Saturday, October 31, 2015

Announcing the creation and establishment of the international ''Newseum of Cli-Fi'' -- A 1000-Year Adventure !

Announcing ...

.. the immament establishment of an international ''Newseum of Cli-Fi''

-- A 1000-Year Adventure !

Tweet us at @clifi

 
 ''Newseum of Cli-Fi''
A 1000-Year Adventure
(2015-3015)
 
Archives of cli-fi novels and movies
OpEds from around the world
Posters of cli-fi movies
''End Times''
End
30
!
 
 
 
 

National Geographic Channel airs one-hour show on climate DENIALIST issues with Bill Nye, Arnold and Guy McPherson

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/now-its-bill-nye-with-climate-change-denial-and-arnold-schwarzenegger-to-the-rescue/?_r=0

Bill Nye's Global Meltdown

32 sec video here:
https://vimeo.com/142305414

Andy, this is great item. I tweeted it and sent it worldwide, as I am sure the show even if it doesn't air overseas will be avail later on YouTube channels or other sites after the copyright is released. The Guy McPherson segment of the show should make for compelling thinking outside the box TV, since he says the End Times are coming as early as 2030 and of course most people don't understand what he is saying with this date. I like Guy and his heart is in the right place. What I think he really means to do is 1. try to wake people up with a thought experiment/thought exercise to try to prod people out of their comfort zones on AGW issues and 2. issue a cri de coeur about what he sees as an important existential crossroad we are fast approaching. It will be interesting to see how the GEO show treats Guy on air, as a sympathethic person or as an outcast nutcase. I hope it's the former and not the latter. We shall see. MEANWHILE: while Guy says the date is 2030 when the etc hits the fan, I have to disagree with him on the details and say that we have a lot more time to prepare for the Climapocalypse, at least 30 more generations of humans, that's your great great great grandchildren times 30, Andy and everyone else here, and Guy, too. At least 500 years, even 1000 years. Not But listen to Guy. Come the year 2031 of course, his prediction will be seen for what it was: dreaminess. We have 30 more generations to fix things or die trying. Via 'The Cli-Fi Report': http://cli-fi.net

ANDY REVKIN at his popular NYT-based DOT EARTH blog posts this today:

Climate Change

Science Guy Bill Nye Explores How We Mourn a Changing Climate
In the face of losses caused by global warming, scientists, activists, and the public at large may be working through “climate change grief.”
Picture of bill nye looking at oil refinery
“Science Guy” and climate activist Bill Nye observes a Syncrude oil refinery in Alberta, Canada, where tarry, bitumen-laced sand is converted into synthetic oil.


The pastel Art Deco buildings of Miami Beach face a waterlogged future, as rising seas and saltwater intrusion threaten to reclaim the low-lying city. Hundreds of square miles of forest lay torn asunder in Alberta, Canada, as tar sand companies squeeze viscous fuel out of the earth below. And California’s lands lay baking and parched, as a historic drought continues to suck the Golden State dry.
It’s enough to provoke some strong feelings. Perhaps you’d prefer to ignore the growing signs of climate change, denying that the Earth’s shifting weather patterns will have a material effect on your life. Maybe you’re angry—or even depressed—about the problem’s size and our insufficient response to it. Or perhaps you’ve accepted climate change as the great challenge of our time and are ready to get to work.
Picture of bill nye on psychiatrist's couch
In “Explorer: Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown,” former California governor and action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger counsels Bill Nye through “climate change grief.”

In other words, you may be progressing through the five stages of a particular kind of grief: climate grief. And you’re not alone. Bill Nye the Science Guy is right there with you.
In the upcoming TV special “Explorer: Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown,” which premieres Sunday, November 1, on the National Geographic Channel, Nye guides viewers through the “five stages of climate grief”—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—as a means of grappling with his own feelings about climate change.
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Nye’s on-screen grief counseling—administered by a sage Arnold Schwarzenegger—serves to categorize the varied ways that different businesses, governments, and citizens are responding to climate change. In Nye’s telling, for instance, the oil company Shell “bargains” with climate change when it builds a massive carbon sequestration plant in Alberta, Canada, that will capture less than two percent of the area’s CO2 output.
“It’s a little bit forced, but it’s charming,” Nye says.

(Environ)Mental Health

Yet make no mistake: Climate change will cause individual and societal loss, and how people will process that loss through grieving increasingly preoccupies scientists and policymakers.
Nye takes his cues from Steve Running, a University of Montana ecologist and lead chapter author on the lauded 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won a Nobel Peace Prize that same year. When traveling the U.S. on a post-Nobel lecture tour, he noticed that his audiences’ responses varied wildly: Some proved utterly resistant to his discussion of a changing climate; others, he felt, were “very sad and demoralized” about the pending future.
Running soon realized that the “five stages of grief,” popularized in the 1970s by psychologist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross to explain people’s methods for dealing with loss, mapped surprisingly well onto his observations.
“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this fits pretty well, this lays out the logic,’” he says, and worked “climate grief” into a widely circulated essay and presentation that has only grown in popularity.
“It’s a clever way to think about [climate change],” says Janet Swim, a psychologist at Penn State University who studies personal and social responses to climate change.
Though Swim emphasizes that research into climate change and mental health has barely begun, it’s clear that one faction in particular is struggling with a staggering sense of loss: climate scientists. As numerous media reports indicate, climate scientists’ existentially numbing work has mired many in what could be considered climate depression.
Picture of dog and abandoned house in drought-stricken california
The specter of climate change looms large in California, where four years of severe drought have turned once-green farms and pastures into arid wastelands.

Running knows the feeling, especially after the failed Copenhagen climate summit of 2009. “After 2009 I had fits of depression.” Running says. “It was kinda hard not to slide back.”
The repercussions may well spread far and wide. The American Psychological Association, for instance, has forecast that climate change will likely have a profound impact on human mental health and well-being, whether from the shock of an extreme weather event such as Hurricane Katrina, or the sense of helplessness that climate change’s magnitude may provoke.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, more than 200 million Americans likely will bear some mental health hiccup because of climate change and related events.
“If there’s anything universal about climate change, it’s loss,” says Katharine Preston, an ecumenical lay preacher who focuses on social justice and the environment. And with loss, invariably, comes some form of grief.
For Preston, who counts Running as one of her inspirations, it’s a “matter of the head and the heart,” as laid out in a 2013 article she wrote on climate grief:
Have we ignored our emotional and spiritual connections to the planet? Could the noise swirling around climate change—science, politics, media blitzes, as well as the weather disasters themselves—drown out the voice of a loss so profound that it rests unnamed in our souls? Could our breaking hearts be part of the reason we are immobilized?
But Preston, along with climate scientists and figures including Nye, underscores the importance of working through the loss in an effort to keep up motivation. Swim’s research, for example, shows that discussing climate change with supportive communities and taking group-level action, such as advocating for bike paths and other green options, can make a positive difference.
“It’s not like it’s ever done,” says Swim. “But it helps.”
As for Nye, he remains eager to get to work on climate change. He has to.
“You have to be optimistic, but you don’t have to look at the world through rose-colored glasses,” he says. “You can be discouraged. But you have to believe the problem is solvable, or you won’t do anything.”
Follow Michael Greshko on Twitter.



 

Now It’s Bill Nye With Climate Change Denial – and Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Rescue


Photo
Bill Nye, the "Science Guy," is diagnosed with "climate change grief" by Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Explorer: Bill Nye's Global Meltdown."Credit National Geographic Channels

In recent years, Bill Nye, best known as “The Science Guy,” has become a must-book figure when a talk show, or President Obama for that matter, is looking for someone to challenge climate change denial.
But however well intended, such efforts often seem to empower defenders of fossil fuels as much as those seeking a low-emissions energy future, given how name calling syncs with the nation’s broader, edge-driven political polarization.
That’s why “Explorer: Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown,” premiering Sunday night* on National Geographic Channel, is so refreshing. In the program, written and directed by Chris Cassel, Nye reluctantly resolves to confront the five stages of “climate change grief” after he is diagnosed with that malady by his cigar-chomping therapist, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The program is built around the environmental equivalent of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five mental stages of dealing with death — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The conceit makes a nice structure for what is a mix of road movie and science explainer.
Spurred by his diagnosis, Nye goes on the road, exploring denial in surreal conversations with a Florida state legislator who flatly rejects any human contribution to global warming or coastal risks, and a street sampling of tuned-out citizenry, even in flood-prone Miami. A helicopter tour shows the entire city is evidently in denial given the blistering pace of construction in the face of inevitable and sustained sea level rise. In the context of warming and sea levels, Nye can’t resist pulling out a flask to show how heated water expands.
Photo
Bill Nye, depressed after meeting an ecologist foreseeing the end of the human race by 2030, goes into a tail spin in a TV program on climate change.Credit NG Studios, Chris Cassel

Nye hits his nadir in a desert meeting with an apocalyptic ecologist, Guy McPherson, who has built something of an “End of Days” following through his prediction that the human race will be gone by 2030. (For a reality check on McPherson, read Michael Tobis and Scott Johnson.)
McPherson’s deadpan pronouncements send Nye into a nihilistic tailspin, including a rare unraveling of his bow tie and a cigarette-puffing walk down the middle of a highway (Cassel said that scene was Nye’s idea), followed by a hilarious cigar-smoking session back in his therapist’s office.
If you can’t catch the show, or want a foretaste, here’s a slide show of the journey.
It’s nice to see Nye explore various facets of denial in a way that, while including some deserved digs at Florida Republicans, is more informative than divisive.
Indeed, in a phone interview Friday, Nye said he sees a rising prospect of a Republican presidential candidate turning the corner on climate: 
I can imagine, with the right advisers influencing the right candidate, that in order to win the votes of millennials, people coming of age right now, you would have to change your stance on climate change. I could easily imagine a thoughtful Republican, along about February or March next year, saying, ‘I’ve been thinking about this issue and I’ve changed my mind. We need to get to work on this right away.’
That would be a phenomenally great thing. I hope the person doesn’t backfire where the person wins the election and then abandons the necessary policies. But I feel we’re so close to a tipping point on this issue where it will no longer possible for a presidential candidate to ignore the reality of climate change.
The film may also offer some comfort to many environmental commentators who were horrified when 21st Century Fox and the National Geographic Society created a joint commercial enterprise. National Geographic Channel has long been a part of Fox and, along with this show, is producing the next season of the climate documentary series “Years of Living Dangerously” and produced “Cosmos.” Amusingly, a montage of Nye’s sparring matches with conservative media in the new film includes a snippet of Fox News in finest form.
One disappointment for me was the lack of any mention — particularly from a science guy — of the decades of bipartisan disinvestment in basic research and development in energy sciences in the United States and other industrialized countries — a gap that many studies have found would need to be filled to have any chance of achieving steep drops in greenhouse-gas emissions.
There’s no mention of nuclear power and a pretty simplified summary of how to end fossil fuel use with today’s renewable-energy technologies. (That’s the difference between a thought experiment and a road map.) But this would realistically require far more than an hour.
Over all, “Bill Nye’s Global Meltdown” is a welcome and entertaining departure from the longstanding stream of woe and shame dominating environmental filmmaking in recent years.
If you want to multitask while watching, you can leaf or click through the November issue of National Geographic Magazine, headlined “Cool It.” The entire issue is devoted to the topic of climate change science and policy options.
And of course, don’t forget to check out Nye’s forthcoming climate book, “Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.” I’ll be reading it shortly.
___
*The program airs at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time EST IN USA ; remember the time change.

Friday, October 30, 2015

A Canadian's take on the themes of Canadian regional literature (glib humour)

FIND CANADA ON THE MAP


A blogger somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy writes with glib humour:

Western Canadian Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Eastern Canadian Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my marriage.”

Cultural differences.

Then this blogger above adds: ''A few folks have commented that the preceding post is overly reductive, and I have to admit that I was perhaps a bit glib. Here’s an attempt at a more accurate summary, then.''

British Columbia Literature: The mountains are cold and empty, like - holy shit, a bear!”
Alberta Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my attempts to reconnect with my heritage.”
Saskatchewan Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Manitoba Literature: “The prairie is cold and empty, like my relationship with my father.”
Ontario Literature:The hills are cold and empty, like my faith in humanity.”
Quebec Literature: “The River is cold and empty, like my faith in God.”
Newfoundland Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my marriage.”
Nova Scotia Literature: “The sea is cold and empty, like my relationship with my son.”
Nunavut Literature:The tundra is cold and empty, like the legacy of white colonialism.”

AND THEN ADDS: ''I think that about covers it.''

======================================

UPDATE / POSTSCRIPT:

A Canadian friend of this blog writes in to say, after I as a Yankee asked, are these jokes funny and do they reflect Canadian humour. My friend said:

''Moderately funny. Canadians always make fun of Canadian literature, but they make fun of everything. '' SEE link below:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/10/23/how-irony-killed-stephen-harper.html

THE SCORPION RULES is YA ''cli-fi'' novel set 400 years from now, written by physicist turned author Erin Bow

Addley Fannin is a freelance writer and graduate student in Northern Studies at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. She can be reached at addleyfannin@gmail.com, on Twitter: @addleyfannin or on Tumblr at adelinecappuccino.tumblr.com. This is her review of THE SCORPION RULES, with a few minor editorial adjustments. This review appeared originally in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. -- Blog Ed.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
THE SCORPION RULES is YA ''cli-fi'' novel set 400 years from now
 

More than 400 years in our planet’s distant future, about 30 generations from now, ''Greta Gustafsen Stuart'' is the crown princess of her nation and a Child of Peace, a hostage taken as an insurance policy against international war. If her country goes to war, she dies. And in a world devastated by disasters both natural and man-made, there is always a chance for war.

Greta is essentially the princess of (what used to be) ''Canada,'' the setting is contained to rural Saskatchewan, and so much of the political maneuvering that redefines the new world and dictates the hostages’ fate is based in the aftermath of a planet devastated by AGW aka man-made global warming, which even today is an issue deeply tied with the politics of the North.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Such is the plot of “The Scorpion Rules,” a new YA cli-fi adventure novel for young adults from former-physicist-turned-author Erin Bow. And if that’s not enough to get you interested, know this: “The Scorpion Rules” is one of the best books this year.


 


As in Bow’s previous novel, “Sorrow’s Knot,” the emotional heart of “The Scorpion Rules” hinges on the powerful emotional bond (romantic and otherwise) between the female protagonist and her two closest companions, a boy and a girl.
 
It’s a delight to see that dynamic explored again, this time with Greta, her Himalayan goddess-royal roommate, and the newly-arrived, irreverent grandson of an American general who disrupts their previously peaceful life.
 
This is no love triangle. There’s no fighting for Greta’s attention or petty jabs at a romantic rival. No, this is a strong love, loyalty, and devotion between three people with Greta at its heart. There’s some re-arranging toward the end when she definitively falls in love, but the bond between three stays strong throughout and helps to support the equally strong friendships formed with their classmates.
Likewise, Greta is no chosen one. She’s not out to destroy a regime, only to survive until she’s 18, when she will be no longer eligible as a hostage. Raised to rule and struggling to live up to her mother’s example, she grows from a sheltered and naïve young girl into a confident, observant woman worthy of the respect she garners from others.
 
It’s brilliant cli-fi storytelling, delivered through a first-person narration with a strong voice that constantly evolves as Greta does.
 
The last three chapters feature a final big plot twist and a major shift in narrative style that’s a real kick in the teeth.
 
 
Also, the whole affair is super clever and laugh-out-loud hilarious. So much of the subject matter is so serious — ranging from war, duty and family devotion to torture, sacrifice, and the suffering of innocents —  that (typo fixed) you don’t expect to laugh. S
 
o when it comes, it’s cathartic and gut-busting. And, rather than dilute the effectiveness of the different scenes, the contrast between drama and humor makes the darkness seem darker and the laughter all the more light.
 
An especially nice bonus for regional fans is how “northern” the book feels without needing to be.
 
Greta is essentially the princess of (what used to be) Canada, the setting is contained to rural Saskatchewan, and so much of the political maneuvering that redefines the new world and dictates the hostages’ fate is based in the aftermath of a planet devastated by global warming, which even today is an issue deeply tied with the politics of the North.
 
In short, this is not a book that treats “the North” like a genre, but it also couldn’t have been written anywhere else. Teens and adults alike will love it.
 
Addley Fannin is a freelance writer and graduate student in Northern studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She can be reached at addleyfannin@gmail.com, on Twitter: @addleyfannin or on Tumblr at adelinecappuccino.tumblr.com.

How do you pronounce Michel Houellebecq's last name? WELLBECK? HOOLABECK? HOWLBECK? HABECK? HEEBECK? HOLLABECK? WHO-EL-BECK?

 
 
WELLBECK?
WALLABECK? 
HOOLABECK?
HOWLBECK?
HABECK? HEEBECK?
HOLLABECK?
WHO-EL-BECK?
HOWLABECKA?
HOOBECK?
HABECK?
HEEBECK?
HULA-BECK?
Ho-ella-beck?

The French pronucuation and therefore the correct one is ''WELLBECK''.

But many TV and radio reporters worlwide outside France are mis-pronouncing his last name in a variety of ways, as listed above. You can HEAR these mis-pronunciations on several YouTube news site where Monsieur Houellebecq is interviewed or in news reports outside France.


Mr. Fernandes
 on August 31, 2006

Houellebecq = WEL BEK

Anonymous
on September 5, 2006

''OO ELL BEK,'' but it'll sound like "WEL BEK" to most English speakers because the "OO ELL" is pronounced so quickly.

(The H is silent, and "ou" in French is like English "oo".)

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Sci-fi and cli-fi have a long history of telling ecological stories

It's true, alas, the image of science fiction in the public imagination predominantly includes spaceships and aliens. But sci-fi and now cli-fi have a long history of telling ecological stories. Some of the more well-known ones are Frank Herbert's Dune, Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy.
That trend still continues today. SEE: The Cli Fi Report at
cli-fi.net

The power of cli-fi novels to touch leaders, even presidents !

President Obama says novels taught him how to be a citizen
In a  public interview, the US premier says fiction helps us to find truth in a complex world. Obama said, “when I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels”.

“It has to do with empathy,” Obama said in a conversation which is published in the 19 November issue of the New York Review of Books. “It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of greys, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
Lessons in leadership ... Barack Obama arriving at the State Library of Iowa to interview Marilynne Robinson, (right). (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
 
Barack Obama has said that novels taught him “the most important” things he has learned about being a citizen.
Interviewing Marilynne Robinson in the second instalment of a two-part interview for the New York Review of Books (also available as audio), the American president asked the author if she was worried about people not reading novels anymore, as they are “overwhelmed by flashier ways to pass the time”. For himself, Obama said, “when I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels”.

“It has to do with empathy,” Obama told Robinson in a conversation which is published in the 19 November issue of the New York Review of Books. “It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of greys, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
Last November, Obama visited an independent Washington DC bookshop, Politics and Prose, where he bought novels including Richard Flanagan’s Booker winner The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Colm Tóibín’s Nora Webster, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Denis Johnson’s The Laughing Monsters and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See.
Robinson, whose novel Gilead won her the Pulitzer prize and Home, which won the Orange, told the president that “literature at present is full to bursting”, and while “no book can sell in that way that Gone with the Wind sold”, there is “an incredible variety of voices in contemporary writing”.
“You know people say, is there an American tradition surviving in literature, and yes, our tradition is the incredible variety of voices,” she said.
Obama responded that it isn’t that Americans don’t read; “It’s that everybody is reading [in] their niche, and so often, at least in the media, they’re reading stuff that reinforces their existing point of view. And so you don’t have that phenomenon of ‘here’s a set of great books that everybody is familiar with and everybody is talking about’.”
Television shows can “fill that void”, he felt, but “we don’t have a lot of common reference points”. And in a world where a premium is placed “on the sensational and the most outrageous or a conflict as a way of getting attention and breaking through the noise”, a “pessimism about the country” develops.
“Because all those quiet, sturdy voices that we were talking about at the beginning, they’re not heard,” said Obama. “It’s not interesting to hear a story about some good people in some quiet place that did something sensible and figured out how to get along.”
The first part of the conversation between Obama and Robinson, which took place in September in Des Moines, Iowa, was published two weeks ago.

UPDATED: Two Holocaust survivors, one in Ireland, one in Manhattan, were "reunited" in NYC on October 28 after more than 70 years

Two Holocaust survivors, one in Ireland, one in Manhattan, were "reunited" in NYC on October 28 after more than 70 years

 
PHOTOS CLICK TO OPEN! SAFE TO OPEN!
SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD LINK:

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Two men discover they were on the same train to Bergen-Belsen

 
 
UPDATED: THE ''REUNION'' TOOK PLACE ON OCTOBER 28 in NYC
 
 
''Reunion'
 
by Dan Bloom,
overeas correspondent,
SAN DIEGO JEWISH WORLD
http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2015/10/30/never-again-holocaust-news-for-october-30-2015/
 
 
Two Holocaust survivors, one who made his home in Ireland after the war and the other who made his home in New York, met for the first time face to face in a heartfelt ''reunion'' in Manhattan on October 28, even though they had spoken to each other by phone and email last March after a San Diego Jewish World reporter arranged their initial Internet communications. The stories are important ones.


When the
​''​
Irish
​ ​
Central
​''​
online newspaper picked up
​a
San Diego Jewish World story
​about ​
Peter Kubicek in and Tomi Reichental,
​the news
spread worldwide
​via social media ​
about these two amazing men and their happy, contented lives in 2015, despite having seen the Nazi evil close and personal in 1944 when they were teenagers
​ in the 1940s.​

                                               
The
​"Irish Central" ​
news article was headlined ''Two Holocaust survivors, one in Ireland, find they were on the same train to Bergen-Belsen."
 

"Both men now believe they may have been in the same train car on their horrific journey to the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen," Irish Central reported.
"Through an amazing series of events [Kubicek has been] reunited with Tomi Reichental, an Irish citizen who lives in Dublin and is also a Holocaust survivor from the same village in Slovakia,"
​the online site
wrote, adding this poignant note:
''They both realized they were very likely on the same cattle car that took them to that notorious concentration camp.''


​Hoping to meet one day in New York, the dream came true on a beautiful autumn day in upper Manhattan when Kubicek, 85, and Reichental, 81, were guests of honor at a college symposium on the Holocaust at the College of Mount Saint Vincent.


​Reichental flew in to New York from Dublin with his wife ​Joyce to have dinner with Kubicek and his wife Edith, at a celebratory dinner arranged by Irish film director Gerry Gregg and Joe Skelly, a history professor at the college.

"The reunion seventy-one years after their forlorn train journey to Bergen-Belsen was a profound and unforgettable experience for everyone in the audience -- students, faculty members, and friends
of Tomi and Peter," Skelly told San Diego Jewish World by email after the event.

"These two men are moral witnesses to the reality of evil and inspiring examples of the resiliency of the human spirit," he said. "They shared their experiences at the afternoon symposium in a way that left an indelible imprint on the consciences of all of those in attendance. Their words will echo in the memories of the college students in the audience, who will now bear witness for future generations to the horror of the Holocaust and the determination of brave souls like Tomi and Peter to defeat evil in our time."




For Kubicek, the reunion with Reichental cemented their online friendship that began in March.




"The college symposium took place in a conference room,  with an audience which was composed of faculty and students," Kubicek told this reporter. "At one point I was handed the microphone and asked to speak. While I had nothing whatever prepared, I am never at a loss for words, particularly when it comes to the Holocaust -- a topic about which I know a lot and about which I have strong opinions."

"After the event, Professor Skelly took our small group out to dinner at -- get this! -- a glatt kosher local restaurant," he added.



​In March, s​
truck by the parallels between these strangers’ lives and a desire to bring them together,
​San ​
Diego Jewish World ran a preliminary story about the two men, based on an earlier New York Times story
​about
Reichental
​from its Dublin bureau ​
and a series of emails
​to this newspaper ​
from Kubicek.
Reichental, after reading the story here at
​the ​
San Diego Jewish World website, said in email that he was interested in contacting Kubicek.


“I am writing to you as I would like to get the email address of Peter Kubicek. I go sometimes to New York, too, so it might be a possibility to meet Peter some day in person.”
A family portrait - Tomi Reichental on the bottom left. Photo from Tomi Reichental.
 




​After the "Irish Central" reporter Frances Mulaney ​picked up our story,
Kubicek
​was interviewed and quoted as saying:
“I was very surprised
​ to hear from Tomi​
. We compared notes and I suspected that we we were on the same cattle car transport from the Slovak concentration camp of Serad to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944 which was the first transport that went there instead of Poland.
Tomi ​
He confirmed that that was the one.”
In
​an
email to Kubicek, Reichental
​wrote
, “It was the
​second
of November
​, 1944,​
when we were deported from Sered and we arrived
​seven days later at
Bergen
​-​
Belsen.
​ ​
i
It​
was the first transport from Slovakia with children, mothers and the elderly that didn’t go to Birkenau because the gas chambers were blown up by the Germans on the
​seventh
of November due to the advancing Russians towards the camp.''
“We were in the cattle cart traveling at the time and must have been diverted to Bergen-Belsen. We lived in block 207.”
A picture Tomi's father carried with him when he was with the Partisans (the resistance) that was all he had to remember them by. Tomi is the little boy, his mother Judith and his brother Miki. Picture from 1941-42. He was 6-7 years old. Photo from Tomi Reichental
 

“It’s an amazing thing – the people who were in Bergen-Belsen – it’s an amazing feeling to meet somebody that has that connection. That’s what sort of connected us, there was nothing else, but when you meet someone who has also lived through horrific times. It makes us special and we have an affinity to each other because we were in the same place, which was a horrific experience,”
​Reichental
told Mulraney in New York.
Reichental gives talks and lectures on the Holocaust in schools throughout Ireland. Kubicek gives talks as well in New York, where he works as a docent at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art
. Age hasn't slowed these gentlemen down.

“It is the last chance. We are the last witnesses to this horrific crime that happened not long ago, and to speak against those people who are trying to deny the Holocaust,” Reichental
​says
. “I spoke to 72,000 students in Ireland and I think they tell their parents and friends and my story reaches hundreds and thousands.
“It is important for me. I owe it to the victims
​," he said. "​
I lost
​thirty-five
members of my family and it’s very important that we speak to young people
​--
that they hear the story and tell their children that they met a Holocaust survivor.''
It’s not easy – reliving my past – I started to lecture 11 years ago. I didn’t speak about it for 55 years before this and when I first started it was hard
​," he added​.



Kubicek
published his own memoir, “Memories of Evil: A World War II Childhood,” in 2012.

"
Tomi mentioned in an email to me that for many years he didn’t talk about it and that is true of many of the rest of us too. They talk now of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that’s certainly what we were all suffering from," he told Irish Central
​ last March
.  "It took us all a long time to live with our memories, but I found that once I started writing it was like I was starting catharsis, like a boulder fell from my back and the process was almost therapeutic.”

UPDATE and POSTSCRIPT: Tomi Reichental wrote to this reporter today from Dublin to say:

"Dear Dan, We finally made it to New York. It was a memorable meeting and practically 71 years to the day that we were dumped into the cattle cart on the way to Bergen Belsen. We thank you for the publicity of the event, it all helps to remind and not to forget the Holocaust."

"By the way, the purpose of our trip to the USA was not only to meet Peter but also to publicize my film produced by Irish documentary producer Gerry Gregg titled “Close to Evil” which received the Irish Film and Television Academy Award for “Best Single Documentary 2015”. We showed clips of the film in Boston and New York and a full showing at a Long Island event with discussion and Q/A. The events were attended to full capacity with standing ovations."

"Thanks again, -- Tomi."
 
 


Peter Kubicek (left) and Tomi Reichental (right) find each other through the Internet.
Peter Kubicek, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor living in New York, knows all about the power of coincidence.


Through an amazing series of events he was reunited with Tomi Reichental, an Irish citizen who lives in Dublin and is also a Holocaust survivor from the same village in Slovakia. Reichental, 79, lectures on the Holocaust to Irish schoolchildren.

They both realized they were very likely on the same cattle car that toook them to a notorious concentration camp.

Kubicek's family was torn apart during WWII as his father failed to secure visas to New York for Peter, his mother and grandmother. His family was split further apart as they were deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in October 1944 and Peter was consequently moved between a further five camps before his liberation in May 1945.


It was one day in Prague, following his liberation, and suffering from tuberculosis, when his family were reunited by chance when he and his mother, who had also miraculously survived Bergen-Belsen, ran into each other on a busy street. Mother and son successfully communicated with his father and immigrated to America.

But even he is surprised by how quickly the Internet can connect two people.
It's thanks to the internet (and a blogger in Taiwan) that Peter is now in touch with Tomi Reichental, a Holocaust survivor in Dublin.

Both men now believe they may have been in the same train car on their horrific journey to the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

The man who brought them together is blogger Dan Bloom. Instrumental in connecting these two courageous men, Bloom says it is “a story to repair the world,” the kind he’s always looking for.

“I have known Peter [Kubicek] for about ten years as an email friend,” Bloom told IrishCentral. “We have emailed a few times a week for the past 5 years. He has written a memoir of this time in the camps and I have read it and been touched by it.”
Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp April 1945: Women and children herded together in one of the camp huts. Photo by Imperial War Museum/Public Domain
Liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp April 1945: Women and children herded together in one of the camp huts. Photo by Imperial War Museum/Public Domain

It was during one of their routine email interactions that Kubicek sent Bloom a New York Times article from March 14 – an article featuring Dublin-resident Tomi Reichental. Reichental is a 79-year old retired jeweler who has received much acclaim in Ireland for his talks at schools about his life in the camps.
The New York Times article focused on Reichental’s involvement in the documentary “Close to Evil,” which follows Reichental’s journey as he attempts to contact Hilde Michnia, a 93-year old woman who worked as a SS Nazi guard at Bergen-Belsen.
After reading the article, Kubicek noticed many similarities between Reichental’s youth and his own. “I, too, was born in Slovakia, in a town called Trenčin. I, too, was persecuted as a Jew, when in March, 1939, Slovakia became a quasi-independent Fascist state, firmly allied with Nazi Germany,” he told Bloom.
“I, too, escaped the deportations of Jews in 1942, most of them to their death in Auschwitz,” Kubicek added. “I, too, was finally deported in November, 1944, to Bergen-Belsen — in the first transport that was routed to Germany, rather than to camps in Poland.”


There was one quote of Reichental’s, in particular, that caught Kubicek’s eye. “People tell me I’m the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today.”
In an email to Bloom, Kubicek said, “While Tomi will soon be 80, I have already reached the venerable age of 85. I would only take exception to Tomi’s statement to the NYT reporter in Ireland that he is the fittest Holocaust survivor alive today. Tomi, you have not met me — though I wish we could meet.
Struck by the parallels between these strangers’ lives and a desire to bring them together, on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, Bloom took the story to the San Diego Jewish World, a website where he is a regular contributor. “I loved the two comments (about being the fittest Holocaust survivor)... I had the idea to write a story for the SDJW which would set the stage for a possible reunion of the two men,” says Bloom.
Wishing to contact Reichental in Dublin, Bloom contacted the New York Times to no avail and struggled to see how he would bring the two men together.
But news of Bloom’s interest in the comparison between Reichental and Kubicek had already spread to Dublin – an email from Reichental himself landed in the inbox of San Diego Jewish World.
To Bloom’s delight, Reichental was interested in contacting Kubicek. “I am writing to you as I would like to get the email address of Peter Kubicek...I go sometimes to New York, too, so it might be a possibility to meet Peter some day in person.”
A family portrait - Tomi Reichental on the bottom left. Photo from Tomi Reichental.
A family portrait - Tomi Reichental on the bottom left. Photo from Tomi Reichental.

Bloom connected the two men, and since their initial contact earlier this week, Reichental and Kubicek have continued discussing the similarities of their experience via email.
The more they shared, the more similarities they realized. Kubicek told IrishCentral, “I was very surprised. We compared notes and I suspected that we we were on the same cattle car transport from the Slovak concentration camp of Serad to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944 which was the first transport that went there instead of Poland. He [Reichental] confirmed that that was the one.”
In his email to Kubicek, Reichental states, “It was the 2nd of November when we were deported from Sered and we arrived on the 9th to Bergen Belsen... it was the first transport from Slovakia with children, mothers and the elderly that didn’t go to Birkenau because the gas chambers were blown up by the Germans on the 7th of November due to the advancing Russians towards the camp.
“We were in the cattle cart traveling at the time and must have been diverted to Bergen-Belsen. We lived in block 207.”
A picture Tomi's father carried with him when he was with the Partisans (the resistance) that was all he had to remember them by. Tomi is the little boy, his mother Judith and his brother Miki. Picture from 1941-42. He was 6-7 years old. Photo from Tomi Reichental
A picture Tomi's father carried with him when he was with the Partisans (the resistance) that was all he had to remember them by. Tomi is the little boy, his mother Judith and his brother Miki. Picture from 1941-42. He was 6-7 years old. Photo from Tomi Reichental

Reichental shares Kubicek’s surprise at how quickly the two men were able to connect. “This modern technology – everything is happening very very fast.”
“It’s an amazing thing – the people who were in Bergen-Belsen – it’s an amazing feeling to meet somebody that has that connection. That’s what sort of connected us, there was nothing else, but when you meet someone who has also lived through horrific times. It makes us special and we have an affinity to each other because we were in the same place, which was a horrific experience.”
Reichental now gives talks and lectures on the Holocaust in schools throughout Ireland. He likes to keep a record of all the schools where he has given a talk and, to date, the total stands at 72,000 students.
“It is the last chance. We are the last witnesses to this horrific crime that happened not long ago, and to speak against those people who are trying to deny the Holocaust,” Reichental says. “I spoke directly to 72,000 students here in Ireland and I think they tell their parents and friends and my story reaches hundreds and thousands.
“It is important for me. I owe it to the victims. I lost 35 members of my family and it’s very important that we speak to young people – that they hear the story and tell their children that they met a Holocaust survivor.
It’s not easy – reliving my past – I started to lecture 11 years ago. I didn’t speak about it for 55 years before this and when I first started it was hard.”
Reichental has been highly commended for his role and was last year awarded the International Person of the Year at the Irish People of the Year awards. He is now in such high demand that he is fully booked right up until the end of 2016.


Peter Kubicek has also spoken out about his memories culminating in the publication of his memoirs “Memories of Evil: A World War II Childhood” in 2012. Speaking of his writing, Kubicek feels that it is another experience shared with Reichental – “Tomi mentioned to me that for many years he didn’t talk about it and that is true of many of the rest of us too. They talk now of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and that’s certainly what we were all suffering from. It took us all a long time to live with our memories, but I found that once I started writing it was like I was starting catharsis, like a boulder fell from my back and the process was almost therapeutic.”
Tomi Reichental doesn’t know where this new contact with Peter Kubicek will take him. Bloom talks of the pair meeting and Reichental admits that it may be a possibility. He tells IrishCentral, “Some time – nothing in planning right now but I have a couple of ties in New York and my son lives in the States but in California.”
“I visit him every year so it could happen, that if I really wanted to plan it, that I could meet him in New York...we will let each other know.”
Kubicek is eager for the meeting to happen if possible. “He [Reichental] tells me that he comes occasionally to New York and I would love to host him here. I work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I would love to take him for lunch there. My family would to love to meet him. He’s supposed to let me know.”
Of his own contribution to the story, Bloom says, “So many Holocaust stories are sad and tragic, as they need to be, of course, but with Peter and Tomi I want to celebrate humor and warmth and two good men, who led good lives and conquered the evil that once ruled Europe.”