Having recently visited the Jewish Museum in New York City, I learned of a series of paper engravings titled "In the Eruv of Theresienstadt."

In their diabolical way, the Nazis fooled the world concerning the ghastly concentration and extermination camps.  During World War II, "small bits of information about the extreme and horrific episodes perpetrated under the Third Reich reached an unbelieving world.  The Nazis needed to answer the world's growing concern, yet they wanted to continue implementing their final solution" of exterminating the Jewish people.  So the "Nazis decided to use Theresienstadt to solve the growing outside pressure.  Through deceit and subterfuge, the Nazis transformed Theresienstadt into a model ghetto."

Those who survived the horrors of the Holocaust remembered.  Fritz Lederer (1878-1949), who was trained at the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts, "designed sets for theater productions in Theresienstadt" – yet another incongruity.  After the war, though, he created "oppressive scenes of the camp, including the 'The Eastern Fortress,' 'The Only Exit from Eruv,' and the 'Little Fortress' depicting the prison where many inmates were tortured and murdered."

The term eruv refers to the symbolic boundary established in some Jewish communities, demarcating a space considered the shared private property of all members, within which certain practices normally forbidden on the Sabbath may be performed.  Lederer's use of the term eruv in the context of Theresienstadt is laced with irony.  The only way out of this eruv was by death or deportation to an extermination camp.

The pictures seen here are stark and vivid reminders of the anti-Semitism that never goes away.

The stench of anti-Semitism remains.  Consequently, even in death, a young Jewish girl is dishonored.  This YouTube video showing Claudia Roth of the German Green party making a mockery of the murder of a young German Jewish teen reminds one of the thunderous applause that Hitler received when he stated during his Reichstag speech that Germany would soon be Judenrein, or free of all Jews.

Thomas Seitz of AfD (Alternative for Germany) attempted to remember the brutal death of this young girl by a Muslim migrant who boasted how he had murdered a Jewish girl.  But the contemptuous and anti-Semitic leftists made a mockery of this moment of silence.

The "leftist German Parliament members started to make noise and applauded for Claudia Roth's intervention."

[A] 20-year-old Iraqi man had admitted to the rape and murder of 14-year-old Susanna Feldman in Germany, where the case has stoked the immigration debate.

The Jewish teenager from Mainz near Frankfurt was found dead on Wednesday in a wooded area in Wiesbaden, near a refugee center where the alleged attacker had lived[.]

In fact, "Ali Bashar ... had come to Germany through Turkey and Greece. He had arrived in Germany in the fall of 2015 at the height of Merkel's migration crisis.  Since then, he had been accused of raping an 11-year-old girl in a refugee shelter, attacking a policewoman and robbing a man at knifepoint.  His asylum application had been rejected at the end of 2016.  Bashar claimed to have been threatened by the PKK, a Kurdish group fighting against ISIS and Turkey.  But he appealed, and was allowed to stay on in Germany until he finally killed." 

The Green Party's Annalena Baerbock declared that nobody should, "presume to abuse the death of this girl to sow hatred."  Yet:

A German poll of refugees last year found that more than half hold anti-Semitic views. Even before the migrant flood, German police had noted the rising number of Muslims arrested for anti-Semitic acts.

In one Berlin school, Muslim students openly boasted, 'If a Jew enters our school, he'll get beaten up – I'd beat him up too.'

In German cities, Muslim mobs have chanted, 'Hamas Hamas Jews to the gas!'  German courts ruled that firebombing a synagogue previously torched by the Nazis was anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic.

A distinction without a difference.

In Judaism, the prayer for a deceased individual is called the kaddish.  The prayer is written in Aramaic, and is "traditionally recited in memory of the dead, although it makes no mention of death."

While there are many who would desecrate the memory of Susanna Maria Feldmann, we should pray for her soul and remember her.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.