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Ruth King

A Pianist Who Survived Hitler Plays Today at 110 The world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor still plays Bach and Schubert. Caroline Stoessinger

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=64018
That music can bring happiness is obvious. But is it also the key to a long life?

Pianist Artur Rubinstein retired from the concert stage after his 89th birthday. Mieczyslaw Horsowski played his final concert at age 99 and taught a lesson the week before he died in 2003, just one month before his 101st birthday. But the world’s oldest living Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer, trumps both of these legendary artists.

On Tuesday, she turns 110. Ms. Herz-Sommer no longer plays Bach and Schubert at concert level. Some days, her arthritic fingers fail to cooperate. And she must rely on her prodigious musical memory, as she can no longer see to read a score. But the woman who made her debut as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic before her 21st birthday in 1924 still plays.

Ms. Herz-Sommer was well on her way to an international career when the Nazis invaded Prague, the city of her birth, on March 15, 1939. Forbidden as a Jew from playing public concerts, she continued to practice long hours in her apartment until the day in July 1943 when she, her husband, Leopold Sommer, and Rafi, their 6-year-old son, were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Having heard rumors of concerts in the camp from Leopold, who worked for the Prague Jewish Community Organization, she faced the imprisonment with cautious optimism. “How bad can it be if we can make music?” she remembers thinking.

In 1938, Chamberlain Bought Time to Rearm. In 2013, Obama Gives Iran Time to Go Nuclear: Bret Stephens

To adapt Churchill : Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little.

Britain and France’s capitulation to Nazi Germany at Munich has long been a byword for ignominy, moral and diplomatic. Yet neither Neville Chamberlain nor Édouard Daladier had the public support or military wherewithal to stand up to Hitler in September 1938. Britain had just 384,000 men in its regular army; the first Spitfire aircraft only entered RAF service that summer. “Peace for our time” it was not, but at least appeasement bought the West a year to rearm.

The signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 was a betrayal of an embattled U.S. ally and the abandonment of an effort for which 58,000 American troops gave their lives. Yet it did end America’s participation in a peripheral war, which neither Congress nor the public could indefinitely support. “Peace with honor” it was not, as the victims of Cambodia’s Killing Fields or Vietnam’s re-education camps can attest. But, for American purposes at least, it was peace.

PLO “Resignations” and the Peace Process by Khaled Abu Toameh

Erekat and other PLO officials who keep threatening to quit are hoping that the Americans and Europeans will “freak out” at the thought of losing Palestinian “peace partners.”

Palestinians understand that the “resignations” are manly aimed at prompting the US and Western countries to to exert pressure on Israel to make concessions to the PLO. The threats to quit are also intended to send a message to the Palestinian public, which long ago lost confidence in the PLO negotiators’ performance, that Erekat and his colleagues are “playing tough” with Israel.

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords 20 years ago, PLO leaders and officials have threatened to resign each time they wanted something from the international community or Israel.

Saeb Erekat, the chief PLO negotiator, who is currently heading the PLO negotiating team with Israel, tendered his last “resignation” earlier this month in protest against “continued settlement construction.”

This was Erekat’s sixth or seventh “resignation” over the past two decades. Erekat will probably enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of times he supposedly resigned.

MY SAY: INTERNATIONAL EVENTS, 1938

JULY 6-15, 1938
REFUGEE CONFERENCE IN EVIAN

“Delegates from thirty-two countries met at the French resort of Evian. Roosevelt chose not to send a high-level official, such as the secretary of state, to Evian; instead, Myron C. Taylor, a businessman and close friend of Roosevelt’s, represented the US at the conference. During the nine-day meeting, delegate after delegate rose to express sympathy for the refugees. But most countries, including the United States and Britain, offered excuses for not letting in more refugees.

Responding to Evian, the German government was able to state with great pleasure how “astounding” it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them when “the opportunity offer[ed].”

AND FROM STATE DEPARTMENT FILES:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/events/events.html
March 11
German troops crossed Austrian frontier.
The Times (London) March 12, 1938, p. 12

March 13
Austro-German Union proclaimed at Vienna: “Austria is a state
(land) of the German Reich.” Text of Anschluss law, Department
of State PRESS RELEASES, March 19, 1938, Vol. XIX, p 374.April 16
British-Italian agreement signed, whereby Great Britain
recognized the conquest of Ethiopia and Italy promised to
withdraw all troops from Spain at the conclusion of the civil
war.
Great Britain, Foreign Office TREATY SERIES, No. 31 (1938)

April 27-29
Three day Anglo-French conference at London. Arrangement
concluded whereby the British and French general staffs would
collaborate more closely henceforth in military and naval
defense.
New York Times, April 29, 1938, p. 1; April 30, p. 1.

July 21
Chaco Peace Pact signed, ending the long conflict between
Bolivia and Paraguay.
Department of State PRESS RELEASES, July 23, 1938, Vol. XIX, p.
44.

September 15
Chamberlain-Hitler talks at Berchtesgaden.
New York Times, September 16, 1938, p. 1.

September 22-23
Chamberlain-Hitler talks at Godesberg.
New York Times, September 23, 1938, p. 1.; September 24, 1938,
p. 1.

September 26
President Roosevelt appealed for peace directly to Hitler and
President Benes.
Department of State PRESS RELEASES, October 1, 1938, Vol. XIX, p
219.

September 29
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler and Mussolini signed Munich Pact.
Great Britain, Cmd. 5848, FURTHER DOCUMENTS RESPECTING
CZECHOSLOVAKIA, INCLUDING THE AGREEMENT CONCLUDED AT MUNICH ON
SEPTEMBER 29, 1938, Miscellaneous No. 8 (1938)

September 30
Chamberlain-Hitler peace declaration signed.
Great Britain, House of Commons PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES, Vol. 339,
col. 49.

October 1-10
Sudeten areas occupied by Germany.
See Great Britain, Cmd. 5848.

October 1
Czechoslovakia yielded to Poland.
New York Times, October 2, 1938, p. 1.

October 2
Polish troops occupied the Teschen area.
New York Times, October 3, 1938, p 1.

December 6
Franco-German peace declaration signed.
New York Times, December 7, 1938, p. 1.

ANDREW BOSTOM:Nuke Deal Fiasco Analyses Ignore Iran’s Genocidal Islamic Jew-Hatred ****

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2013/11/25/nuke-deal-fiasco-analyses-ignore-irans-genocidal-islamic-jew-hatred/

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, Iran’s President Rouhani, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, all concur on this critical outcome of the interim agreement struck between Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers, announced early Sunday morning, 11/24/13: Iran’s nuclear enrichment program will continue apace.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a not-for-profit, non-partisan, advocacy group which seeks to thwart Iran’s ambition to obtain nuclear weapons, issued a press release highlighting the fundamental strategic failures of the interim 6-month pact:

By not agreeing to dismantle a single centrifuge, Iran has not rolled back its nuclear infrastructure and with the many centrifuges that it is currently operating, Iran retains the ability to breakout and produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear weapon in as little as 2 months. At the same time, the carefully constructed sanctions architecture developed over decades has been significantly rolled back.

UANI argued further that the Geneva agreement provided Iran disproportionate sanctions relief, which would enable the Iranian economy (as gauged by the value of its currency, the rial) to recover to an extent that Iran’s nuclear weapons development (i.e., nuclear enrichment, and plutonium generation) programs, would be abetted by this reduction in economic pressures.

YES! IT CAN BE REPEALED: JOHN FUND

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/364765/print Washington, D.C. — “These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” said then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dan Rostenkowski in August 1989, after senior citizens angry over a federal health-care law booed him and chased him down a Chicago street. That law was repealed a few […]

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: THE LAWLESS ONE

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364731/front-man-kevin-d-williamson Conservatives have for years attempted to put our finger upon precisely why Barack Obama strikes us as queer in precisely the way he does. There is an alienness about him, which in the fever swamps is expressed in all that ridiculous Kenyan-Muslim hokum, but his citizen-of-the-world shtick is strictly sophomore year — the great […]

The Mendicant and the Medal of Freedom by EDWARD CLINE

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/the-mendicant-and-the-medal-of-freedom There is a glaring and ironic contradiction in President Barack Obama’s mendacious bestowing of the Medal of Freedom on anyone. During his two terms in the White House, he has done perhaps more than any other president to reduce the range of freedom of individuals to achieve anything. In the unlikely event I was ever nominated for the Medal of […]

BILL SIEGEL: WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT IRAN FROM THOMAS FRIEDMAN

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/what-we-can-learn-about-iran-from-thomas-l-friedman New York Times’ Opinion writer Thomas L. Friedman demonstrates in his November 19, 2013 piece entitled “Let’s Make a Deal” how a well admired and rhetorically brilliant influencer can be little more than today’s most “useful idiot.” Friedman often seems to function as a White House “rabbit,” preparing the ground in advance for the […]

JOHN WOHLSETTER: IRAN’S THUGS SMILE…WE LOSE

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/irans-thugs-smile-we-lose John Kerry’s interim disaster augurs catastrophe…. Sunday morning’s interim nuclear deal that six Western powers made with Iran’s rulers is a disaster in search of catastrophe–the latter in the form of the planned final deal six months hence. On Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace began his report on the deal having been reached […]