CINCINNATI (TDB) -- An amazing obituary was in the morning newspaper that landed in my driveway today, and it refutes everything that happened in Iran last week where a brain-dead cabal tried to produce a consensus that Hitler's minions did not slaughter Jews under Third Reich rule. It is the life story of Henry Meyer, a classical violinist who settled in Ohio after losing his family to death camps. He died Monday at the age of 83.
The story was easy to miss, hidden inside on a page with some want ads. But here is a portion of Cincinnati Enquirer arts writer Janelle Gelfand's word portrait, and she ought to e-mail it to the Iranian Embassy at the United Nations, or to Teheran, where it can be translated into Farsi for the kooks:
''Born in Dresden, Germany, in 1923, Mr. Meyer was a child prodigy who studied violin in Dresden, Prague and Berlin. He performed duo-recitals with his brother, Fritz, a pianist, and at age 8 was soloist with the Dresden Philharmonic. His world fell apart on Nov. 9, 1938, "Kristallnacht" when Nazis smashed windows of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses and rounded up Jews. As a teen, Henry endured labor camps in Berlin and Dresden.
"Several miracles kept him alive. In 1943, Henry and Fritz were transported by cattle car to the notorious death camp, Auschwitz. Fritz died and Henry was selected to be gassed when a doctor recognized him from a concert in Breslau, where the young violinist had been soloist. The doctor swapped Henry with a corpse, broght him to another barracks and exchanged their file card numbers. Mr. Meyer survived first by shining the shoes of the infamous SS doctor Josef Mengele, and later playing the cymbals in a concentration camp band at Birkenau."
After the war, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower met with him and helped him get a visa. Ike didn't doubt the Holocaust. He ordered some Germans to march through the camps to see what had happened.
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