Menachem's Shoa Writings

Over the years I have written many pieces connected to the Shoa, the Holocaust of European Jewry. These essays are scattered amongst my Writings, which are arranged in the order in which I wrote them.

I have now produced an index to these Shoa Writings. They include personal narratives related to me by survivors, told here in my words, as well as some portrayals of life before the very tragic, murderous events. I have also written of the trials and tribulations of growing up in the second generation.

Today is the fast of the 10th Teveth. This day was ordained to commemorate the commencement of horrific events which took place in later biblical times, culminating in the destruction of the Beth haMikdash, and of all Jewish life, in Yerushalayim.

Soon after the establishment of the State of Yisrael just a few years after the end of the Shoa, the chief rabbinate updated this day to include the recent tragedies. This was the first date set aside to commemorate the so recent tragic times and events. They declared this date be the day on which people, who did not know the date of the murder of their loved ones, should keep as a memorial day, yartzeit. They renamed the day יום הקדיש הכללי.

On this day I remember my infant sister, Eva Kaufman. I do not know anything about her, how old she was nor when and where she was murdered. She was about a year old and met her demise in 1943 or 44.

I think about her a lot.

Menachem Kuchar, 14th December, 2021    
10th Teveth, 5782    

The Partisan's Trilogy

• That Cigarette
• The Existential Barber
• The Second Generation

• Reflections of Shiva for my brother Dennis
• His Last Kidush
• A Partisan Survivor's Letter to His Cousin in Israel A Letter from Beyond the Grave
• Reactions to Yom haShoa and Second Generation Survival Essays The Partisan Survivor's Letter — from Beyond the Grave
• YomShoa, 5780 — remembering my sister
• My name is Menachem Kuchar I am a survivor
• Some Benefits in Discovering Your Long Lost Relatives
• Three Holocaust Experiences. My friends tell me their stories
• My Holocaust Survivor Friends Tell It As It Is — Another first hand account of the Amalekites and their partners' attempts to annihilate God and the Jewish people in this world
• Another Uncle and Another, Very Different, Holocaust Experience Lipot's story
• I Once Had an Uncle
• [My mother] Returning Home after a Lengthy Absence
• My Uncle the Soccer Star
• I Finally Meet My Father's Long Lost Relatives All Around the World
• Memories of my Father
• Skeletons in My Closet or I think I may smell a rat
• The Smell Just Isn't Going Away
• Remembering my Father on Yet Another Anniversary of His Death Yartzeit and Kaddish — An examination of Death
• Capos, Kapos and Nazi Murder Inc. — Could the Germans have done it on their own?
• Capos, Kapos and Nazi Murder Revisited. How do Holocaust victims, and how should we relate to Capos?
• More on Capos — A moral dilemma
• Why Do Jews Love a Free Lunch? Anything, Anywhere and with Anyone
• The Road from Presov to Kosice. A Mere Sixty Kilometres or an Eternity?
• The History of My Family via My Grandmother's Candlesticks
• Setting the Record Completely Straight re My Aunts
• Amelekites, Nazis and the Enemies of the Jews
• I'm left-handed, but nobody bothered to tell me
• Three Old Friends, a Sewing Machine and a Kidnapping
• Hidden Beneath a Cowshed, Chapter I
• Hidden Beneath a Cowshed, Chapter II
• Cogito ergo sum — I Think, Therefore I Am or I Don't Think, Therefore Perhaps I Am Not or "What's all this Doublespeak?"
• Smuggling out of the Soviet Block
• The Shattering of the Myth — the Jews of the Disapora and the Jews of Israel
• Whose Land Is This?
• Of HUSSEIN Obama, Elie Wiesel, Cairo and Buchenwald
• A Eulogy to a Survivor
• My Life Story by Edith Duci Gluck Kuchar Schwartz
• A Life Saved by Dog Biscuits
• An Israeli School Boy Faces the Atrocities of Jewish Life in Poland