Vieijr
The handwriting in the letter was not Meier’s. It had been re-written and was also censored. The text that was censored apparently expressed condolences on the death of Samuel Vieijra. Samuel, Meier’s uncle, his father’s brother, was murdered on 7 August 1941 in Mauthausen. Only the signature was original.
Even the written word was controlled, monitored and silenced by the Nazis.
On 17 September 1941, Meier Vieijra died from the consequences of his hard life in Mauthausen. He may not have been gassed or shot but he was murdered nonetheless.
Blanche gave birth to a baby daughter on 2 October 1941 and called her Rachel. In May 1943, Blanche and her daughter went into hiding in Oldebroek with the Flier family. Both Blanche and Rachel survived the Holocaust.
I watched All Quiet on the Western Front, last night. I thought that November 11 would be the perfect date to watch a World War I movie. It is a very powerful retelling of the story. Although I thoroughly liked the movie, this is not going to be a review of it, suffice to say I do recommend it.
This post is going to be about the man who wrote the book, Im Westen nichts Neues, which was translated into English as All Quiet on the Western front Erich Maria Remarque was born as Erich Paul Remark, his life was everything but quiet. it is also a reflection of how little regard the Nazis had for their World War I heroes.
Remarque was born on June 22nd, 1898, in Westphalia. After a local school and university education, he was drafted aged 18 and sent to Flanders on June 12, 1917.
Remarque was wounded five times within a month of being on the western front, the last during the third battle of Ypres. He began writing in a military hospital about his experiences, supplementing them with stories of fellow injured soldiers.
Remarque was the third of four children of Peter and Anna. His siblings were his older sister Erna, older brother Theodor Arthur (who died in early childhood), and younger sister Elfriede. The spelling of his last name was changed to Remarque when he published All Quiet on the Western Front in honor of his French ancestors and to dissociate himself from his earlier novel Die Traumbude (which he started writing at the age of sixteen and completed, but it was not published, until 1920). His grandfather had changed the spelling from Remarque to Remark in the 19th century.
In 1929, Remarque scored his greatest success with All Quiet on the Western Front. The novel, a lasting tribute to Germany’s “lost generation” that perished in the Great War, became an immediate international bestseller. In Germany alone in 1929, the book sold almost one million copies. It was translated into more than a dozen languages, including English, Chinese, and Dutch.
All Quiet on the Western Front earned Remarque accolades generally from the liberal and leftist press for the work’s pacifist stance. The Nazis and conservative nationalists immediately called it an assault on Germany’s honor, a piece of Marxist propaganda, and the work of a traitor.
That same year, German-born Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, acquired the rights to make a film of the book. In May 1930, the American film premiered in Los Angeles and won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. That summer, audiences in France, Britain, and Belgium flocked to the film and it received popular acclaim.
Nearly immediately the Hollywood-made movie ran into trouble in Germany. When it was proposed for showing, a representative of the German Ministry of Defense demanded that its screening be rejected on the grounds that it damaged the country’s image and shed a bad light on the German military. In response, the Berlin censorship office requested Laemmle to edit the film, which was done. Remarque’s former boss, the press and film magnate, and outspoken German nationalist, Alfred Hugenberg, indicated that because of the movie’s alleged anti-German bias it would not be shown in any of his theaters. He subsequently petitioned German president, Paul von Hindenburg, to ban the film.
In December 1930, when the edited and dubbed version of the film was shown to the general public in Berlin, the Nazis sabotaged the event. The Party’s leader in Berlin and its propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, organized a riot to disrupt the showing. Outside, SA Stormtroopers intimidated moviegoers, while inside they released stink bombs and mice and harangued the audience. At subsequent showings, the Nazis carried out violent protests. In response to these actions and conservative attacks on the film, the government banned the film. Liberals and socialists condemned the action, but the prohibition lasted until September 1931, when Laemmle produced a more censored version for German audiences.
Remarque left Germany for Switzerland in 1932.
Once in power, Goebbels banned all Remarque’s works, stripped him of his citizenship, and let his Nazi rumor mill claim the author’s birth name, Remark (his grandfather dropped the French spelling), was a reversal of his real, Jewish, name: Kramer. On May 10, 1933, pro-Nazi students consigned his works to the flames during the fiery book-burning spectacles staged throughout the country. Remarque’s writing was publicly declared as unpatriotic and was banned in Germany. Copies were removed from all libraries and restricted from being sold or published anywhere in the country. The 1930s version of cancel culture.
In 1943, the Nazis arrested his youngest sister, German: Elfriede Scholz, who had stayed behind in Germany with her husband and two children. After a trial at the notorious Volksgerichtshof (Hitler’s extra-constitutional “People’s Court”), she was found guilty of “undermining morale” for stating that she considered the war lost. Court President Roland Freisler declared, “Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen” (“Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach – you, however, will not escape us.”) Elfriede was beheaded on 16 December 1943. The bill of 495.80 Reichsmarks was sent to her surviving sister, Erna. Remarque later said that his sister had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance activities.
In exile, Remarque was unaware of his sister Elfriede’s fate until after the war. He would dedicate his 1952 novel Spark of Life (Der Funke Leben) to her. The dedication was omitted in the German version of the book, reportedly because he was still seen as a traitor by some Germans
In 1944, Remarque wrote a report for America’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the country’s foreign intelligence organization and the forerunner to today’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In it, he urged the Allies to adopt a systematic policy for re-educating the German population after the war. Germans, he believed, had to be exposed to Nazi crimes and evils of militarism.
When you watch the movie, and I hope you will, or read the book then please remember it is not just a bit of cultural history, but also something that is still current. That hate has never left, it just came back in different configurations.
(Many thanks to John Davis for pointing out the story to me, and Jackie Frant for doing some research on it)
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
On this day 30 years ago the British Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, issued a notice under clause 13 of the BBC Licence and Agreement to the BBC and under section 29) of the Broadcasting Act 1981 to the Independent Broadcasting Authority prohibiting the broadcast of direct statements by representatives or supporters of eleven Irish political and military organisations. The ban prevented the UK news media from broadcasting the voices, though not the words, of ten Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitary groups, these included IRA, INLA, UVF and UDA as well as Sinn Féin.(bizarrely enough it did not include Ian Paisley’s DUP).
The Government’s notice on Northern Ireland broadcasting restrictions came into force on 19 October 1988 after an escalation in paramilitary violence over the preceding summer months.
Home Secretary Hurd, told the Commons that the ban was being instituted because ‘the terrorists themselves draw support and sustenance from access to radio and television .the time had come to deny this easy platform to those who used it to propagate terrorism. Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said it would “deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity”.
The ban did not have the desired effect and any one with a common sense would have been able to guess that.
It did create a few ironies though.
The ban sparked the creativity of broadcast organisations and actors were hired to do voice overs. Actors became so skilled in lip-syncing sound clips for news bulletins that viewers barely noticed the dubbing.Some actors could earn up to £120 per session.
Stephen Rea, who was among the actors to voice Gerry Adams in interviews, later told the Irish Times he tried to speak the lines “as clearly and neutrally as possible, Stephen Rea’s wife though had been an IRA volunteer at the time.
The restrictions also applied to non news or current affair TV Shows.In December 1988 the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Tom King, ordered Channel 4 to cancel an episode of the US drama series Lou Grant that featured the story of a fictional IRA gunrunner, even though it had aired previously.
Restrictions were temporarily lifted during the 1992 general election, facilitating a political debate between the SDLP leader John Hume and the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams to be heard during the election campaign, but the ban resumed once the polls were closed.
The Republic of Ireland had its own similar legislation that banned anyone with links to paramilitary groups from the airwaves, but repealed this in January 1994. The British government followed suit on 16 September 1994, two weeks after the first IRA ceasefire had been declared.
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know a you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of €2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then €2 just add a higher number in the box left from the paypal link. Many thanks
They say that music soothes the savage beast. quite often this is true, but it can also have an equal opposite effect and sometimes it can be both.
The song ‘Adolf Hitler’s Lieblingsblume ist die Schlichte Edelweiss'(Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss) ,composed in 1933 by Otto Rathke, with lyrics by Emil Gustav Adolf Stadthagen and made popular by the German Opera Tenor Harry Steier, was one of Germany’s favourite songs.
However by 1939 it ended up on the list of songs which were banned in the third reich. It suddenly was branded degenerate music along with music from Jewish composers and Jazz music.
The reason why it fell out of favor was because it was seen as kitsch and it was also perceived as a satire on Hitler. It took them 6 years to figure that out.
Below is a part of the English translation.
“High on steep cliff walls blooms a rare kind of flower,
to which the Kanzler quietly turns his thoughts.
A queen of the Alps this is his heart’s joy.
Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss.
Take this song through all the districts,
plant it forth from mouth to mouth,
take a piece of the German soul around the whole world.
Plant it in hearts for the leader to praise and cherish.
Adolf Hitlers favorite flower is the simple Edelweiss”
Both composer and performer had died in 1936.
Now here is the real irony of this song, although it was banned by the Nazis, Some Neo Nazis are now endorsing it, another indication that aside from having some mental issues, they also know nothing about the history of the man they so adore.
Donation
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
History of Sorts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.