From Ashes to Freedom

Jews all over the world today are remembering the deaths of more than 6,000,000 Jewish men, women and children in the tragedy of the Holocaust. Never in the history of human civilization has a society, let alone a so-called "civilized" and "sophisticated" one, perpetrated such massive human rights abuses in the manner that the Nazis and a sizeable population of non-Jewish Germans did during World War II.

The extermination of European Jewry was not carried out entirely by Germans alone, however, and so the blame must be shared by the Poles, Croats, Ukrainians, French, Italians and many others who had one bone or another to pick with their Jewish neighbors. Each of these societies played eager and willing roles as Nazi accomplices. There are innumerable documented instances of each of the European countries outdoing the shameless acts of their German counterparts in the level of barbarism and cruelty with which they treated the Jewish citizens of their countries. For the countries of the time, it was a question of the degree to which their citizens harbored anti-Semitic feelings, not the existence of them.

As important as it is to neither forgive nor forget the actions of the Germans and their cohorts, it is equally important to remember the deafening silence of a world who refused to act on behalf of the Jewish people in spite of their tremendous ability to do so. If there was one country which the Jews could have turned to in this time of distress, their annihilation could have been stopped, or at least the pace of it could have been slowed. Sadly, this was not the case.

The anti-immigrant nativist sentiment that pervaded the United States in that era-some of which bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the rhetoric of Pat Buchanan and his herd of sheep-was one reason for the reluctance to absorb the homeless refugees. Hitler's righthand propaganda czar went as far as to say "At bottom... I believe both the English and the Americans are happy that we are exterminating the Jewish riff-raff." This is certainly the conclusion he would have been led to if he was aware that Roosevelt had the ability to order a bombing of the railway lines leading to the concentration camp Auschwitz but refused to do so. Such an action could have saved thousands upon thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish lives.

In another instance, the Jewish passengers of the ship St. Louis were refused permission to disembark in Havana harbor. After being turned away by the Cubans, the ship sailed northward close enough to Miami to be able to see the city lights. Telegrams to the White House from a committee working on behalf of the passengers went unacknowledged. There is little need in recounting the obvious fate which awaited these passengers as they were made to return to Europe....

This was an all-too-convenient time for Americans to forget the poem by the Russian Jewish immigrant Emma Lazarus engraved upon the statue of liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door..."

It came as little surprise that the British government would refuse the natural historical and religious right of the Jews to return to Israel (then known as Palestine). The sentiment of the Arabs, of course, did not leave room for any misinterpretation--the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Hitler on at least one occasion to discuss his personal perspectives on and possible answers to the so-called "Jewish question."

The world today bears a tremendous burden of guilt from which none can shy away. There is a debt which is owed to Jewish civilization the likes of which can never be repaid, for no consolation from the world can restore the smallest measure of dignity to a people whom they aimed to dehumanize.

If there is any good that could conceivably have arisen from the ashes of the crematoriums and the bones of those heaped anonymously into mass graves, it was unquestionably the rebirth and independence of the State of Israel. The 600,000 poorly equipped Jewish survivors-turned-soldiers who fought against the tide of 50,000,000 Arabs-ironically for the very same right to exist that had just been denied them by an uncaring, apathetic world community-were again given what amounted to an insignificant amount of assistance in the fight for sovereignty. The subsequent miraculous victory in the 1948 War of Independence will be recalled in Israel a week from tomorrow on Israel's independence day, to mark the re-establishment of the Jewish homeland more than 2,000 years since the expulsion of the Jews from their home. Sadly, the recent events in northern Israel are bitter testimony that the Jews are still, in spite of the experiences of several millenia of persecution, denied that basic tenet of freedom and self-expression afforded humanity--the right to exist.

As necessary as it is to never let the memory of those that died fade, so is it important for the Jewish people to shlepp naches (derive pride) in the miracle of Israeli independence. The beauty and triumphant existence of the state of Israel is testimony to the fact that Jews are not a humiliated people, that in spite of the attempts to defile and denigrate them, they are alive and well and that they are doing more than surviving (much less can be said for the Nazis and their sympathizers)--Jews all over the world from every strain of religious observance are on the cutting edge of the sciences and arts. The brutality of the Germans, or for that matter, the anti-Semitic atrocities of every other country, did not succeed in sapping the Jewish people of their destiny.

It is in this light that I react in a mixed way to the display of photographs yesterday in Loker Commons and the Science Center. The one fault of what was, in general, a very eye-catching and effective display of black and white photographs was the lack of any pictures portraying the Jewish people in a more positive light. There should have been at least a few multi-colored pictures of the thriving kibbutzim in Israel, the sight of lush greenery and seemingly infinite groves of oranges and olives in what was a combination of malaria-infested swamps and barren dessert before Israeli Independence was achieved. Why were there no pictures of the fields of green in previously arid areas of the Negev? Why were there no pictures of the solar heating panels on the roofs of Israeli houses and other technological achievements which mark the modern Jewish state?

Would it not have made the emaciated victims in black and white striped concentration camp garb proud if they knew that next to them, in similarly glossy, yet much more dignified and multicolored photographs, were the pictures of smiling children walking upright in the streets of Jerusalem, or Tel Aviv, or Haifa, or countless other Israeli cities? Why were there no pictures of the diversity of modern Israeli cities--of the Ethiopian and Russian and thousands of other different immigrants--a demonstration for the world that the Jews now have a safe haven and are being protected by their own? Why were there no pictures of squadrons of Israeli Air Force jets--the guardians of liberty who defend the right of a people to live on a daily basis? We do the victims of the Holocaust a tremendous injustice in failing to extol and elevate the achievements of the Jewish state in the past 48 years at the same time that on this day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah, we recall the ultimate sacrifices of the martyrs of the Holocaust.

The children of the 600,000 inexperienced freedom fighters of 1948 are today waging a campaign fought for the same ideals of liberty, yet on a completely new set of tactical terms. The Israel of today is the only democracy of the Middle East (not to be confused with Lebanon's Syrian-controlled puppet government). For this reason, along with its renowned military capabilities, which have been tested to the utmost degree in the wars over the past years, Israel is the United States's foremost ally in a turbulent area of our globe.

I was dismayed yesterday to observe the disgraceful nonchalance with which some passerby in the Science Center gave the posters commemorating the Holocaust nothing more than a cursory glance. "I already know enough about the Holocaust," they seemed to say. (As if the ignominy of the Holocaust could conceivably be overstated!) I couldn't help marvelling at some of the expressionless faces of the passersby that walked on, unmoved by the nameless faces peering out at their from behind the electrified barbed wire. There was tremendous irony in the quote on one poster which doubtless many did not even stop to read: "Six million were wiped off the face of the earth. And there is the danger that they will also be annihilated from our memories. Are they doomed to a two-fold annihilation?" Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's haunting question remains unanswered. Only time will tell.

Justin C. Danilewitz '99 is an editor of The Crimson.