Two Holocaust stories, both heartbreaking, but one has a happy ending

In 1928, at the Olympics, the Dutch women’s gymnastic team was unbeatable.  Nazis, unfortunately, have long memories and, when they invaded Holland, they hadn’t forgotten that Jews — whom they considered an inferior species — had prevailed at gymnastics, which they considered a peculiar Aryan skill set.  So, they rounded up all the team members they could find, and of course their families, and killed them.  Of the Jewish gymnastic team members (including the coach) only one survived the war.  No members of their immediate families survived.  Lesson:  evil never forgets an insult.  In that regard, we should remember that the Islamist attack on the train in Madrid, which killed 191 and wounded 1,900, was considered an act to revenge and reverse the Moorish expulsion — in the late 15th century.

Sometimes, though, history’s long memory is lovely.  In Israel, Esther Friedman, who managed to survive Auschwitz, which she entered when she was 12, and Bergen Belsen, where she was at the end of the war, received a visit from Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.  The occasion was Yom Hashoah.  But this visit was special — Gen. Gantz’s mother had saved Esther’s life:

I had typhus (at Bergen Belsen), and then they threw me onto this mountain of bodies. Your mother, and I have no idea where she got the strength to do this, was the one who pulled me out from all of those bodies and carried me to the British ambulances.

There is evil, and then there is great good.