Its AGM time again.  During the AGM we will be showing the locally produced documentary “Strawberries with the Fuhrer.”

Four years in the making, the documentary “Strawberries with the Fuhrer” tells the true story of Helga Tiscenko, whose father was a Nazi SS General, and the ongoing impacts of her traumatic and violent family legacy.

Growing up in Nazi Germany, Helga understood only that her parents were loving and intelligent people. She likens her experience of being chosen to present Hitler with a bunch of forget-me-nots at his birthday celebration one year to what it would feel like for a child of today to meet a pop star. They ate strawberries and ice cream together; Helga shared her parents’ unquestioning devotion to the Nazi regime.

As the Third Reich collapsed, the reality of its atrocities was fully exposed. Helga fled the Allied advance, barely escaping with her life. Her father was executed as a war criminal. Helga and her Russian husband escaped Europe for a new life in South Canterbury, New Zealand – and rarely spoke of the past.

In her 70s, Helga finally decided to break the silence and write of her life’s upheavals and of the near impossibility of reconciling how two honourable and caring people like her parents could have come to be so involved in the Nazi regime.  “She now sees vividly how economic hardship, social upheaval and social deprivation can spawn despotic leaders like Hitler and the dangers of mass hysteria,” says Amy, who travelled to Germany and Slovakia to further research Hermann Höfle’s war-time role.

The material uncovered was relayed back to Helga’s daughter Katerina, who grew up largely ignorant of her grandparents’ Nazi connection. “She has been an amazing part of this documentary. I believe that talking about it has been the best thing for her, and I also found the younger generation I met in Germany, with a similar family history, to be very forthcoming, ” said Amy O’Connor, who made the documentary.

Be sure to send us your nominations for the Committee to arrive a week before the AGM.

We are having another sausage sizzle at Shirley Bunnings on Marshland Road this weekend.

Each sausage sizzle has been a wonderful opportunity to meet the public, raise awareness of Israel, the Middle East and Jewish culture.

If you can help out for a morning or afternoon, then feel free to email us on contact@nzfoi.org or call (027) 433 9745

Shavuot (or Shavuos, in Ashkenazi usage; Shabuʿoth in Classical and Mizrahi Hebrew Hebrew: שבועות‎, lit. “Weeks”), or the Feast of Weeks, is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (late May or early June).

Shavuot commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai, although the association between the giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) and Shavuot is not explicit in the Biblical text. The holiday is one of the Shalosh Regalim, the three Biblical pilgrimage festivals. It marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer.

The date of Shavuot is directly linked to that of Passover. The Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and immediately followed by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the Giving of the Torah. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.

Yom Kippur (Hebrew: יוֹם כִּפּוּר, IPA: [ˈjom kiˈpuʁ], or יום הכיפורים), also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jewish people traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora’im (“Days of Awe”).

Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei and also regarded as the “Sabbath of Sabbaths”. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jewish person tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.

Presented by the NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc.

The Holocaust is the name given to the systematic slaughter of over 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of other minorities under the Nazi regime in the 30s and 40s.  If one has heard about the Holocaust at all it is usually from the victorious Allies or from the tragic testimony of survivors.

Christa Behr, is a writer based in Israel, who grew up in Post-War Germany where she learnt about the Holocaust for the first time.  She often takes Israelis to travel through Germany and arranges tours of Israel for interested Germans.

Behr will answer the following questions in her address:

1. What was it like growing up in post-war Germany and learning of the Holocaust?
2. How could the Holocaust happen in a modern civilised country with high rates of literacy and education?
3. Why didn’t dissenters speak up?
4. How did Germans react when the truth came out?
5. How has Germany dealt with the Holocaust since the War?
6. What are German attitudes toward the Holocaust now?
7. What are German attitudes toward Jews now?

The work of Oscar Schindler in saving many Jews from Nazi slaughter was made famous by Steven Spielberg’s movie “Schindler’s List.”

This year, with the NZ Zionist Federation and the Wellington Holocaust Centre, invite you to attend an evening with Eva Lavi.

When a German officer pointed at her to enquire why she wasn’t selected for the camps, Schindler stepped between them and argued that she was necessary for assembling tiny parts in their manufacturing facility.  Unable to argue otherwise, the officer moved on.

She was less than five years old.

Meet history in person.

We look forward to you joining us.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 27 January, is an international memorial day for the victims of the Holocaust, the genocide that resulted in the annihilation of 6 million Jews, 2 million Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), 15,000 homosexual people and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.

Counting of the Omer (or Sefirat Ha’omer, Hebrew: ספירת העומר) is a verbal counting of each of the forty-nine days between God’s appointed festivals of Passover and Shavuot. This mitzvah derives from the Torah commandment to count forty-nine days beginning from the day on which the Omer, a sacrifice containing an omer-measure of barley, was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, up until the day before an offering of wheat was brought to the Temple on Shavuot. The Counting of the Omer begins on the second day of Passover (the 16th of Nisan) for Rabbinic Jews, and after the weekly Shabbat during Passover for Karaite Jews, and ends the day before the holiday of Shavuot, the ‘fiftieth day.’

The idea of counting each day represents spiritual preparation and anticipation for the giving of the Torah[citation needed], which was given by God on Mount Sinai at the beginning of the month of Sivan, around the same time as the holiday of Shavuot. The Sefer HaChinuch states that the Hebrew people were only freed from Egypt at Passover in order to…

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Hi Folks

Passover begins on the evening of March 26 and ends April 2.

We have received requests from families seeking to share a Passover meal with another family.  If you are interested then please send us an expression of interest by return email and we will endeavour to match you up with someone near you who has also expressed a similar interest.  Once matched its over to you to discuss logistics.

Kind regards

NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc

P O Box 33 200
Christchurch
New Zealand
Mb +64(27)433 9745
Em contact@nzfoi.org

Wb www.nzfoi.org