A ditch in a Jewish cemetery, a hotel basement, a house that was anything but a home. All may seem innocuous today to passers-by in Haltern Am See, Germany, but the life of a Jewish family was forever changed in these spots 70 years ago. Holocaust survivor Alexander Lebenstein visited the locations last summer with family and friends, reliving the past in which his life was uprooted during Kristallnacht—the anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria that began Nov. 9, 1938. The “Night of Broken Glass” was a coordinated attack on Jewish people, their property and synagogues.

Despite laws that forbade Jews to attend most Polish schools, 11-year-old Mendel Lichtenstein was attending a Polish school in Bialystok when the German army overran the city in 1939, during the early days of World War II. A native of the small town of Szczucin in southern Poland, he had handily passed the school entrance exam. “He was so smart they couldn’t refuse him,“ said his wife of 55 years, Rita Field Lichtenstein.

Despite laws that forbade Jews to attend most Polish schools, 11-year-old Mendel Lichtenstein was attending a Polish school in Bialystok when the German army overran the city in 1939, during the early days of World War II. A native of the small town of Szczucin in southern Poland, he had handily passed the school entrance exam. “He was so smart they couldn’t refuse him,“ said his wife of 55 years, Rita Field Lichtenstein.

On a day when the president of Iran decried Israel at a United Nations conference in Switzerland, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was in the Holy Land, meeting with top Israeli officials and attending a Holocaust remembrance service. Kaine and his wife, first lady Anne Holton, last night were guests at the solemn opening ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial outside Jerusalem for the start of Israel’s annual commemoration of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

The Passover seder concludes with “next year in Jerusalem.“ The Vatican has announced that Pope Benedict XVI will travel to Israel in May. His trip will include stops in Jordan and the so-called territories. Although the pope reportedly will attend a service at Yad Vashem, he will not tour the museum associated with the Holocaust memorial. A display that identifies Pius XII as “neutral” during World War II has drawn the Vatican’s objections.

On the day she arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Eva Geiringer Schloss’ fate was decided by the coat she was wearing. Guards sorted new prisoners at the concentration camp into those who faced a life of hard labor and unspeakable horrors, and others—too old, young or weak—who went to the gas chambers.

Adele Litwak knew the Nazi invasion had started because she could see the line of wounded people waiting to get into the Jewish hospital up the street. On a Friday morning in September 1941, the invaders had reached her hometown, Lwow, Poland. Soon anything of value had been taken by soldiers who piled belongings in the middle of the floor in front of their owners as if the residents of Lwow were nothing, she would say later.

Filmmaker Ed Zwick considers himself fairly knowledgeable about the Holocaust and World War II. But he had never heard of the Bielskis, until one of them died in 1995.  Zwick’s childhood friend Clayton Frohman read The New York Times’ obituary of Alexander “Zus” Bielski, one of four brothers who helped hundreds of Jews survive in the forests of Byelorussia during the war. Frohman, a screenwriter whose credits include “Under Fire,“ gave the obituary to Zwick.

Putting in 15-hour days for 20 years as a volunteer at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, Maria Bowles dispensed 17,000 hours of hope to patients with terminal cancer. “Most patients don’t believe in hope because one is so sick and some wish to die, because the suffering is so great,“ she wrote in her journal. When her patients’ candles of hope burned low, she would relight them by telling her own remarkable story of survival despite starvation, loss of family and brutal assault.

Before Miriam “Margaret” Grunstein Shuman and her family were deported from their home in Hungary during World War II, her father had a bracelet that she owned made into a ring that looked like a wedding band.

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Vera Farmiga At: Westhampton FYI: Running time: 1:33. Rated PG-13 (themes)      Apparently, the Holocaust was a very bad thing that was done by some very bad people.  Remember, you heard it here first.  The makers of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” want you to know these things. In case you don’t, it is happy to explain them to you in as simplistic a manner as possible. Welcome to Holocaust 101.

Alexander Lebenstein, the only Jew from a small German town to survive the Holocaust, started receiving invitations in 1987 to return there. He turned them down four times.

The following remarks were made by Bodo Klimpel, mayor of Haltern, on this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which they observed Jan. 27.

These letters were sent by e-mail from sisters Emily and Lovisa Lane, students who met Lebenstein during his trips to Haltern. From Emily Lane, 20: I was in the ninth grade when I first met Alexander. For me, it was a great experience which has influenced my life quite a lot.