And You Think You Had It Bad
I may have finally lost it. I have never been the most normal person but lately there are things that have been bothering me more and more and my reaction is getting worse. One of those things is the Holocaust. As you know my dear readers, this has been a subject that is always with me but, I find that I am getting much more touchy about it all the time.
Case in point. I went to see a documentary on Ithzak Perlman at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv. They are having a documentary series on famous Jews and this was the first film to be shown. I will admit that I did not know much about Mr. Perlman before other than he had Polio as a child and was known as being a master on the violin.
It was a well done, though slightly long, film that I enjoyed.
Until the end.
At one point his wife says something like this.
'Itzhak, your mother had a hard time in her life. It was not easy for her to grow up in the ghetto and yet she was able to help you succeed. My parents also had a hard time in the United States with all the anti-antisemitism. Not as bad as your mother of course but it was bad'.
To some of you ( maybe most) there may not seem to be anything wrong with that statement.
I was going to yell at the screen ( like people used to do at the movies in Washington Heights when I went to school there) and walk out. How dare this woman compare her parents experience with someone who was in Europe during WWII?
My parents and my father especially had it very bad during the war. I think I can say with some degree of confidence, that it was worse than most.
My mom was put in the Lodz Ghetto at the age of 10 and at 14 taken to Auschwitz where her mother and siblings were killed. She then spent 9 months in another camp building housing for the Germans and was liberated from Bergen Belsen.
My father was in over 10 camps in five years, one of which no more than 50 people out of 5000 survived. He was liberated from Buchenwald weighing less than 100 lbs.
I have said many times that their ability to go through this horrifying experience and then build normal ( mostly) lives afterwards is nothing less than miraculous.
Today, people talk about how there are very few survivors left but what does that mean. I know this sounds crazy but is it OK for someone who left Europe in 1933 or even 1939 to say they are a survivor? How about someone who ran away to another country? Some of those people had it very bad but is it the same as someone who watched mounds of bodies being pushed by bulldozers while they were a young teenager?
Two stories to illustrate some of what makes me so angry at how some of this gets portrayed.
About 10 years ago, my wife and I took a film class. Every week we would see a movie before its release and then have a Q&A with one of the actors or the director. One week they showed a documentary called Steal a Pencil for Me. The subject of the film describes his ordeal as follows " I'm a very special Holocaust Survivor, I was in the camps with my wife and girlfriend and believe me it wasn't easy."
Pretty funny, right?
No
At the end of the showing, being the understated, shy person I am, I went to the academy award nominated director of the film and told her that this was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. I then told her that a movie like this should never have been made let alone screened.
She looked at me askance and horrified.
I told her that you have taken what you think is a very cute and inspiring story and have now set this up as an example of peoples experiences in the Holocaust and while it is true that this was someone's experience, it so skewed the reality of what really happened to most of the victims,that people will think it wasn't really that bad at all.
About 7 years ago I went to a school open house where each teacher presented what they would be covering for the semester. One of the teachers said they were going to teach about the Holocaust for two weeks . The first week would be about resistance and the second week about everything else.
I approached the teacher after everyone was gone and told her what I thought about this proposed curriculum.
"How can you spend a whole week on resistance and another on everything else?" How many Jews do you think resisted? The truth almost none did while 6 million went to their deaths . The story of the Holocaust is how that was accomplished and who the victims and perpetrators where. Resistance is a one lesson topic at best . By giving each a week you are equating the two and that is a lie.
I have written about this before so I won't belabor the point.
Back to the story.
I told one of my daughters about the Perlman documentary and how I got so upset. She asked me why did it make a difference. I asked her the following question.
Is it OK for someone to compare Trump to Hitler. How about whats happening in Syria to the Holocaust?
"of course not"
why?
because as bad as it is, it isn't the same.
Agreed. That is why we can't have people comparing the Holocaust to other things.
It goes without saying that the Israeli police are not Nazi's no matter what some sick Haredi parents are teaching their kids. We also know that there is no Holocaust being perpetrated against the Palestinians no matter what your thoughts of that situation are.
Yet we hear those comparisons all the time.
Now you can say , so what? , we know the truth.
Maybe, but the rest of the world doesn't. A recent CNN poll in France showed that 20% of the French ages 18-34 NEVER HEARD OF THE HOLOCAUST.
My mom and others who lived it are still on this planet and these people have never heard of it, in a country that had a government that helped perpetrate it.
Yes, it makes a difference what people say and how things are portrayed.
and yes, it makes me crazy and it is getting worse all the time.
So what can we do?
Well, we need to recognize that although some people had it really bad in the war ( like being called a Kike on the streets of New York) we, our own people especially, need to be accurate when we describe what happened to us one generation ago at the hands of the Nazi's.
As hard as it might be, we need our kids and Grandchildren to know what really happened. It is ugly, difficult, horrifying , shocking and extremely hard to deal with.
But they need to know.
We all want to protect your kids but not being completely truthful on this subject is a disservice. I am afraid that in the near future Jewish kids will not know what truly happened . They keep hearing everything is a Holocaust , there is nothing special about what happened to us.
The only thing that can be done is to tell them the truth. Not the PG version of it but the most horrible aspects of it. Of course what is discussed needs to be age appropriate but if you or your kids are a old enough and have not been to Yad Vashem or seen pictures of bodies,gas chambers , and the abject horror of the war then you are helping those who wish to deny or misrepresent what happened . That is how someone who's parents grew up in New York in the thirties could dare compare their parents experience to those who were slaves in Europe.
I know that I have said some harsh things in this post and I am truly sorry if I offended anyone but this is my daily reality and in truth , whether you realize it or not, it's yours as well.