resist tyranny

**Bumped up from December 2013. Posted by VitadMD**

Dear, dear Shifra… Thank you for sharing this remarkable photograph – an image with a profound message and interesting story of defiance. Fortunately, the provenance of the photo is known and is deserving of proper attribution. For anyone interested…

Via JSpace.com: Tracing the Roots of the Famous Holocaust Menorah

In 1931, a woman snapped a photograph of her family’s menorah in a windowsill. It was the eighth night of Hanukkah and nine white candles stood along the candelabra, set off by the German courtyard seen through the glass of the window.

Just in the distance, a Nazi flag hung.

The image, freezing in time a notorious piece of the past, has grown to become an iconic part of history for the Jewish community. But until just recently, not much was known about the origins of the photo.

Both the menorah and photo survived World War II, with the hanukkiah finding its way to Yad Vashem through the loan of Yehudah Mansbuch. Mansbuch is the grandson of the woman who took the picture, and he retains the original snapshot, on the back of which are written the words, “Hanukkah, 5692. ‘Judea dies,’ thus says the banner. ‘Judea will live forever,’ thus respond the lights.”

When Yad Vashem was putting together its plans to open the Holocaust History Museum, a team of researchers set out to learn more about this famous photo. Their inquiries led to Mansbuch, who explained how his grandmother and grandfather had lived under Nazi oppression in Kiel, Germany, eventually fleeing to then-Palestine in 1934.

Mansbuch’s grandfather, Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner, was a beloved leader in the Kiel Jewish community. He was known to use Shabbat sermons to denounce the Nazi regime and used his position to act as a peaceful opponent to the uprising. His wife Rachel’s placement of their menorah in such a prominent place, in their home’s front window, can be seen as a sign of this defiance, as can the words Rachel ultimately wrote on the back of the photograph….

Related:

Elmsintheyardblogspot.com: Menorah of Courage

Another famous image: yadvashem.org

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  1. Alain41 says:

    Kiel is Germany’s Baltic seaport. A famous son is Max Planck, physicist father of Quantum Theory. Planck helped spread Einstein’s theories and in fact gave Einstein a professorship at Berlin U. In the 1930s, Planck was in his 70s and President of the leading German science org. Because he kept teaching Einstein, the Nazis did not care for Max, investigated him to see if he was a Jew, and called him (and others) a White Jew (in case you were wondering if there was a precedent for White Hispanic…Yes). It was concluded that Max was 1/16th Jew and so with his fame, the Nazis didn’t do anything to him. But he resigned his Presidency and moved to the country for life out of the limelight. In 1946, he was the only German invited to London for the 300th birthday of Isaac Newton.

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