The internet really is a wonder. Here’s a fascinating image I ran into on the internet. Using the New York Times search engine I was able to verify most of the dates and text. Links to all of the articles are presented in order below, along with links to free PDF downloads where they were available.
ZIONISTS’ MASS MEETING – Leaders in the Movement Arouse Enthusiasm at Cooper Union. A PLEA FOR HUMAN JUSTICE Israel’s Great Gift to Mankind Recalled — Dreyfus and European Persecution Mentioned in Convention. – Article – NYTimes.com, PDF
MORE DETAILS OF THE KISHINEFF MASSACRE – In Some Places Jews Managed to Defend Themselves. The Jewish Chronicle, of London, Charges the Russian Government with Responsibility for the Outrages. – Front Page – NYTimes.com, PDF
THE MACEDONIAN MASSACRES. – Letter – NYTimes.com, PDF
SENATE’S TRIBUTE TO HOAR. – Holds Memorial Exercises — Depew’s Estimate of Him. – Article – NYTimes.com, PDF (with another article)
What Maxim Gorky is Doing in Berlin – Article – NYTimes.com, PDF (with another article)
SLINGSBY CASE UP TODAY. – Legitimacy Contest Likely to be One of Longest Suits on Record. – Editorial – NYTimes.com, PDF
$1,000,000,000 FUND TO REBUILD JEWRY – Six Million Souls Will Need Help to Resume Normal Life When War Is Ended. LOANS WITHOUT INTEREST Committee of American Jews Lays Plans for the Greatest Humanitarian Task in History. 6,000,000 Jews Need Help. Outline, PDF
TELLS SAD PLIGHT OF JEWS. – Felix M. Warburg Says They Were the Worst Sufferers in War. – Article – NYTimes.com, PDF
BEGS AMERICA SAVE 6,000,000 IN RUSSIA – Massacre Threatens All Jews as Soviet Power Wanes, Declares Kreinin, Coming Here for Aid. – Article – NYTimes.com, PDF
GERMAN POET IS SAFE. – Else Lasker Schuler, Reported Missing, Is Located in Zurich. – Article – NYTimes.com (related, earlier article: JEWISH POETESS MISSING IN REICH – Else Lasker-Schuler and Others Have Disappeared Without a Trace, British Paper Reports. – Article – NYTimes.com)
Congress Defends Polish Jews. – Article – NYTimes.com
I did not pay to download the more recent PDFs. From the ones I did examine it seems that whoever created the image cut and pasted and highlighted certain portions of the Times’ PDFs, but otherwise faithfully reproduced the contents. Long story short, the information in the image appears legitimate.
I think this is an invaluable image. For instance, it helps put the following article, just published by the Times on 14 February 2012, in proper context.
Study of the Holocaust Sees Growing Demand Among Overseas Visitors:
Seven decades after the Holocaust, with its survivors rapidly dying, the most systematic slaughter in human history is taking on a growing and often unexpected role in education across the globe. Yad Vashem alone, which opened its international teaching branch only in the 1990s, produces material in more than 20 languages, is active in 55 countries and puts on 70 seminars a year for groups of visiting educators.
And while many believe that to make a universal point it is important to teach the Holocaust in the context of other genocides — in Rwanda, Armenia and Cambodia — the trend at Yad Vashem is the opposite, going more deeply into the human details of the slaughter of six million Jews — most of them grim, some uplifting.
“We live in an era when young people know little and have big opinions,” said Dorit Novak, director of Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies. “The Nazi regime wanted to erase any trace of the Jewish people. If you don’t understand that, you can’t understand the event. But paradoxically the more you delve into the facts and the particulars, the less uniquely Jewish and more universal it gets.”
Despite an ever more universal gloss on the Holocaust abroad, here in Israel there is concern among liberals that it has taken on too big a role in the national narrative, leading to a mentality of victimhood and siege.
A poll of Israeli Jews in 2009 found the only issue on which there was near-universal agreement was the need to remember the Holocaust. Citing that poll, Merav Michaeli, a columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, complained that “the Holocaust is the sole prism through which our leadership, followed by society at large, examines every situation.” She added that the way many Israelis view world events, “all our lives are simply one long Shoah.”
This was also the point made by Avraham Burg, a former speaker of Parliament, in his book, “The Holocaust is Over; We Must Rise from Its Ashes.”
He urged that on the campus of Yad Vashem there should be built an international court of crimes against humanity, adding: “Israel must leave Auschwitz, because Auschwitz is a mental prison. Life inside the camp is survival laced with guilt and victimology.”
Mr. Shalev, the Yad Vashem chairman, said the Holocaust should not be the sole source of Israel’s definition of itself. Still, he said, it was clearly an important element, adding: “The Holocaust does, in some way, hold our identity together. At the same time, the buildup of interest in the Holocaust around the world has created a growing awareness of genocide generally, and we have an important role to play in that.”
The Taiwanese studying here agreed. They said they would take home lessons they would apply to discrimination and even bullying on their campuses.
Mr. Paz Alcalde, the Spanish teacher, said he, too, believed that studying the details of one particular set of events was the best way for a larger point to emerge.
“I don’t see any dichotomy between the particular and the universal,” he said. “The history of the Holocaust is a history of real individuals and families, people with birthdays and dreams. Once you get to know them, their story becomes your story.”
Indeed. For more than a hundred years jews have been trying to displace our story with their own, making all our lives simply one long holocaust narrative.