Feeling Grateful – Shabbat Shalom

There was just a hint of sunrise as we saw the light pink sheen reflected on surface of Lake Washington at 5:50 AM.  The water was still, calling out for a pebble to be thrown or a water skier to glide across its smooth surface.  The birds were singing and the herons still, standing on its impossibly thin legs, waiting for a fish to come near – breakfast.  It was me and my two nephews at the marina this morning – no one else was foolish or as we think smart enough – to get up that early.  I was so hoping that we would see a beaver or two heading out to find their morning breakfast or an eagle swooping down to catch a fish in the Lake.  But we were satisfied with an almost empty lake as we zoomed toward Mercer Island at 30 miles per hour – looking for glass – the dark, smooth, glassy water, that is heaven for a water skier in August.   

This post has nothing to do with the Holocaust except that after digging deep into Sam and Esther’s story and the reality of the Shoah, I want to live life to its fullest and full of gratitude.  As I sit before my computer just an hour before Shabbat, I am so full of gratitude for my life and for what I have in my world.   The water skiing experience this morning is a representation of all the goodness that life brings.  My body is healthy and I am able to be physically active.  I have a beautiful home and wonderful children who bring me joy each day. 

My gratitude towards all who are part of my life is real.  So thank you for being in my life.

And if you live in Seattle and you want a boat ride or want to go water skiing – send me a message and we will do it!!!   Live life to the fullest.  Shabbat Shalom. 

My Soul is Filled with Joy – Finalist in PNWA, Nancy Pearl, Book Award

The phone rang.

I thought – don’t answer the phone, if you hold answer while on the dock above Lake Washington, the chances that your phone will fall in the water are very high.   You see, I have lost two phones to the lake and many members of my family have likewise have sacrificed their cell phones to the monsters that lurk beneath the surface of Lake Washington.

Well, I answered the phone.

But it was great news – I was informed that I am one of five finalists for the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, Nancy Pearl, Book Award.  The winner will be announced on Saturday evening September 14th at the Pacific NW Writer’s Association Conference.  I will not be at the dinner where this will be announced because it will still be Shabbat and I do not drive on Shabbat.

There are five finalists, so my chances of winning are 20% – not too terrible. But honestly, even if I don’t win, it is such an honor to be a finalist.  The judges are librarians – and we all know what that means.

So stay tuned.  I will let you know, win or lose!

 

Hunger – Tisha B’av – Diaries of David Sierakowiak

“All day long I had nothing to eat but water (soup) in the kitchen. It’s more and more difficult for me to go on starving. In the past I was able to not eat all day and still hold on somehow, but now I’m an empty pot. I was so weakened by the lack of soup at school that I thought I would collapse.”

Saturday, July 19, 1941. Lodz. (p. 112 Dawid Sierakowiak – age 17)

******

Today we commemorate Tisha B’av – the Ninth of Av – a day of Jewish mourning.  We read Jeremiah’s Lamentations as we mourn the destruction of two Temples, we fast and read poems of remembrance.  Mostly, we try our best to sit in the darkness of Jewish history.  So many tragedies – destructions, pogroms, crusades, inquisitions and of course our generation’s tragedy – the Holocaust.

I decided that today I must finish the Diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak that I first mentioned in a blog post on June 13, 2019.  I wanted to finish reading the Diaries because I feel hungry and tired and a headache is slowly developing from fasting.  I want to realize that what I am feeling is nothing compared to what Dawid or my in-laws, Sam and Esther, experienced during the Holocaust.

If there is one theme in Dawid’s many diary entries – it’s starvation in the Lodz ghetto.  All he thinks about is food.  Every few entries we hear of the rations that were given out.

Friday, March 27, 1942. “A series of rations has finally been issues.  3 kilos of potatoes, beets, sugar, margarine, coffee substitute, saccharine and Fruchstuppe [German fruit soup], and a ration of meat (30 dkg).

Many people are being deported.  Only those employed in the workshops are exempted, but their families are deported if they are large.  A certain percentage of clerks is also being deported.”  (p. 150).

This deportation and so many others sent thousands of Lodz Jews sixty kilometers away to Chełmno.  Here they were put in mobile vans with the exhaust pipe connected to the passenger section.  The van drove out of town with its own carbon monoxide pumped into the cab.  It would slowly asphyxiate the passengers.  The dead would be dumped into pits outside of town.  By the middle of 1942, approximately 30 such gas vans had been produced by a German car manufacturer for use at Chełmno.  (Arad 11). By the date of Dawid’s diary entry – March 27, 1942 – the Chełmno killing vans had been functioning for three and a half months.  Dawid’s mother was deported and murdered at Chełmno in September of 1942.

In total, 130,000 Jews were deported from Lodz and were murdered in Chełmno and Auschwitz. (p. 14).

The suffering seems never ending.

Wednesday, April 29, 1942.  “It’s really bad a home. There is no fuel, and we are eating our May rations of potatoes in April.  No one knows what will happen in May.  Nothing good, that’s for sure. Again, I don’t have any will, or rather any strength, for studying.  I want to do something, but everything is exceptionally difficult for me, so I just stick to reading most of the time. Time is passing, my youth is passing, my school years, my power and enthusiasm are all passing.  Only the Devil knows what I will manage to save from this pogrom.  I’m slowly beginning to lose my hope of coming back to life or even of holding onto the one I’m living now.” (p. 160-161)

If this does not break your heart, the entries that tell of Dawid’s father’s hunger and how it turned him into someone to be loathed will surely rip it to shreds.  His father would repeatedly steal other family member’s portions of the meager rations they received.

Saturday, May 30, 1942.  “The ‘internal situation’ at home is becoming extremely tense again.  After two weeks of relative calm, during which Father divided his bread into equal daily portions, he became spoiled again.  Last Thursday and again yesterday he devoured his whole loaf of bread, and today on top of it, half of kilo from Mom and Nadzia [sister].  I also don’t know why he hoards all the money. He takes away all of Mom’s and Nadzia’s pay, and doesn’t want to give us money for anything.  Today he bought our ration of sausage and ate over 5 dkg of it on the street (Nadzia was with him), so everyone’s share of sausage was short.  . . . Father also bought his whole portion of meat today, and having received a liter of whey at the dairy store for a whole family, he cooked it only for himself and lapped it all up.  As a result, the rest of us have nothing to cook at home anymore, and are going to bed without supper.”  (p. 176-177)

Oy!

This was family of four, who were living lives before the war, going to work, school, summer camp, etc.  Now, look what became of them.

There was a happier time – the diaries begin with entries from Dawid at summer camp, just two months before Hitler’s invasion of Germany, when a long train ride was something to look forward to and there was plenty of good food:

Wednesday, June 28, 1939: “We arrived safely today at summer camp.  After a fourteen-hour train ride and an hour by bus, dinner was waiting in Kroscienko.  The food is excellent, plentiful, and tasty.” (p. 21 – Dawid is 15 years old in 1939)

But this happiness and carefree life ended on September 1, 1939.   Over four horrible years Dawid suffered and suffered.  He finally died in August of 1943 of “ghetto disease” – TB, starvation and exhaustion. (p. 268)   His father preceded him in death – also of ghetto disease on March 6, 1943. (p. 252).  We do not hear of Nadzia’s death in the diaries, but it is presumed that she was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 (p. 14).

Hunger takes over one’s mind one’s body and ultimately, if deprived long enough, can kill.  The starvation in the Lodz Ghetto took 60,000 lives (p. 14) and was a tragedy that should never have happened. It happened because of hatred and bigotry of Jews.

We are taught that it was such hatred among humans that caused the destruction of the Second Temple.  Hatred is unfortunately still alive and well in the world.  Whether the hatred presents itself as racism, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny or any other form, it has the same result – tearing apart our world and sometimes even resulting in murder of other humans.  We unfortunately see it right here in the United States of America.   I am sickened by it all.  I will try to stand up against such hatred and hope that we will see a day when all of us learn to live in peace with one another.

SOURCES:

Adelson, Alan, ed. The Diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak, translated by Kamil Turowsky, New York, Oxford University Press (1996).

Arad, Yitzhak, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,1987.

“Three Generations of Imbeciles is Enough”

Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”   Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr. in Supreme Court Case Buck v. Bell (May 2, 1927).

Just before this famous line, Justice Holmes penned the following:

“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”   Buck v. Bell (1927).

 

This Supreme Court case came roaring back into my life this past week thanks to RadioLab, one of my favorite podcasts.  I know about this case from law school, but only after I researched the Nazi Euthanasia program a couple of years ago was I able to put this case into historical context. 

The RadioLab Podcast tells the story of a fellow esquire – Mark Bold, who, like me learned of Buck v. Bell as a law student.  But unlike me, he asked when this case was overturned – surely it was overturned by the Supreme Court.

Answer:  No, never overturned.  Most States eliminated sterilization laws, but this Supreme Court case remains on the books. 

******

“Eugenics” Greek for “good birth,” was coined by Francis Galton who was born in England in 1880 and was a cousin to Charles Darwin.  After Darwin told him all about his theory of natural selection, he thought – we can do better – we can help natural selection.  He believed that physical and mental traits, as well as moral character were passed down from parent to child.   Through selective breeding the human race can be made better.  Galton went all around Europe lecturing about this great idea and tons of “scholars” and “scientists” agreed with him.

Eugenics came to America in the early 1990’s.  With the huge wave of immigration and with the post-Civil War emancipation of the slaves, there were plenty of unwanted physical, mental and moral traits to eliminate.  David Star Jordan (1851-1931), who was the founding President of Stanford University, was a huge proponent of Eugenics.  He taught all his brightest students about this great idea.  “The Republic will endure,” Jordan stated, “only as long as the human harvest is good.”      

Colonies were created all around the country to house epileptics and feeble-minded people.  The main purpose was to house these people together so they would not procreate and pass on their unfavorable traits.   It included people of color, immigrants, promiscuous women, “morons,” “idiots” and “imbeciles.”  Buck v. Bell in 1927 paved the way for 60,000 sterilizations of such people in this country.  

[photo Dr. Mark H. Bell]

Back to Mark Bold and his research. 

In 2012, Mark checked State codes and found that indeed most States eliminated their sterilization laws.  But then, he found one State where the law was still on the books – Virginia.  Chapter 27, Article 16 of the Virginia Code stated that sterilization be allowed for a mentally defective person if sterilization is “in the best interest of society.”  He thought if he could bring a case challenging this state law and then it could get appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court and – poof – Buck v. Bell would be overturned. 

His first step was to pretend to be a father of a girl who had a mental disability.  He called the Virginia Court and asked about the sterilization law for people like his daughter.  He was assured that all he needed to do was to file a petition with the court and it would come before a judge and most likely approved.  It would be in his daughter’s best interest to be sterilized, the court clerk assured him.

So, realizing that this statute was actually used to sterilize people, Mark published an article about Virginia’s sterilization statute and within a week, the Virginia Legislature overturned the statute.  So much for his attempt to get a case up to the Supreme Court.

But this idea, which began in England with Galton, found its way to Germany under Hitler in 1933.  One of the first laws passed under Hitler’s rule in 1933 was a sterilization law.  One of the tasks Hitler set for the German people was “racial reclamation” – “to weed out the unhealthy section of the population, primarily through sterilization” of “genetically unfit citizens.” (Fritzsche, Peter, Life and Death in the Third Reich, 86) (See blog post written on December 22, 2015).    

By 1939, Hitler must have been tired of simply sterilizing these unworthy humans. He decided to murder them.   Through deception of a physical exam by a doctor in a white coat, the patient was led to a shower and asphyxiated by gas.  Over two years the Nazi Euthanasia Program murdered 70,273 children and adults who had mental or physical disabilities.  (See blog post, December 21, 2015).  This program was ended in August of 1941 when the some of the German public became aware of the murders.  The well-trained doctors and staff were soon redeployed in Poland at the newly constructed Death Camps – Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka – where the unworthy Jews were gassed to death.

Sam Goldberg was saved from the gas chamber at Treblinka through many miracles.  I for one, am very glad he was able to pass on his very worthy traits to future generations.

*******

Photo of Dr. Bell is from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

Photo of Supreme Court Seal – attribution:  By Original:OptimagerVector:Ipankonin – Own work based on: Seal of the United States Supreme Court.png by Optimager.This SVG seal includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this seal:  US-GreatSeal-Obverse.svg (by Ssolbergj)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1831846

What Were Your Ancestors Doing in the Summer of 1938?

The snow-capped mountain rose high above, the alpine meadow flowers burst with purple, yellow, red, orange and white, and the waterfalls crashed over the side of the mountain into pools below.  It was a perfect view of Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens rising above their little brothers and sister mountains of the Cascade Range.  The day was crystal clear, like the water that flowed through the meadows.

 

My annual pilgrimage to Mount Rainier and Paradise Inn, which sits nestled among the trees and the mountains at 5,400 feet, was especially powerful and even, I would say, spiritual.  In the eerie quiet of the morning, an hour’s hike from the Inn, I sat alone on a large boulder in the middle of a stream and wrote in my journal.  As I wrote I felt the spirit of my maternal great-great grandfather, Sam Friedlander.

You see, Sam Friedlander had come to Mount Rainier and the Paradise Inn in July of 1938.  How could I possibly know this, you might ask?

Well, here is what happened.

I have started digging into my own family history.  The archives of the Seattle Jewish Transcript have shed much light on what life was like for my families here in Seattle.  When I searched “Friedlander,” I got 402 hits.  One was the following note on the “Society Page” of July 22, 1938:

“Mr. Samuel Friedlander with his daughter Mrs. Sanford Cohen and granddaughters Joan and Joyce Cohen motored to Paradise Inn on Tuesday.”

I read this and paused, realizing that Shlomo and I would be “motoring” to Paradise Inn on July 25^th, some 81 years after my great-great grandfather “motored” there with his daughter and grandchildren.  It was his spirit I felt as I sat on the rock in the middle of the creek.  The landscape of the mountain has not changed much in the past 81 years and it’s possible that he walked by this same creek and saw the same glorious meadow flowers and was in awe of the mountain and its surroundings as I was.

Then I began to wonder what others in my family were doing in the summer of 1938.

Well, I’ll tell you.

The same week that Sam Friedlander went “motoring” to Paradise Inn, my great Uncle William Staadecker was “entertaining with an informal dinner at his home . . . for the pleasure of Mrs. Elmer Steinhauser of Chicago and Mrs. J.K. Heyman of New York.”

Just two weeks before these events in early July my grandmother Elizabeth (Staadecker) Friedlander, whom we called Nanny, and her mother Belle (Singerman) Friedlander, whom we called Gigi, hosted a tea at Glendale Golf and Country Club:

“Tea at Glendale Country Club on Friday afternoon given jointly by Mrs. Louis Friedlander and Mrs. John Friedlander . . . Honor guests being Mrs. Paul Friedlander, a young bride and Mrs. Sanford Cohen, an eastern visitor.  . . . Mrs. Louis Friedlander in dusty rose chiffon with deep purple orchids . . .Mrs. Cohen in a soft grey gown of shirred net . . . Mrs. Paul Friedlander in black chiffon plaited skirt with white chiffon bodice.  Mrs. John Friedlander in a smart jacket model of white and black and white satin print. Their flowers too were orchids.”

It wasn’t just my mother’s side of the family that was living it up.  My father’s side was also busy in the summer of 1938.  My paternal grandmother, Rose (Steinberg) Treiger, whom I called Bobby, was entertaining guests, together with her mother, Chaya Tzivia Steinberg after whom I am named.  The Society Page explains:

“Mrs. Morris Hirsch with her two sons, Robert Solomon and David Neeson has returned to her home in San Francisco after spending two weeks with her brother Mr. Jack Steinberg and her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Steinberg [Rose’s parents]. While in the city Mrs. Hirsch was extensively entertained. Among hosts for the visitor were Messrs [Sam] and Messdames Sam [Rose – why did women never get their own names!] Treiger, George Sidell, Abe Nelson, Joseph Isaacson, Abe Steinberg and A.E. Doris.”

For my great-Uncle Bert Treiger and his wife Lena the summer of 1938 took them to Palestine where Bert received Rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

What were Shlomo’s parents and grandparents doing in Poland during the summer of 1938?  This was a year before Germany invaded Poland and upended their worlds and murdering their families.  Though the 1930’s saw a rise of antisemetic activity in Poland, the Goldberg and Wisznia families seemed to have been living a “normal” life.  Esther was 18 years old, living at home with her parents and four siblings.  She had a boyfriend – Moishe Kwiatek.  I imagine that she helped her mother in the home, sewed shirts and undergarments to sell at the Stoczek market, attended Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth group.

Sam was about 20 years old, living on the Goldberg farm with his parents.  He worked closely with his father as they traded cattle, timber and produce in the nearby towns of Wengrow and Ostrow Mazowiecka.  His brother Hirsch Mayer lived across the street with his wife and children; another brother, Itche and his wife, lived just a few doors down.  His sisters were married and lived in nearby towns as was his other brother Yankl.  Life was peaceful.  They could not have predicted what was to come.

 

In contrast, by the summer of 1938, the Jews of Germany were living under severe persecution and economic deprivation.  Hitler came to power in 1933 and immediately prohibited Jews from being judges, attorneys, journalists, conductors, musicians and professors at Universities.  Hundreds of laws were enacted by the German Parliament restricting the lives of Jews, including the elimination of Schita (ritual slaughter of animals).  Jews were fired from the civil service jobs and they could not go to cinemas, theaters, swimming pools or resorts.

In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were passed which prohibited marriage between a Jew and “nationals of German kindred blood.”  “The Nuremberg Laws,” states Lucy Dawidowicz, “completed the disenfranchisement of the Jews of Germany.”  (War Against the Jews, p. 91)   As the summer of 1938 approached, things were looking bleak.  In March of 1938, the Germans conquered Austria with no opposition (the “Anschluss”)

The summer of 1938 (July 14, 1938) saw the German Parliament pass the third Decree to Reich Citizenship Law, which defined a Jewish business enterprise as one whose owner is a Jew, thus preparing the way for one of the greatest theft of property in history.  In August, Mauthausen concentration camp took its first prisoners.

Nikolaus Wachsmann, in kl: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, describes Mauthausen’s watchtowers which were joined together with “vast granite walls that enclosed much of the compound, making it look less like a camp than a forbidding castle.”  [kl 163] “By the end of 1938,” Wachsmann continues, Flossenberg held 1,475 men and Mauthausen 994, at a time when Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Dachau held over 8,000 inmates each.” [Id.]  Most prisoners in concentration camps at this time were  political prisoners and those who posed a “danger” to the Third Reich – could have been Jews but Jews were not the focus of the camps at this time.

The end of the summer brought the Munich Accords, gifting Czechoslovakia to Germany and Chamberlin’s famous line that “there will be peace in our time.”

If it had only been true.

What were your family members doing during the summer of 1938?

 

SOURCES:

Jewish Transcript, June 17, 1938:

http://jtn.stparchive.com/Archive/JTN/JTN06171938p07.php?tags=treiger

Jewish Transcript, June 23, 1938:

http://jtn.stparchive.com/Archive/JTN/JTN06231933P08.php?tags=treiger

Jewish Transcript July 8, 1938:

http://jtn.stparchive.com/Archive/JTN/JTN07081938p04.php?tags=friedlander

Jewish Transcript, July 22, 1938:

http://jtn.stparchive.com/Archive/JTN/JTN07221938p04.php?tags=staadecker

http://jtn.stparchive.com/Archive/JTN/JTN07221938p04.php?tags=friedlander

Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945.  New York: Bantam Books, 1975.

Wachsmann, Nikolaus, Kl: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.