A Jew Remembers Her Escape From Nazi Germany.
I have not been writing about Israel and the Jews as often as I’ve done in the past. Why? For starters: The information is in, it keeps coming in, it’s not good, it keeps getting worse, it is simply too painful to keep pointing it out, again and again, without being able to make much of a difference.
No, I am not talking about Israel’s capacity to defend itself militarily or about the likelihood that Iran’s nuclear and imperialist ambitions might lead to a new kind of alliance between Israel and the Arab Middle Eastern states. I am certainly not referring to Israel’s capacity to achieve miracles in terms of medicine, science, and business.
Here’s what I’m talking about. Israel’s demonization is just about complete. It is a done deal. No matter where one turns, no matter what else the subject might be, the real subject is always Evil Israel, the nation that allegedly killed the arch-fiend Palestinian terrorist, Yasir Arafat, (this comical accusation was just made yesterday) the iconic Mohammed al-Dura, the pro-Palestinian unwitting shahida, Rachel Corrie, and, for that matter, the entire Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank. After all, that’s what genocide does and Israel has constantly been accused of commiting a Nazi-like genocide, “ethnic cleansing,” etc. And yes, Israel is also evicting Arabs who pay their rent in East Jerusalem.
These are all Big Lies—but they are devoutly believed by western poets, playwrights, academics, UN officials, European officials, American state department and cabinet appointees, human rights activists, so-called progressives, including feminists, including Israeli feminist leftists. All say that Israel (not Sudan, not Iran) must be boycotted, further cut down to size, forced, at best, to live with low-level war victories from now until eternity.
For God’s sake: President Obama is giving the infamous Mary “Durban” Robinson the Medal of Freedom.
And just yesterday, Code Pink persuaded Oxfam to drop an actress from their commercials because she also stars in commercials for an Israeli beauty product company.
I’ve been writing about all this since early 2001. Maybe I’m suffering from battle fatigue. In any event, maybe I just can’t bear to write about Israel today…. but allow me to share a conversation I had with a Jewish woman who escaped Hitler. Somehow, such stories seem important, somehow the individual matters, the individual details matter: We can grasp them, relate to them. The complex political analyses do not always touch our hearts in the same way.
Last night, I had dinner with my dear friend, Ruth Jody, someone I’ve known for more than forty years. Ruth is a “tough” woman: Fiercely independent, always on the go, formerly a champion gymnast who, to this day, although she is in her mid- eighties, swims and exercises daily. She never complains about her life, no matter what. She keeps making new friends, studying new languages, attending concerts and dance recitals, insisting that she has already seen every opera “ten times ” and there are so few movies “worthy of us” today. She is so German-Jewish.
Ruth rarely talks about how she got out of Hitler’s Germany.
Over the years, she has shared information with me only in little bits and pieces. Once, when she celebrated the Sabbath at my home, she suddenly told me that her grandparents had been Orthodox Jews who had written “the most heartbreaking letters” to her mother before they were carted off to be murdered. “Such dignified people, starving, shivering, selling off one piece of furniture after the other for the price of a meal.”
Ruth’s stepfather was a well-known violinist and concertmaster who landed a position at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ruth has often regaled me with gossipy tales about her teenage life backstage at the Met, where the leading tenors of the day routinely “hit on” her when she was a delicious, delightful, flirtatious teenager.
Last night, Ruth was different. This time, almost as soon as she sat down, she began talking about how noisy and rude, how ungovernable, the German Jewish girls were when they first came to America and became students at Julia Richman High School in the 1940s.
“We kept talking to each in other and laughing in class. No matter what the teacher said, we didn’t listen to her. We were terrible brats. Actually, we were uncivilized. How else could we behave after what we’d been through?”
Then, Ruth switched tone. “I remember the night we left. It was a cold pre-dawn morning in February. But we’d been frozen for a long time. They’d fired the Jewish teachers, then they closed the Jewish schools, then they demolished the schools. We were walking around in a complete state of shock. We did not know what was coming next, when the next blow would fall.”
“Then, after my stepfather arranged for passage on a boat to England, I remember we crept down the stairs. We felt the eyes that were watching us through their peepholes, the eyes of all our neighbors, just waiting for us to leave so that they could come in and ransack our apartment. Of course, we had to leave everything behind. I had a self-portrait that Chaliapin had done for me and signed. I don’t understand why I didn’t take it. As I said, we were in shock, not thinking.”
Ruth does not look “Jewish.” She still has red-blonde hair and blue eyes as did her stepfather, who was not a Jew. He was once the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic and on his way to America he was given the task of carrying a Stradivarius out for money; it was meant for a violinist who had already made it to the New World.
“We got to Hamburg where the boat was docked. We were very hungry. But we were afraid to go into any restaurant. They all had signs that Jews were forbidden to eat there. But finally, hunger won out. We took our chances and walked into a hotel restaurant. Well, we looked Aryan enough for them and they fed us.”
They risked death for a meal.
“In Hamburg, we were also told to strip naked by a female Nazi official who herself went through every seam in all our clothing. She wanted to make sure that we had no jewels or money sewed into our clothes. If we did, she might get to keep it and we’d be killed.”
Imagine standing there naked in front of a fully clothed Nazi bureaucrat, in front of your own family.
Ruth went to England for a year, her parents went to the United States. “The Brits were very kind to me. They even helped me rescue an aunt. Their neighbors physically went and got my aunt’s children and brought them back to England.”
Okay, let’s hear if for these brave and compassionate Brits.
Ruth continued. “Every Jew who came here had a job the day after we got off the boat. None of us wanted to accept charity or welfare. We took whatever kind of work we could find. Cleaning. Working as waiters. Sewing. My mother started an exercise class the day after she came. God knows how she found her first pupils.”
Ruth got out and never looked back. Only now, in her eighties, is she beginning to recall the details. We live at a time when other Jews are also “getting out” of Europe. This makes me very sad, a bit frightened too.
For example, last week, I unexpectedly bumped into some very sweet French Jews with whom I’ve had the pleasure of dining; actually, they are now ex-French Jews. They left France forever after the “troubles” became far too troubling for them. Now, they live in New York City: A grandfather, two adult sons, a daughter-in-law, grandchildren. They are making a new life here. And, of course, I’ve written before about my friend and comrade-in-arms, Pierre Rehov, who has also left France for good.
Are the Jews on the move again? How many will go to Israel, how many to North America? I hope that it is not too late for Europe to take a stand, to turn around, to remain “European.”
What am I saying? Just like the Islamic world, “Europe,” has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecution. It still remains a continent that matters to me.
May God watch over us and protect us. I am not sure that Israel can count on the American Marines right now, not with Samantha (“Let’s invade Israel”) Power in office.
none of us know our true fate, however, i venture a guess. that the putrid suckups, the thugs, the oily cockroaches, the ignorant, the hate deranged will ooze into their spiritual eternity as rotting sewage.
together again.
“…not with Samantha (”Let’s invade Israel”) Power in office.”
There was no mystery concerning Barack Obama’s relationship with Samantha Power—long before the election. It was extremely well documented. The cynics among us took for granted that Power would have a lot of influence. This was simply taken for granted. Elections have consequences.
It is about 68 in the year after political Hitler (APH), a true and dangerous scoundrel. But what if we started history with Trotsky; why don’t we do that and see what it looks like? The emancipation of the Jews was complicated by the revolutionary Jewish participation in the Bolshevik revolution against the czar and democratic Russia. The aim of this revolution was, in part, to integrate the Jews in society by going beyond religion and property generally but that involved, from the standpoint of those who did not know their ‘true’ identity, taking away their religion and property. Wining that war might be nice but fighting it substantially raised the risk of the Holocaust.
Dr. Chesler,
Through the ages, Jews have been persecuted for no good reason. The phenomenon will continue as people with no understanding, continue to feel that Jews have a perceived advantage. Of course, there is no advantage, just hard work, sweat and drive.
It should be no surprise that the Obama Administration reviles Israel. For the same reasons above and his pre-Presidential associations would tell the tale about Obama’s favorites. Just as he berates the Bush Administration, so does he berate Israel.
Fortunately for us, the POTUS is now facing a more sophisticated American electorate, who can see the lack of a “transparent” Administration. He is going down a dead-end path with his decisions and will most likely find the end of the road before turning around. At the dead end, watch for claims of “racial hate”, the problem with Jews, and a “Neocon” conspiracy.
Hang in!
Dr. Jeff Heller
I remember reading on your blog before the election that you were torn about who to vote for. I’m just wondering if you regret that now.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has an effective form of self government with officials elected by its citizenry. The United States should give it full support and for many years did. Sadly, in recent years, and now with unmistakable bias and prejudice, the “elitists” in this country have unmistakeably become hostile to Israel. It is painful to observe. These new found friends of Hamas and Hezbollah think Ahmadinejad is a trustworthy person. Is this hostility to Israel disguised anti-semitism? I fear that it is; it is morally unjustified. Israel is the bastion of freedom in the Middle East. It more than desrves our support; it is in the interest of the United States to give Israel the support it needs.
Dear Phyllis
A sad, moving and necessary blog from you, as so often. Some people, alas, cannot sde the wood for the trees; and others, worse yet, keep putting their own little interests back into the past and so devalue, trivialize and misconstrue the huge juggernaut iof anti-Semitism that keeps on rolling o ver history and over us. We can deny, run and hide, shake our fists in futility or wring our hands in despair–or actually fight back and win at win at least another generation or two of life. Which will it be?
Norman
I am not so confidant that ‘reality’ (Arab intransigence and lack of reciprocity) and waning of popularity will dim Obama’s mission of splitting Israel and the United States.
I read Thomas Hoving’s “Making the Mummies Dance’ memoire and he was very proud of the ‘Eye on Harlem’ Exhibit in 1968 despite the black anti-semitism controversey in which one 12 year-old girl contributer said something along the lines of; ‘why the surprise? Everyone knows blacks don’t like Jews.’
We don’t even talk about youthful Obama’s flirtation with Louis Farrakhan and how Reverand wright (Obama’s mentor) has close ties with ‘Nation of Islam’.
It’s hard to talk about anti-semitism in the political discourse, much less the White House. And no wonder – it does no good in the case of Jew-hatred to call policies and attitudes by their true name.
Yet; here we are. Hard to believe only now is Jewish support for Obama being reconsidered, but not diminished.
Samantha’s Powers real job is to watch the woman she calls a monster and who BO made Sec of State to neutralize, Hillary Clinton. That Hillary agreed to accept the job with SP watching her is a testament to her inability to be trusted by feminists to make global change for women as Condi Rice did do.
After I read Samantha Power’s brilliant book,” A Problem from Hell” which displayed prominently the torture, abuse and genocide in Iraq, I learned she did not support the recent US invasion of Iraq.
I emailed her. I told her that I thought her whole book was about why people do not stand up against their peers and their political allies to stop genocide. I told her now she knew why, since she could not stand up to the male left, her peers and comrades, to support Bush who was ending Saddam’s genocide in Iraq. I said she would lose everything and that is why sensible people look the other way. She emailed back saying, how dare I say such things to her, a Harvard professor and I , a nobody.
Now Powers has done the same thing in Sudan. She traveled there interviewing the victims and will make a lot of money from her book of outrage. But she will oppose any “intervention” because the left calls it imperialism. This is the ultimate hypocrisy — almost too great for me to grasp.
Make your money writing about atrocity and make your status & career from opposing efforts to take meaningful action to stop atrocity.
Stay fluid in public and behind the scenes, to your left peers, use all the pejorative code words (neo cons, Hillary is a monster) to build your career network. And then on to the next book. And this is the admired intellectuals of our civil society who inhabit the Universities our taxes support. Until they go on to play watchdog for a sexist president.
Please let me get this right, you are saying that all Europeans are racists and so is everyone from the Islamic world (What am I saying? Just like the Islamic world, “Europe,” has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecution. It still remains a continent that matters to me.)
As your article is short in relevant facts one must take it that you are a few cents short of a dime in brain power.
# 10 Frank; I take it you don’t keep up on the EU climate of antisemitism. I believe Dr. Chesler might feel discouraged because of the inherent racism toward Jews in the EU present day. It is terribly sad to have to leave one’s home due to hatred of one’s religious beliefs and the resulting animosity. If anyone is a few cents short of a dime, it is definitely you.
Frank, where do you see the writer saying “all Europeans are racists and so is everyone from the Islamic world”? It certainly isn’t stated, nor implied, not in the part that you quote, “What am I saying? Just like the Islamic world, “Europe,” has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecution. It still remains a continent that matters to me.” Among educated people, conversations don’t require every detail to be constantly re-iterated. Europe does have a history of antisemitism, a history of ghettoization, expulsion, humiliation and murder against Jews, a history which is mirrored in Dhimmitude under Islam. That doesn’t say say “all” Europeans, or all Moslems, are, or even were, racists. Does she really need to tell you about the exclusion of Jews from Guilds, the Spanish Inquisition, Kishinev, Dreyfus, Bloood Libels, etc. for you to grasp that ““Europe,” has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecution”? You might want to re-read the article, in your haste to judgement you seem to have entirely missed it’s point. Cheers, mate….
No Frank, she did not say all Euros are racists. She said “…’Europe’ has had a long history of Jew-hatred and Jew-persecution.” This is an incontrovertible fact. Jew-hatred by Muslims is also a fact, from modern day pogroms (like in Iraq in 1941) going back to Muhammed’s massacres of Jews, which are attested in accounts by Muslims themselves. We could also mention the vicious, Nazi-style antisemitic drivel put out by government-owned and directed media in the Arab countries (Egypt for example, where a 41-part TV series based on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was produced a few years ago). You were able to type out the words, why could you not comprehend them? Seems to me it is you who are a few cents short of a dime, for lack of reading comprehension skills.
What we all need is a change of perspective.
Both the
Palestinians and the Israelis are victims of the obvious “Agenda of the Arab Despots
and their Fundamentalist Cohorts” who are intent on perpetuating their autocratic
regimes. They are not at all eager to support another emerging fledgling Palestinian
Democracy. They are, rather, quite willing to spend their last dollar and sacrifice the
last “Palestinian Freedom Fighter” and the “Dream of Palestinian
independence” to consolidate their regimes by battling encroaching democracy.
The Palestinians best hope is in accepting Israel’s long standing offer to establish
their own “Independent State” and aid in spreading the benefits of Democracy,
as so vividly demonstrated by Israel, to the exploited, disfranchised and intimidated
subjects of the benighted Despotic Leaders.
Whether Obama is a “Conspirer” or “Inspirer” is yet to be deermined.
The Jewish Sages of old advised: “Respect him and suspect him!”
#14,I agree with you,however so many facts show now that BHO beyond suspect:he is a supporter of“Agenda of the Arab Despots”
Obama doesn’t talk like “Rev.” Wright but he does think like him. This administration is an enemy to Israel and to Jews. He is clever to have some in his entourage.
…of course I don’t think Israel has been well served by Olmert either.
I travel a lot and have worked in many countries and Israel is one of my favorite places.
Hello,
I live in the West Bank Palestine, and I saw the after math of the Gaza attack. OMG!!! I’m a American Catholic and I still have night-mares of what I saw. I wish I had the power to end this battle between Israel and Palestine. The issue I see living with the Arabs is that they are very ignorant. The Palestinians are poor and miserable and wish they can have a better life. But I think their culture holds them back from real change. I hope the upcoming generation is open to change. But please know not all Arabs hate Jews or Americans. 80% of the ones I spoke to hate their culture and their people. I didnt visit Israel yet because I feel the Jews’ only want Jews in Israel. I wish that we could all just get along! My family had to leave Russia due to Hitler. Hitler killed more christains n Russia then the Jews in Germany. FYI.
Lynn, #11: “# 10 Frank; I take it you don’t keep up on the EU climate of antisemitism.” From what I can tell from Frank’s posts on PJM generally, he’s convinced that Jews invented anti-Semitism for their own benefit, and that if Jews were to start thinking of themselves as people instead of Jews, anti-Semitism would somehow magically end.
#17 Jeannie, “I didnt visit Israel yet because I feel the Jews’ only want Jews in Israel.” I think you have it backwards. Israel has a substantail minority of non-Jewish citizens, including Arabs (both Christian and Muslim) and Druze, who vote, own property, hold elected office and have full rights of citizenship. Israel also took in more Vietnamese boat people than any country except the US, as well as muslim refugees from Bosnia and from Darfur. But Jordan and the Palestinian Authority refuse to let Jews live in Jordan or under land controlled by the PA, and insist that all Jewish towns be removed from the land that the PA claims to want for its state.
The armed checkpoints are a sad fact of life. Just remember that the checkpoints were not there before Arabs started bombing, shooting and stabbing Israeli women and children, and were acclaimed as heroes by other Arabs for their acts.
As to your point about Russian Christians, more of them may have been killed in absolute numbers, but a vastly greater percentage of Jews than Christians were killed. The Germans did not set up death squads to kill every Russian Christian they could find. They did set up death squads to hunt down, round up and murder Jews.
I am computer challenged. Don;t know what
a URL is. In l970, I left Dutchess County
for a residency in general adult psychiatry at Wake Forest Medical School in Winston Salem N.C. Since l973 I have been a member of the Tucker Psychiatric Group in Richmond, VA. I was a team leader of one of the small research groups that tested DSM III for Reliability.
I am still working.
would like to hear from you
graenum
Sensational looking site, exactly where did you obtain the web template?