If you attend a Holocaust Remembrance ceremony and the names of victims are read aloud, it is due to the efforts of Haim Roet, who survived the Holocaust and died on May 22 at age 90 at his home in Jerusalem. Look at this sweet face.
It started with a protest in front of the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv in 1989. The Dutch Government had released two Nazi war criminals from prison. Mr. Roet and a group of like-minded Israelis of Dutch descent read some of the names of the 107,000 Dutch Jews who had died in death camps.
“It was a very moving event,” Mr. Roet said. “People cried. You see the names, and suddenly you see what’s behind it. You see the date, you see the children, how each of the victims had a life of their own.” He created “Unto Every Person There is a Name,” a memorial project that involves annually reading the names of Nazi victims in public around the world. He spoke at the UN.
Roet himself survived the Holocaust, hiding in Nieuwlande, a small village in the Netherlands that sheltered more than 100 Jews during the war despite the threat of execution by the Nazis. He lived with Alida and Anton Deesker, who had three children and introduced him to strangers as their nephew.
Before the Resistance placed him there, the Nazis picked up his sisters and grandfather, whom he never saw again. The next morning, the SS officers returned for the rest of the family. But his mother, who spoke German, shouted and argued with them so vehemently that they left. Remarkable. He was eventually reunited with his parents and brothers, moved to Israel, married, and worked for the Ministry of Finance.
In addition to his daughter Vardit Lichtenstein, VP of an OB-GYN group, Mr. Roet is survived by his wife, Naomi Echel; another daughter, Avigail Omessi, a manager for a CPA firm; a son, David Roet, the head of a division of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; a brother, Abraham; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren, every one of whom has a name.
The puzzle today was very cute, if you like babies. The central across answer was THE BABY IS ASLEEP, and in four places the letters SHH were squooshed into single square. [When that happens it’s called a “rebus.”] For example, there was RO[SHH]ASHANA, and BRITI[SHH]UMOR. Rex included an hysterical Talking Heads video of the song “Stay Up Late,” which it is not beneath Owl Chatter to steal shamelessly.
BTW, I just learned that Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth married their drummer Chris Franz in 1977 and they have two sons and are still married, kinahora. Here’s the band in the hospital room soon after one of the boys was born.
Since ROSH HASHANA was in the puzzle today, boringly clued with “First of the Jewish High Holy Days,” I couldn’t resist posting one of my favorite jokes on Rex’s blog. I hope it’s not viewed as racist, anti-Semitic, or both.
Here it is:
Two Black gentlemen are talking.
Hey, I have off tomorrow — do you?
No, it’s Tuesday — why are you off?
My boss is a Jew and it’s Yom Kippur, we’re closed.
Yom Kippur? What’s that?
Damn — you don’t know what Yom Kippur is?
No — what the hell is Yom Kippur?
Well, you knows what Shabbos is, right?
Sure — I knows what Shabbos is.
Well, next to Yom Kippur, Shabbos ain’t shit!
The pioneer in atomic theory at 44A was Niels BOHR, born in Demark in 1885. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. His dad was a physiology professor (not Jewish); his mom came from a wealthy Jewish banking family. He loved soccer, as did his brother, who played on the Danish national team in the 1908 Olympics.
Despite finding him to be a great Bohr, Margrethe Norland married him in 1912 and they had six sons. Get this — their son Aage became a physicist and also won the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 1975).
After Denmark was occupied by the Germans, word reached Bohr that he was in danger of being arrested because of his Jewish mom. The Danish resistance helped Bohr and Margrethe escape by sea to Sweden. The next day, Bohr persuaded King Gustaf V of Sweden to make public Sweden’s willingness to provide asylum to Jewish refugees. The mass rescue of the Danish Jews by their countrymen followed swiftly thereafter. Some historians claim that Bohr’s actions led directly to the mass rescue, while others say that, though Bohr did all that he could for his countrymen, his actions were not a decisive influence on the wider events. Eventually, over 7,000 Danish Jews escaped to Sweden. Bohr eventually reached Britain and was part of the British mission to the Manhattan Project.
He received numerous honors, including postage stamps and bank notes featuring him. An asteroid and a lunar crater were named after him, as was a chemical element, Bohrium, with the atomic number 107. No Barbie doll (yet). He died in 1962, back in Copenhagen, at age 77.
Here’s Niels and Margrethe, and then Niels with 5 of the boys.
See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 