Our Holocaust Vacation

Love at the End of the World:
Stories of War, Romance and Redemption
by Tonia Rotkopf Blair

A few years after Tonia Rotkopf Blair was filmed for “Our Holocaust Vacation” in 1997, she dedicated herself to writing. Although she had already written a few stories, she enrolled in a writing class and began pouring her most poignant memories into precise stories in a provocative teenage voice. A few stories cover events in the movie, others her years in South America and New York but almost all grapple with the Holocaust as experienced by a young woman.

Although her entire teen years were under the Nazi boot suffering immense horror, she didn't let that stop her from practicing kindness, learning about romance, and developing intense relationships, some of which saved her life. From falling in love with a young man while jammed in a cattle car to chaste flirting with a German pilot and other liaisons, she kept her heart and dreams alive and inspired others.

Indeed, the book includes an essay by her son, Doniphan Blair, also its editor, which revisits Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” as “survival of the lovingest."

"Love at the End of the World” is available at most book sellers and lists at:

Kindle $4.95 (US)
Paperback $12.95 
Hardback $26.95

May is the cruelest month, my mother still tells me, even though she was liberated May 7.  I went to a ceremony honoring the Jewish partisans at a synagogue in Oakland and watched 'Defiance' last night.

Imagine Irena's surprise when she realizes that not only is the family vacation back to Europe with her grandmother to learn about the Holocaust but her father and uncle are making a movie about it.  Welcome to "Our Holocaust Vacation," a documentary about family, loss, atrocity and even having some fun!

Ironically, one the same Sunday, May 1, that Osama bin Laden was killed, PBS was showing "Our Holocaust Vacation" up and down California. We got this post from a viewer in Simi Valley.

"Amidst all the joy about the death of Osama Bin Laden, at 11pm, I was flipping through the channels and came upon the beginning of 'Our Holocaust Vacation' and instead of watching anything about Osama, I spent the hour with you and your family, still blown away about the strength of your mother and the journey of your whole family on that 'vacation.' Peace, Jeffrey"

Since the film is about healing from terror, that is appropriate.  I applaud what is now happening in the Arab democracy movement, but for it to flourish, its members will have to normalize thinking about Israel.  A good way to start would be to recognize the history of the Holocaust and its healing.

This is not to compare suffering but to understand history as pre-natal psychology.

Our Holocaust Vacation was supposedly accepted by the Tehran International Film festival but we didn't submit it because we didn't receive an upper level administrator's OK.  Nevertheless, we are very interested in communicating with Iranians, Arabs and Muslims about the Holocaust story, people's right to flee terror and the subsequent land swap with Arabs and the conflicting narrative of the Jews as only Zionist colonialists.

Art and story telling is the way to allow these two competing narratives to heal and move the Middle East culture towards acceptance of Israel as well as its own democracies.

As much as studying the Holocaust is about horror and tragedy, it is also about the romantic belief in the goodness of man.  First of all, if anti-Jewish sentiment did prevail, we would not be here talking about the history.

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