My Dad, Repentance, and Mosques

Of late I’ve been obsessing about the controversy over the Muslim center in lower Manhattan.  Those of you who pay attention to my tweets or Facebook postings will have noticed this.  There’s a very simple reason.

B-14777

That’s the number on my father’s arm.

We children of survivors are witnesses.  Imbedded in our genes is the understanding that oppression takes many forms:  quotas, job restrictions, zoning restrictions, segregation, marriage bans, ghettos, slavery, Auschwitz. If we don’t stand up at the first signs of the evil of prejudice, Martin Niemoller’s prophecy will come true.

Call me obsessed.  I’m second generation.  I grew up with The Number.  And hearing the memories.  My aunt regaling us with tales of her stay in Plaszow and Birkenau and Feldafing.   My uncle being part of the crew cleaning up the Warsaw Ghetto while the fighting was still going on.  My mother being smuggled out of the Budapest ghetto by her mom to get bread – at the risk of her 8  year old life. My father being introduced to life in Birkenau (he was 16) when he saw the flames rising above the chimneys and being told that that is what’s left of his parents. That’s my legacy.  And my lesson.

So I am embarrassed by Jews who oppose the Park 51 project. We have been the victims of much worse.  Jonathan Sarna spelled it out here :  how we (the Jews) were victims of the same type of hatred that Glenn Beck,  Sarah Palin and  their ilk  preach today. In America:  the Goldener Madina.

Oppression starts mundanely. My mom tells the story of how in the beginning of the Fascist occupation of Hungary, Jews couldn’t own radios. When she was 6 she couldn’t buy an ice-cream cone at her favorite vendor because she was a Jew.   That led to you-know-what. 

The majority rules, but not absolutely.  Conventional wisdom can be wrong.  At one point, the majority of Americans supported the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, school segregation between African-Americans and whites, and treating Gays as second-class citizens. The majority has been wrong. 

It’s Elul.  We need to start thinking about T’shuva – Repentance.  If we stand silent, or oppose the right of another religious minority to build a community center or house of worship because it “doesn’t feel right”, we are validating The Final Solution. Because if we deny a minority their rights, we may be next.  

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --

Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me. (Martin Niemoller)

The Victory Dance

Last week I found myself bopping to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. Now, ordinarily, if I heard this tune pop up in Pandora or my radio I would turn it off.  It DOES NOT reside in my iPod. This time was different:  I was smiling.  I was watching the video-gone-viral:  “I Will Survive Auschwitz”. It features 3 generations: a holocaust survivor, his daughter and his grandchildren dancing their way through Auschwitz, Trezin, Lodz, Dachau and other holocaust sites. The score is Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”.  It ends with the survivor declaring how incredible and “historical” it was for him to visit the camps with his grandchildren. Their dancing prowess leaves much to be desired, but that’s not the point.  The video is about celebrating life.

When I first saw it (thanks to David Bryfman for calling my attention to it on his blog Bryfy.net) I was admittedly taken aback for the first few seconds.  When I realized what was going on, I was spellbound. I watched the family cavort in front of concentration camp gates, memorials and train tracks, and remembered…

Five years ago my dad, a survivor of Birkenau-Auschwitz (he was 15) brought my mom (who spent her 8^th and 9^th years enduring the ghetto of Budapest), my wife, our 2 daughters and me on our own “March of the Living”.  We ended up at the gates of Birkenau where my dad said “This is my victory. I beat the Nazis. And I’m with my granddaughters”. We didn’t dance.  We said kaddish for my dad’s parents and sister instead.  But it was a celebration nevertheless.

The “I Will Survive-Auschwitz” video had engendered much reaction. There seem to be 3 type of responses:  there are those who think it is a travesty and the ultimate in disrespect for the memory of those who died; there are the Neo Nazis and other anti-Semites who use the film to attack the “dancing Jews” and draw the obscene comparison between Auschwitz and Gaza; and then there are those who look at it as I do: as an affirmation of victory.

In my own very unscientific survey of reactions, I found that 2^nd generation children, like me, understood the message and liked the video.  My parents had a different take:  they understood what the video was trying convey, but their objection was that the camps are cemeteries (for their parents) and as such are not appropriate places to dance.  I wonder if this is a generational perspective. Those of us once removed from the trauma may deal with it differently. I do.

My take is that the last thing that Rudolph Hoess (the S.S. Kommandant of Auschwitz) expected or wanted was a bunch of Juden dancing in his death factory.  It is an act of laughing in the face of Nazism and racism.  When we think of the Shoah we need to remember and memorialize the lives of the individuals and the communities that were lost. But we must also celebrate the fact that we are still here and Eichmann isn’t.   I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but I’m going to quote Gloria Gaynor: “I've got all my life to live, I've got all my love to give, and I'll survive, I will survive.”

Jewish Identity Crisis-Victim and Oppressor?

On Wednesday some anti-Semite nut job tried to shoot up the Holocaust memorial. What I’d like us to think about is how we react to hate and how we teach our kids to respond to anti-Semitism. Facts are facts. Anti-Semites killed Jews. My dad has a number on his arm to prove it. We need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. The question (here goes!) is: What is the price WE pay to fight anti-Semitism?

A story. As a former member if the Israel Defense Forces, I subsequently served a monthly stint every year in Miluyim (Israeli reserves). Sometimes I would find myself at a checkpoint outside of Eilat – Israel’s southern most city, and the only port city in the south. As such, it was considered a strategic asset, with special security protocols. We were commanded to “detain all those with an ‘eastern complexion.’” In Hebrew: “la’atzor kol echad im d’moot mizrachit”. So, being good soldiers, we followed orders. It got weird, as many of the guys in the unit were S’faradim (Jews of Mediterranean origins) and had dark skin, but we all knew what the order meant. You see an Arab. Pull him over. Take him off the bus.

Long-story short: An Eged bus came to our checkpoint. We got on. We checked the passengers’ I.Ds (those who looked Arab anyway). I got off the bus and saw that one of our guys had pulled off a gentleman with his wife. She was dressed in traditional Arab garb – a hijab and robe. And she was very very pregnant. He was from Jerusalem. He was okay. She was not. I think she came from Ramallah – in the West Bank. She didn’t have the proper papers. So she and her husband were not allowed to enter Eilat. I argued with my C.O. At least they gave her a chair to sit on, under the hot desert sun. They had to wait for a taxi to take them back north. I don’t think she was a terrorist.

What does fighting oppression do to us victims?

A few days ago, Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn publicly declared that a memorial to the victims of Nazi genocide should only be in memory of Jews and not the other victims, such as Gays or the disabled. “To include these other groups diminishes their memory…These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust…It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims.” (http://www.nypost.com/seven/06082009/news/regionalnews/hikind__jews_only_173112.htm)
Tell that to my dad, whose barracks in Birkenau was directly across from the gypsies’ area. He remembers waking up to the shots and the screams as the Roma children were driven out to be burned. Assemblyman Hikind, where is your sense of all people being created B’tzelem Eloheem?

So what do we teach our kids? That only we Jews have a monopoly on suffering? That the world is against us and so we can do whatever we want to protect ourselves? Should we agree with Chabad Rabbi Manis Friedman, who wrote in the recent issue of Moment magazine that “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),”
(http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2009/2009-06/200906-Ask_Rabbis.html)

What do we tell our kids? How do we teach them compassionate self-preservation? How do we, the victims, not turn into the oppressors?