dear world... postcards from life...

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April 8, 2013: Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah)

Today, Americans commemorate the Holocaust and remember its victims.

Yom Hashoah is Israel’s official day to honor the Jewish Holocaust victims. In 1979, Congress established an annual eight-day remembrance period that begins on the Sunday before Yom Hashoah and ends the following Sunday.

This past weekend, Defiant Requiem, a film about Jewish prisoners at Terezin concentration camp, aired on PBS. In the spring of 1944, a handpicked group of Nazi officers were treated to an unusual performance by inmates in a concentration camp.

What appeared to be a soaring rendition of a choral masterpiece was intended as a subversive condemnation of the Nazis and a desperate message to the outside world. In the face of horrific living conditions, slave labor and the constant threat of deportation to Auschwitz, the Jewish inmates of Terezin concentration camp — artists, musicians, poets and writers — fought back with art and music.  

Learn more about the prisoners at the Terezin concentration camp.

Image: Graves of prisoners in Terezin during the World War II

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September 12, 1959: Bonanza Premieres

On this day in 1959, the western television series Bonanza premiered on NBC. Bonanza was the first regularly scheduled television program presented in color. The show ran for 14 seasons and ranks as the second longest running western series in history.

In 2002, Bonanza was ranked No. 43 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest Shows of All Time. Bonanza is especially remembered for addressing racism, a topic largely ignored on American television at the time.

From the early 1940s into the 1970s, during the Golden Age of Television, western series were produced for television with great success. Check out this Pioneers of Television list of well-known and well-loved western series.

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The Man Who Knew

For six years, John O’Neil was the FBI’s leading expert on Al Qaeda. He warned of its reach. He warned of its threat to the U.S. But to the people at FBI headquarters, O’Neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him.

He left the FBI in the summer of 2001 and took a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center.

Watch FRONTLINE’s “The Man Who Knew” and read more about the program, including updates since the program first aired in 2002.