Blog – Page 3 – Suzanne Berliner Weiss

Review of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” – Review by Phil Ward

Socialistresistance.org | Socialist Resistance

Phil Ward, 7 May 2020

For the author’s comments on related Holocaust autobiographies, see end of this review. (SBW)

“Holocaust to Resistance” differs from [other biographies on the Holocaust] in two respects. Firstly, Suzanne Weiss was too young to recollect – and certainly to understand – most of her experiences of the war years, so one of the strands of the book is a journey of rediscovery of her past as a Jewish girl born in Paris in 1941. The second strand recounts her life as a political activist, including over 25 years as a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (USA – no relation to the British SWP). Although many Jewish holocaust survivors have developed left-wing views as a result of their experiences and used them as a guide in their working lives, a memoir from an activist in a far-left political group or “party” is different.

A life of political activism

In 1958, aged 17, having moved with her adoptive mother to the Los Angeles, Suzanne came to political activism through her interest in the struggle of African Americans against racism and for civil rights. She soon encountered the Socialist Workers’ Party and joined its youth wing. The SWP was about to enter a decade or so of growing political influence, after the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period. The party brought with it a number of people seasoned in the workers’ struggles of the 1930s, the war period and its immediate aftermath. Its history in the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, meant that it was able to draw on experiences wider that just the USA to inform its activity.

Continue reading Review of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” – Review by Phil Ward

The Impact of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on the French Resistance

Commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto, 2020

I come from the Nazi Holocaust in France born under Nazi occupation. There, an anti-Jewish French regime, called “Vichy,” was allied with the Nazi invaders. The Nazis considered the Jews, Roma, people of colour, anyone not of German origin, “untermenshen” lower than human.

The French authorities campaigned against immigrants and refugees, blaming them for unemployment. Vichy passed harsh laws against Jews, including my parents.

In July 1942, a massive police raid in Paris imprisoned 13,000 men, women and children in the sports arena, Vel D’hiver. Among them were 4,000 children. Disoriented and stunned, they were all transported to concentration camps. They knew not what was in store for them.

The fact is that up to that point, the Jewish people believed the transports were taking men to Germany as slave labour. There was much discussion on the separate transport of women and children. Where were they going? Would their families reunite? How would they live? They did not know.

‘Holocaust to Resistance’ Tour Draws Wide Interest

March 23, 2020

Resistance to Hitler Has Lessons for Today

by John Riddell: The dangers posed by the Covid-19 virus forced suspension on March 19 of Suzanne Weiss’s tour introducing her memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey. But the tour’s results so far indicate encouraging interest in her story and its message of global solidarity.

Suzanne’s seventeen meetings in Toronto, Montreal, Kingston, Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Pittsburgh were attended by 1,000 participants. Many more saw her or heard her four interviews in print and online. (See Interview by Radio Western.)

All Suzanne’s city and university presentations highlighted Palestinian human rights, a topic that today often triggers false accusations of anti-Semitism. (For a recent overview of this controversy, see IJV Statement.) Yet Suzanne’s meetings aroused no such criticisms. When her views were questioned, the exchange was respectful and constructive.

Palestinian Demands are Simple and Just’

‘For Freedom to Think and Freedom to Live’

by Rana Abdulla

Rana Abdulla’s introduction to my presentation in Winnipeg March 2 includes a powerful statement of the rights of Palestinian people. Her statement is reproduced here with Rana’s permission.

When I landed in Winnipeg with my partner John Riddell the previous day, we were met by Harold Shuster, a friend from Independent Jewish Voices. He took us for lunch at wonderful Palestinian restaurant, the Yafa Café. There, we met its dynamic driving spirit, Rana Abdulla, well known in Winnipeg as a strong voice for Palestinian rights.

Interview in: Sada Almashrek

by Hussein Hoballah

Suzanne Weiss, Jewish advocate for Palestinian human rights and author of “Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey” (Fernwood, 2019), contributed the following response to our questions in Sada Almashrek, an Arabic-English publication in Montreal.

Though the “anti-Semitism” narrative is today being made bait at large to hit back hard on any criticisers of Israel, outspoken Weiss says she, like many other Jews, refuses the Israeli authorities’ unjust treatment and supports, instead, al-Quds Day, as well as collaboration with Muslims to fight real anti-Semitism and any other form of racism.

Mrs Weiss says that her activism on behalf of Palestine is based on the principle of “universalism” found in both Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Now nearing eighty, Suzanne Weiss still enjoys a strong memory of major global incidents that have shaped today’s injustices and is therefore determined to make a difference.

1) Mrs Weiss, it is amazing to read your book Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, and learn about your personal journey, so would you please briefly share some background info on it?

When I was an infant child, a Jew in France under Fascist occupation, the Nazis targeted me to be killed. After the Nazi defeat, I wondered how I had survived. Over the decades, I pieced the story together: my survival was the work of a broad movement of solidarity that saved many thousands of other Jewish children.

It’s a Page-turner That Brings You In On Her Journey

By Sue Goldstein

Toronto – March 10, 2020 -Suzanne Berliner Weiss is a lifelong organizer, whose passage to activism began in Vichy France under Nazi rule. In her highly readable memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, Weiss recounts her life in France and the people who saved her from Hitler’s slaughter.

As a hidden child in Auvergne in south-central France, Suzanne lived with a farm family who were loath to give her up once her father, after surviving the war, returned to retrieve her. Shortly afterwards, her father died.

‘Holocaust survivor condemns McGill’s handling of anti-Semitism allegations’

By Kevin Vogel, published in the McGill Tribune, February 25, 2020

Photo by Kevin Vogel, The McGill Tribune – Suzanne (in the middle) is being given a kefiyyah.

During her visit to promote her memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, Suzanne Berliner Weiss led a rally on Feb. 17 condemning Deputy Provost of Student Life and Learning Fabrice Labeau’s handling of anti-Semitism allegations regarding last semester’s controversial Face to Face trip. Weiss, a lifelong activist and Holocaust survivor, heard about these allegations from media coverage last December. Co-organized by Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill, the rally outside of the James Administration Building featured Weiss delivering a letter to Deputy Provost Labeau detailing her perspective on the issue. Weiss read the letter aloud before delivering it to Labeau’s office.

No War on Iran

End Canada’s Sanctions; Restore Diplomatic Relations

Suzanne Weiss was one of the speakers at a anti war rally Saturday, 25, 2020. She is a member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) and a longtime Palestine solidarity activist.

Image may contain: 2 people, people sitting President Trump and his government are threatening war against Iran!

Most Canadians polled are against this war.

No war against Iran!

Trump is trying to strangle and starve Iran through crippling sanctions.

These sanctions aim to starve the Iranian people and bring them to their knees.

No sanctions on Iran!

Image may contain: 10 people, crowd and outdoor

Forty years ago, the Iranian people rose up in a great revolution and asserted their national sovereignty against U.S. domination. Washington has never forgiven them for that. Canada should respect Iran’s sovereignty. Continue reading No War on Iran

A visit with Ronald Lee Romani activist and historian

Our beloved friend, mentor, teacher, author, archivist, historian, musician and tireless fighter for Romani human rights, our dear Ron is gone. Ron you have taught and inspired us. You will live in our memory and our hearts. (January 26, 2020)

Ronald Lee was an extraordinary historian of the Roma people. John Riddell and I visited him on a rainy December 29 in St. Peters’ Hospital long-term care facility in Hamilton. He greeted us with a strong handshake and reviewed his life and personal work with animation and enthusiasm. Ron is a Romani Canadian born in Montreal who spent World War 2 in England by happenstance with friends of his parents. He returned in 1945 to Montreal, where he spent most of his adult life.

A self-educated scholar, Ron Lee became a Romani activist, journalist, linguist, and published author on the history of the Romani people. He lectured extensively for colleges, universities, and elementary and high schools in Canada and the US, and taught a seminar on the Romani diaspora at New College, University of Toronto in 2003-2008. He received an honorary degree at Queens University in 2014. For a selection of his writings see his website http://kopachi.com/

Suzanne Weiss speaks with high-school students in Clermont-Ferrand, France

by Sophie Leclanché in ‘La Montagne’

With high school friends in Clermont-Ferrand, May 2017

Below is an article reports on Suzanne Berliner Weiss’s discussions in 2017 with high-school students in Clermont-Ferrand, capital of the French region of Auvergne. For a fuller account of her visit and discussions, see Chapter 31 of her book ‘Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey’ (pp. 285-295). The book can be purchase from Fernwood Publishers. The text by Sophie Leclanché is translated from French by John Riddell.

Suzanne Berliner Weiss came to Auvergne to speak of all those who protected her when she was a young Jewish child and to thank them collectively.

Her repeated visits to Auvergne do not aim merely at identifying names and locations. It’s also to say “thanks”. Thanks to the people of Auvergne as a whole and also in particular to those who enabled her to survive and flourish. Suzanne was a hidden Jewish child somewhere in France, probably in Auvergne. Suzanne will recount what she has experienced to high-school and college students in Clermont-Ferrand.

Her aim lies not so much in revealing facts buried in her memory but in underlining the importance of “acting in the same spirit as the Auvergnats.” As a survivor, she identifies these essential qualities as “solidarity, generosity and love,” speaking in a French that sparkles more than it hesitates. Cautious and respectful, Suzanne does not presume to talk of French politics. But as a left-wing activist, she stresses the need, everywhere and always, to “address the challenges that we face.”