Wicked Local
PLYMOUTH – When they were forced to flee Paris at the start of World War II, Muguette Szpajzer Myers’ family showed its strength of character by safeguarding the fortune of their elderly host.
Three years later, when they fled back to the same village to escape Nazi persecution, villagers protected and saved the Jewish family from concentration camps.
Myers saw an aunt hauled away by Nazis in Paris, but lived out the war under an assumed name given to her by the parish priest in the village of Champlost. She once found that same priest burning letters of denunciation against Jews.
Holocaust Remembrance Day Interfaith Observance Thursday, April 8
Wicked Local Yom Ha-Shoah v’ha-G’vurah” is the name, in Hebrew, for a day that commemorates the Holocaust. This day refers back to the 1930s and 1940s, when Adolf Hitler led the National Socialist German Workers Party, which was called the NAZI party. Hitler built up Germany’s economy and put forth the idea that the German people could be turned into a pure, superior race of human beings. Jews, the Roma, certain classes of people from Poland and Russia, homosexuals, and others were defined by the Nazis as inferior and who, therefore, would be eliminated. Eleven million people, including 6 million Jews, were murdered by the Nazis, in the places where they lived, in the forests, and in concentration camps and death camps.
Old Colony Memorial Person of 2020: Vedna Heywood
Emily Clark
Special to the OCM
Vedna Heywood was on a school bus with some friends near her home in Florida when two young men spat on them after verbally abusing the bus driver. She said she remembered their faces, how they called her and her friends the “n-word” and other expletives. The teenagers sat frozen, willing the incident to pass.
Her mother complained to the school, but nothing was done.
Two years later, the same two men hurled racial slurs and kicked her friend Luyen Phan Nguyen to death at a party in Coral Springs, Florida, because he was Vietnamese. The men were among five convicted of the brutal murder, which drew a crowd of onlookers who did nothing.
2020 in Plymouth, from the pad of Emily Clark
Thanks to Pinehills housing trust
PLYMOUTH – In January, Zoning Board of Appeals member Michael “Buster” Main and his wife, former Conservation Commission Chairman Gerry Hooker, known affectionately as Sweetpea, recounted how Pinehills Managing Partner Tony Green took the high road and responded to criticism of a lack of affordable housing with a wonderful offer. Ten years ago, they said Green and Pinehills President John Judge asked if Main would get involved in The Pinehills LLC trust dedicated to providing funding for affordable housing. The Pinehills Affordable Housing Charitable Trust was born and Main served on its board of directors. Green and Judge, as well as developer Tom Wallace, put their heads together to dedicate funds and raise money for 19 affordable homes for the homeless, veterans and those who simply couldn’t afford a home otherwise. As Main retired from his post with the trust, he publicly acknowledged the m