Below are songs with lyrics written by Paul about the Holocaust and about Antisemitism.
Paul’s father-in-law was a survivor of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (he passed away on 31/12/2017).
As the number of survivors decreases, it is imperative that children are taught about The Holocaust by the children of survivors and by their children for ‘We Must Never Forget’!
The world could have stopped the slaughter but stood by and allowed it to happen – read HERE.
Paul himself suffered ‘institutionalized Antisemitism’ at the hands of his former employer, the London Metropolitan Police for which he took them to court and defeated them – read HERE.
Click on the links below to listen to the songs, read the lyrics as well as a short description about what the song is about.
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Anna Frank Watch the video HERE.
Till My Day Is Done – Watch the video HERE
May you rest in peace my kind, wonderful, loving Father-in-law Shmuel Itskovits.
To the Nazi’s you were just the number A.9119 that they tattooed on your arm as they murdered all of your family there in Auschwitz but you survived, and despite all that you had suffered you remained kind and gentle and full of love as you yourself found the love of your life and you would stay together side by side for 63 years and you raised a loving family who adored you, but in the end the cconsequences of what you had suffered in that dark evil place eventually took their toil upon you and now you are in a place without pain or suffering, May you rest in peace my kind, wonderful, loving Father-in-law Shmuel Itskovits.
My Father-in-law Shmuel Itskovits and his cousin Harry Ruttner were the only members of their families to have survived the concentration camps. Harry recently visited us from his home in Montreal (30/5/19 – 6/6/19) and as a sprightly 90 year old, he conveyed to me some of what he experienced and suffered during those dark days.
Harry told me that soon after they arrived at Auschwitz and their heads were shaved and their arms were tatoo’d with their numbers they were sent to the neighbouring Birkenau concentration camp. He only saw his father briefly before he and his own family were murdered there and it was as he was working carrying bricks from the trains to waiting carts, as Siemens was building an electric power station there. A Polish political prisoner, distinguished by the red triangle sown onto his shirt who was also a ‘Kapo’, told Harry and some other boys to hide beside a pile of bricks, which they did for a number of consequetive days which undoubtably contributed towards their survival, but of course if they had been found out then they all would have been shot.
By January 1945, the Russians were nearing Auschwitz and Birkenau to liberate the camps and the nazi’s took the remaining living prisoners deeper into Poland on ‘the Death March’ (Listen HERE) to escape capture in one of the coldest winter’s in memory with the prisoners wearing just their thin stripped camp ‘pyjama’s’ and with nothing on their feet and surving on a ration of a slice of bread per day. Harry told me that many died of cold, if you allowed yourself to fall asleep then you would freeze to death and many were shot by the nazi’s if they stopped or tried to go to toilet at the side of the road, they were allowed to stop to rest about every 3 hours and the prisoners used to hug eachother to try to keep warm during that time.
By the time they arrived at the next concentration camp, Harry couldn’t recall the name, the Russians soon there after started bombing the area and firing mortar shells, some of which blasted holes in the barracks where they were housed and one night Harry, Shmuel and a few others escaped through these holes in the wall and into the adjacent thick forest.
They walked for a number of days, all the time trying to find food and found themselves in the Polish city of Katowice and Harry recalls one time asking the Russian soldiers who were liberating the city for food to which a Russian soldier pointed to some nearby houses saying, ‘There’s plenty of food in those houses’ and Harry replied, ‘But there are people inside’ to which the soldier pointed his gun in the direction of the houses and said, ‘I can kill them and there won’t be’! Harry didn’t take him up on his offer but he recalls that a few of them were in an unoccupied house searching for food and all wearing their camp stripped ‘pyjama’s’ and they found some potatoes in the basement which they cooked up on the stove and ate them and saw there was also a man wearing a thick long Russian soldier’s winter coat who didn’t speak but who they saw take a container of dried milk and mix it with water and drink it and shortly thereafter a dozen or so Russian soldiers came into the room and put them all up against the wall and told the man in the Russian winter overcoat to take it off and underneath it he was wearing his nazi SS unfiform, they took him outside an shot him.
Harry is grateful to the Russians for saving him, as he says,’They hated the Germans more than they hated the Jews’, and they allowed them to take the trains out and eventually Harry arrived at the transit camps in Cyprus and would take a ship to (Palestine) Israel and he made it, despite the British, who were then controlling (Palestine) Israel, trying to blow them out of the water!
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