Today is Esther Goldberg’s 22nd Yarzheit – We remember.

Of the many choices made by Esther Goldberg during the war years, the one that stands out to me is the choice she made to help Sam and Velvel after they escaped from Treblinka. She met them in the forest, after they escaped from the Death Camp Treblinka.   Esther was covered in lice and her clothes had turned to rags after a year of hiding. Sam showed up “looking like a prince,” Esther recalled. After all, each day at Treblinka brought fresh clothes of the murdered Jews. The Lalka, Sam’s Nazi protector, insisted that Sam wear these nice clothes.

“Can you help us,” Sam and Velvel said to Esther on August 3, 1943, “We just escaped from Treblinka and the Nazis are chasing after us. We need to hide.”

“Yes,” Esther answers.   “Go into the woods and hide and come back here at noon, when the Polish people are having their lunch.   I’ll take to you to my “angel.’”

Esther knew how little food she and Chaim had and knew sharing with two more would mean less for herself and Chaim.  She also knew how dangerous it was for the Stys families to hide two Jews, let alone four. She could have said:

“What you escaped from Treblinka? That’s amazing.   I think your best bet is to go into the forest and hide. Good luck to you.”

But she didn’t. She chose to help Sam and Velvel took them to Helena and convinced her to hide them all in her barn for three days.  After the massive search for escaped prisoners, Velvel left them, but Sam stayed and hid with Esther and Chaim.

I can’t imagine that on August 3, 1943, Esther knew the import of her decision – that allowing Sam to survive the roundup would lead to their marriage, 16 months later. Together they would emigrate to America, raise a family of three in Brooklyn, open and run a butcher shop in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and retire to Florida.   I imagine, at that moment, in 1943, Esther was thinking of survival – for Sam, for Velvel, for herself, and for Chaim. Without a good hiding place, they would all be killed. She found the kindness within her soul and helped them survive, when so many would have turned them away. The kindness was returned a million-fold throughout their lives together and especially when Sam cared for Esther at the end of her life when she was dying of a brain tumor.

Today, we commemorate Esther Goldberg’s 22^nd Yahrzeit.   When she died, I was pregnant with my fourth child, who is currently 21 years old and whose name is Esther Goldberg. I am sad that my daughter Esther did not have the opportunity to know her Bubbie, but she inherited her strength of character and I am proud to be her mother.

Today, let us commemorate and celebrate Esther’s life and reflect on her courage and her resilience.

Choices matter, so let’s choose carefully.

[Esther and Sam Goldberg’s graves in Israel]

The South Will Rise Again. Really?

 

[photo: slave dwelling –  https://slavedwellingproject.org/%5D

Name one Problem that led to the Civil War:

1. Slavery
2. State’s Rights
3. Economic Reasons

[see below for answer]

*****

I got an ear full as I listened to more of Susan Neiman’s book Learning from the Germans: Race and Memory of Evil. Though I am loath to compare Nazi Germany to any other society or any other evil, I am fascinated by the Nieman’s analysis and I am grateful for the education. I will share a bit of what I learned.

If you missed my first blog post on the Neiman book and want to catch up – feel free.

After the Civil War, the 14^th Amendment granted civil rights to the freed slaves. After the Civil War, Congress imposed “Reconstruction,” that the Confederate losers did not want. There were years of pressure and negotiations and in 1877, a compromise was reached that ended Reconstruction. The promise made by the Southern politicians to protect the civil rights of the emancipated slaves, was promptly forgotten as the “Black codes” (also known as the Jim Crow laws) were passed.

Diane McWhorter, an author who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama spent 19 years researching and publishing a book titled Carry Me Home: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. McWhorter argues that the Black Codes “reconstituted and renewed” slavery until segregation was ended in 1964. So, rather than thinking that the work of reconciliation started after the Civil War, McWhorter argues, it’s a much more contemporary struggle.   It’s now, in the post-civil rights generation that the reconciliation work must be done, just as the hard work was done in the post-war generation in Germany.  

McWhorter contends that though there was no literal genocide of the African American people, there was socio-political and economic genocide – during the era of slavery and segregation. As McWhorter spent time in Berlin studying Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who worked for NASA after the war, she began to see the segregated South that she grew up in as a totalitarian society. The South was organized around race and the racial laws were enforced by the police. It was acceptable to kill the political opponents of segregation. “For Black people,” Neiman quotes McWhorter as saying, “segregation was enforced by terror. For white people it was something more subtle though less comprehensible – shame.” This was true because the White people were more scared of being ostracized from each other than they were of black people.

McWhorter maintains that one big difference between Germany and the South is that it is clear to the Germans that they lost the war. She argues that there is not the same clarity in the South. There is a still strong feeling in the south that the civil was a catastrophe for the South and that the “South will rise again.” All the debates we hear in the news about the statues and monuments in the South and the arguments about the Confederate flag – well, it seems that there are Southerners who are not ready to give up their feelings of superiority. Under the “Lost Cause Theology” and among groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Civil War was not so much about ending slavery but was a war of northern aggression to destroy the superior southern way of life and to defeat States’ rights. Through this pseudo religious lens, the Lost Cause Theology sees the South as a 19^th Century Jesus – “innocent and martyred but destined to rise again.”

[photo: Confederate Monument in Statesboro, Georgia]

Though there are plenty of “Lost Cause” Southerners who wish for the good old days and will not let go of their flag or their monuments, there are groups in the South, like in Germany, who are doing the hard work of reconciliation. There are groups who gather, like the Germans, to find a way forward. There are people, like Joseph McGill, who are trying to educate and raise awareness.   McGill initiated the Slave Dwelling Project, in which his goal is to renovate and sleep in every slave dwelling the South. He invites others to join him and creates a dialogue about what it must have been like to be a slave.

Another example is David Percy, who lived in and owned one of the “big houses” that used to be a home of a slave owner. Though his family did not own slaves, the family that used to live in his house, did. The House, it seems, was built on cotton money. David has dedicated his life to asking hard questions about the slave-owning South.

“I only seek to understand what influences people to standup for what’s right,” Percy states. “but in the end, there may be no explanation. There are human beings who open their eyes look at the evidence and decide to devote their lives to persuading others to do the same.”

This of course reminded me of the Stys family – who, during WW II, stood up for what was right in the face of evil all around them. The hard work of standing up for what’s right has no borders and no nationalities. It can be achieved where there are people who decide to do it.

*****

The question at the top is found on the U.S. Citizenship test. It is the only question for which more than one answer is considered “correct.”   All of them – a, b and c are “correct” answer for the test.  

 

Source: Neiman, Susan. Learning from the Germans: Race and Memory of Evil: Part 12, Part 2 (there are no page numbers cited above because I was listening to the book -so don’t know the exact page).

TEN LESSONS LEARNED ON MY BOOK TOUR

I am 35,000 miles above earth, on a Jet Blue flight, heading home after a two week book tour. In my exhaustion, many emotions are rushing through my brain and body.  I met so many wonderful people and visited so many interesting places.  I can’t sort them all out just now, but here are 10 lessons learned:

• Holocaust fatigue is not as bad as I thought – Many Jews are genuinely still interested in hearing stories of survivors and learning lessons to enrich our lives;
• There are radically different kinds of Synagogues, each with its own character and personality; it can be seen in the spaces created and in the people who inhabit the spaces, striving to  make a purposeful community;
• Whether a Jewish community is large or small, there are people who are passionate about making meaning in their Jewish lives, learning new things, and searching out ways to connect to others;
• Hotel rooms are not all created equal;
• My son Jack is still well loved and remembered in the Boston community;
• How PR is done for an event really matters;
• If you keep nudging editors of Jewish newspapers, you may get an article;
• Dallas-Ft. Worth airport is one of the most insane places in the world;
• Always take a non-stop flight – if at all possible;
• The kindness of people is a powerful and beautiful thing – let’s pay it forward.

Here are all the amazing places I spoke over the past two weeks:

• November 4 – Har Zion Temple– Philadelphia, PA
• November 7 – Congregation Beth El – Springfield, MA (in partnership with the Springfield JCC)
• November 10 – El Paso Holocaust Museum – El Paso, TX (in partnership with Congregation B’nai Zion)
• November 12 – Millis High School (350 students) – Millis, MA [PHOTO ON TOP FROM MILLIS HIGH SCHOOL – JEFF COTTON, SEAN HAVILAND AND MR. MULLANEY]
• November 12 – Congregation Beth Abraham – Nashua, NH
• November 13 – Private Home – Newton, MA
• November 13 – Congregation Shaarie Tefillah – Newton, MA
• November 14 – Temple Beth Elohim – Wellesley, MA
• November 16 – Torathon -Worcester, MA

Thank you to all the people who made this wonderful book tour possible. You have enriched my life.

A special thanks for the Jewish Book Council for including me in the author’s network for 2019-2020.

Stay tuned – next post will be part II about Susan Neiman’s book – Learning from the Germans.

Tomorrow – I get to spend time with this beautiful baby.  Can’t wait.

 

 

OK, so I told the frozen turkey story in New England

An old Parochet (curtain that hangs in front of the ark), was encased in glass, hanging on the wall of Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua, New Hampshire. It has Hebrew lettering on it.   As I looked closely and read the words, I was shocked.

“Dedicated for Moshe Capeluto for the Kahal Hakodosh (holy gathering/synagogue) of Ezra Bessaroth.”

“What,” I said, “Capeluto is a name of friends of mine in Seattle and Ezra Bessaroth is the name of the Synagogue in Seattle that was founded by emigrants from Rhodos, Greece. The Capelutos are members there. This needs further investigation.”

“We don’t know its origins,” Stephanie told me, “it was found at a rummage sale and donated to Temple Beth Abraham.”

So, today, I called my friend in Seattle, Lina Capeluto, and told her about the Parochet. She said, her father’s name was Moshe Capeluto and that he was named for his grandfather, who was named for his grandfather before him. But she said that Capeluto is a common name. But she does not know of any other synagogue in Rhodos or in the United States name Ezra Bessaroth.   She will ask other members of EB, as lovingly we call it. A quick Google search, however, did not find any other Synagogue named Ezra Bessaroth.

So, for now, the origins of this beautiful Parochet will remain a mystery.

This was my first visit to New Hampshire.   As I drove through the town of Nashua, I found myself thinking that perhaps I was in a painting of America in the early 1900’s.   Some homes are large and stately with lawns, white picket fences and large front porches and others are smaller, more run down, straddling the two sides of the local hi-ways. The old buildings on the main road scream New England, with their red bricks and square structure. The many Church windows are of stained glass and their spires rise high above the other shops letting me know that this is a place of deeply held beliefs.

But as I pulled up to Temple Beth Abraham, I felt at home. This beautiful Temple established in the end of the 19^th century looks more like a house of a very large family than a Nashua religious building. I arrived last night, it was a cold outside, but I knew that I would be warmed by the community. A group of lovely congregants gathered to listen, to learn and to ask. After the event was over and the AV equipment was returned to the closet, I can say that I was correct in my gut feeling – the community welcomed me and made me feel at home.

Earlier in the day, I spoke to 350 High School students in an even smaller town, named Millis, Massachusetts. Millis is a town of 7,000 and is where my friend Sean lives. I met Sean, now a junior at this High School, and his Zeidy, Jeff, on the Ride for the Living in Poland this past June. We quickly became friends and in casual conversation, I offered to Sean to come and speak at his high school in November.  Well, he and Zeidy Jeff introduced me to Mr. Mullaney, the Head of School, and a date was set.

I spoke to all 350 students in their auditorium. The students listened attentively as I gave them a bit of Holocaust and WWII history. We commemorated the 81^st anniversary of Kristallnacht with more history and some good visuals. Then, I jumped into Sam and Esther’s story – but focused on the summer of 1942 when Sam was taken to Treblinka as a prisoner and Esther began her long two years of hiding in and around the Stys family homes and barns.

And then at the end, just for fun, I told them the post-war story of Sam hitting the German on the head with a frozen turkey because the German told Sam (calling him a Jew) to sit at the back of the bus. After knocking the German out cold with the frozen turkey, Sam stepped over him and got off the bus. He waited for the next bus, boarded and made his way home to Esther and Fay with the turkey intact.

They loved it!

But then, I could not resist – I continued and told them the story of when my son Jack was 13 and was walking on the street from his school to his tutor when a student from a nearby Catholic school walked by him and gave him the finger.   He stopped and asked, “Why did you do that?”

“Because you’re a Jew,” the student said.

Jack did not hesitate; he clobbered the kid in the jaw. The kid fell to the ground. Jack stepped over him and kept walking to meet his tutor.   When I picked him up, he told me what had happened.

“Are you nuts,” I told him sternly. “You could have gotten killed. That kid could have had a knife or a gun.”

But then I paused and smiled and looked at him and said, “but I am proud of you.”

They loved that one too!

It was a great day in New England.

PHOTOS:   

Top: City Hall – Nashua, NH: Photo: By Gary McGath, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5701372

Middle:  Friends in Nashua, NH at Temple Beth Abraham

Bottom:   Zaidy Jeff, me, Sean and Mr. Mullaney.

El Paso/Juárez – A Weekend To Remember

[Photo: Wall mural in Juárez, Mexico]

 

“Are you kidding?” so many people said to me at last night’s book event at the El Paso Holocaust Museum, “you did what?”

“Well,” I responded, “Shlomo and I visited Juárez this afternoon. We walked over the famous foot bridge.”

“You’re nuts,” they said shaking their heads in disbelief, “it’s very dangerous over there.”

*******

Well, our adventure to Juárez started out to see the “WALL” between El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Mexico – so we drove ten minutes from our hotel to the border and saw the famous WALL. First, compared to Israel’s concrete wall, it’s not much – just a fence with slots.  But more surprising – the WALL doesn’t go very far – it just ends. In fact, we saw four women climb up the small embankment from the Rio Grande, the border between Mexico and the United States, onto American soil.   We were surprised that the “WALL” so much in the news in the past 3 years, is not much of a barrier to entry.

[Shlomo standing before the WALL and showing where the WALL ends]

After the WALL visit, we saw the famous foot bridge from El Paso to Juárez. There were lots of people heading over, so we went to look. It cost 50 cents per person to cross the foot bridge.   We were worried that I wouldn’t be able to return easily, since I only had my Driver’s License, not a Passport.   We walked over to the side where people were entering the U.S. from Mexico and asked the Border Patrol Officer if my enhanced driver’s license was enough.

“Absolutely,” he responded cheerfully.

So back to the foot bridge we went, dutifully paying $1.00 and heading across.   As we crossed the Rio Grande without even a hint of security, we noticed a change in our surroundings.   Next to us, on the ramp, were cars waiting to cross into the U.S. and there were vendors selling things (or trying to sell things) to people in cars. There were also beggars on the foot bridge, and it looked, felt and smelled very different.

Well, we made it across and were greeted with a scene that reminded me of Beit Lechem – on the other side Israel’s Wall.   When I visited Beit Lechem some years ago with my daughter, Elisheva, we cross a checkpoint into the West Bank with no security, and entered an area where taxis wait to drive people home or somewhere else. There were open air vendors selling food and tchotchkes. The stores were run down and sad, and there were lots of people milling about.   And of course, there was/is a large wall that separates the two places. In Juárez, it looks pretty much the same, except the WALL is smaller and the language is Spanish and not Arabic. Shlomo and I wandered the streets a bit, inhaling the savory and sweet smells coming from the street vendors’ carts. We noticed that on the main street there are lots of Dentists offices and a building that has “Zoo” written on it with an artificial hippo. Also, we found a small park that has a garden of animals made from old tires. This place enjoys its artificial animals.

We walked down a side street and saw an encampment of tents that, I am sorry to say, reminds me of the I-90 on-ramp in Seattle. But we decided that was enough and we walked back towards the foot bridge – the one that goes back to the U.S. We needed 50 pesos to pass through the entrance, but we didn’t have any Mexican money. As we stood there, looking at each other with one of those “what do we do now?” looks, a gentleman that was also crossing, saw our dilemma and gave us the needed change. We offered him a dollar in exchange, and he refused – saying – “de nada.” Shlomo insisted and stuffed the dollar into his hand. This gesture of kindness from a stranger was so moving. It made me realize that the people here in Juárez, with its poverty, crime, and fake animals, are people with hopes and dreams to fulfill.  There may be a lot of crime in Juárez, but we found kindness.

We made it back across the border, after presenting out documents to Border Patrol. As we re-entered the U.S., we noticed the sad looking stores on the El Paso side of the border – not as sad as Juárez, but still sad, selling cheap shoes, socks, and backpacks. Shlomo said, it reminded him of certain parts of Brooklyn, where Spanish is spoken everywhere, and the stores sell cheap goods.

This Sunday afternoon adventure came after spending a wonderful, sunny, Shabbat in El Paso with Larry Lesser and Laurie Davis. They were wonderful hosts and we found much in common. We certainly hope to stay in touch.   Shabbat services at Congregation Bnai Zion were meaningful. Rabbi Scott Rosenberg was welcoming and engaging. He is a “Jack of all trades,” as he serves as the Rabbi, the Chazan, and the Baal Koreh (the one who reads the Torah).   I am told that the El Paso Jewish community has shrunk in the past decades and now stands at not more than 3,000. However, this small community packs a punch, they have vibrant programming and engaging people. It was suggested that because El Paso is so isolated, that they must make the Jewish community thrive on their own.

El Paso is a place full of melancholy, surrounded by sand-colored mountains that hug the city. Spanish is the predominant language and white-skinned people are in the minority. It makes for a fascinating mixing of cultures and languages that I don’t find in Seattle. Curiously, there is one hilltop where Mexico, Texas and New Mexico all converge – a physical metaphor for this city of nearly 700,000.

After dropping Shlomo at the airport Sunday afternoon, I went straight to the El Paso Holocaust Museum, where my book event was to be held at 6:30. The Museum is beautiful and well designed. Many students come there throughout the year to learn about the Holocaust. I began my talk with a song composed and recorded by our Shabbat host – Larry Lesser. It’s a beautiful song, titled Stack the Stones, about the Holocaust and includes a mention of Treblinka. Larry’s CD of original Jewish music will be coming out in January. I can’t wait to get it.

[Photo – left – me with Laurie Davis and Larry Lesser; right – me with Jamie Flores, the Executive Director of the Holocaust Museum and Rabbi Scott Rosenberg]

The rest of the event went on without a hitch. I was thrilled to meet and talk with the attendees after the event as I signed books. One man told of me his Uncle who lived in Germany in 1938 and was arrested on Kristallnacht and sent to Sachsenhausen and though he was scheduled to be released on November 27, 1938, he was ill and then died on November 28 in the camp. It eats him up until this day – why did he die? What happened to him? He will never know. It’s a reminder that everyone, everywhere, has a story to tell.

Thank you to Rabbi Scott Rosenberg, Jamie Flores, and the entire El Paso community for inviting me to visit and for making my stay so meaningful.

[Photo – exhibit at the El Paso Airport]

 

What’s Your Long Shadow?

When I hear people speaking German, or even speaking English with a German accent, the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up, my pupils dilate, and my heart begins to beat faster.   This reflexive, visceral reaction to anything German is my brain’s way of telling my body – stay away – DANGER, DANGER.  It was, after all, the Germans who thought up and efficiently executed [pun intended] the murder of European Jewry. My first thought is Yemach Shemom – may their names be stamped out. My next thought is – what was your grandfather or great grandfather doing between 1939 and 1945?

Thus, the question “whether the sins of the fathers contaminate the children – and if so, for how long?” –  posed by Susan Neiman in her book Learning from the Germans: Race and the Meaning of Evil, gave me pause.

Neiman’s book hopes to draw lessons from the post-Holocaust attitude and actions of processing the guilt of starting World War II and murdering six million Jews. Her book hopes to bring these lessons home – to America – and encourage those of us across the pond to think more deeply about how we can look at our past, particularly how we deal with our dark history of slavery.

Honestly, I am only part way through the first section of the book, so I cannot fully report, but I am moved by what I read yesterday and I want to share.

I learned of a German author, Alexandra Senfft, whose grandfather was the Third Reich’s envoy in Slovakia during the war. He was the one to sign the order deporting the Slovak Jews, sending them to their deaths.   During the war, Alexandra’s mother, Irika, recalls the beautiful villa that they lived in during their time in Bratislava. Of course, the villa was stolen from a Jewish family. Irika learned, just before Christmas in 1947, that her father was executed for war crimes in Slovakia.   Alexandra wrote a book – Silence Hurts: A German Family History – about her family’s story. Alexandra’s mother, Irika, suffered from deep depression during her life and the author was searching to understand the cause of her silent pain.

Though her family ostracized her after the publication of Silence Hurts, many Germans wrote to Senfft and spoke with her about their own family’s secrets from the war.   After hearing so many other stories, Senfft wrote a second book titled The Long Shadow of Perpetrators: Descendants Face Their Nazi Family History, about how this long shadow of Nazi past affects the post-war generations.

“No one likes admitting mistakes,” Neiman writes, “[but] what does it take to admit that your parents were world historically wrong?”

Each German family dealt with this trauma in their own way. But many born in the late 1950’s and 1960’s took a hard look at their history and what their grandparents did during the war and wanted to do “something.” This is the generation that watched the 1961 Eichmann trials in Jerusalem and the 1963-65 Auschwitz trials in Germany, which charged 22 defendants with crimes for their actions at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These trials, especially the Auschwitz trials, brought the horrors of the Holocaust into German citizens’ living rooms and the parents and grandparents could no longer hide in silence. A generation of Germans went from being heroes, to being victims, and then finally perpetrators. It was a shift in the public mindset and the next generations grew up attempting to process it all.

Alexandra Senfft is working to bridge the gap between emotional and cognitive wrestling of the past. According to Neiman, Senfft feels that if the children and grandchildren of the Nazis don’t do this work, they will pass their unprocessed feelings onto their children in an unhealthy way.   Neiman tells of groups, made up of children of victims and children of perpetrators, that get together to look each other in the eye and process feelings and facts. It was the children of the 1960’s, Neiman states, that broke the silence.

In Sennft’s own words:

“Every democracy must be stimulated, challenged and developed – continuously. Democracy lives and thrives through self-critical confrontation with the past – personal and collective – and by scrutinizing the assumptions of earlier generations.

Where such reflection does not take place, people adhere rigidly to generationally-transmitted patterns of thinking, feeling and action. Lack of reflection allows far-right and nationalistic forces present outmoded messages of salvation that develop their own dynamics and create new injustice.

By means of dialogue my work, in an interdisciplinary and international fashion, confronts the past to develop tasks for the present so that society can withstand anti-democratic trends and movements in the future.”
Alexandra Senfft   (http://alexandra-senfft.com/)

I got no sense from Neiman’s book as to how widespread these feelings or actions are among Germans.   Surely, we still see antisemitism in Germany, but unfortunately, antisemitism is alive and well in many places, including our own backyard.

I wonder if we all live in a long shadow of some kind.

 

 

 

Risk My Life? Would I really? The Couriers Did!

[Frumka Plotnik – one of the Couriers – By Unknown – Warsaw Stories. Frumka Płotnicka, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46490962%5D

 

Risk your life to spread the word – and resist.

Would I? Would you?

By the end of 1941 the Nazis had been shooting Jews into pits the size of football fields for six months at places that include Babi Yar, Ponary and Slonim – yes, Slonim where Esther’s entire family and some of Sam’s brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews were murdered.

Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, the Operation Reinhard Death Camps, were not yet operational, but reports of the shootings in the East seeped through the cracks of the ghetto walls. Through their tears, survivors like Esther and Moishe, told family and friends the truth of what happened. People listened, but many didn’t believe. Murder on such a grand scale was beyond comprehension.

But there were some . . .

Abba Kovner, a young resistance fighter in the Vilna Ghetto, heard reports of the shootings and concluded that the Germans were not going to stop until all the Jews were dead (Esther thought the same after the Slonim massacre in August of 1941). In fact, Hitler’s decision to exterminate the Jews, rather than relocate to Madagascar or Siberia, came in the last couple of months of 1941. The Wannsee Conference was held January 20, 1942, when all the top Nazi leaders were informed of this new iteration of the Final Solution and were told of the plan to exterminate the vermin Jews.

[Photo: Abba Kovner testifying at the Eichman Trial – 1961 (from Wikipedia)]

On December 31, 1941, Abba Kovner gathered 150 young people and called for armed resistance against the Germans.

“. . . Hitler is plotting to annihilate al the Jews of Europe.” Kovner wrote. “[T]he only response to the enemy is resistance! Brothers! It is better to die as free fighters than to live at the mercy of murderer.”

This was a radical statement at the end of 1941. Most did not want to hear this. But Abba Kovner’s commitment and passion drew together young Jews who began to spread the word and build the resistance. But how? How to communicate to other Jews – no radios, mail was censored, trains were off limits.   The Jews were inside the prison walls of the ghetto. These young people had to get inside the ghettos and reach the Jews, scream to them –

“RESIST – WE MUST RESIST.”

Even if there were no physical walls, like in Stoczek, the residents wore the Jewish mark of Cain – a Star of David (except of course for Sam, who refused to wear the star). The men had an additional mark – cut into their skin – a circumcision. So even if a man had blond hair and blue eyes, hallmarks of the superior Aryan race, he was doomed to be discovered as a vermin Jew, good for nothing but hard labor on behalf of the Third Reich and death.

It was the Aryan-looking Jewish women who are the heroes of this story.

Young female Jewish resistance fighters answered Abba Kovner’s call to action. These young women dressed like non-Jews, took Aryan names and new identities. With ID papers tucked into their purses and bras, they traveled from town to town, from ghetto to ghetto, sneaking in with the message that the Jews were doomed under the Nazi regime and their only hope was to join the armed resistance. They supplied Jews in the ghettos with underground newspapers, money, ammunition and weapons. These women risked their lives each hour of each day to spread the word and convince others to join the resistance against the Germans. They became known as “Couriers,” spreading the message of hope, community and resistance.

“Nothing stands in their way. Nothing deters them,” wrote Emmanuel Ringelblum, the founder of the Warsaw Ghetto Oneg Shabbes archives. “How many times,” he continues, “have they looked death in the eyes? How many times have they been arrested and searched? [. . .] The story of these Jewish women will be a glorious page in the history of Jewry during the present war.”

Vladka Meed, one of the heroes of this story, smuggled weapons and ammunition into the Warsaw Ghetto. The weapons were used by the fighters of the uprising in April of 1943. Vladka survived the war and wrote a book called On Both Sides of the Wall. I found the book on Amazon and ordered it. I can’t wait to read it.  In her book, Vladka describes some of her successful attempts at smuggling weapons into the Warsaw Ghetto. One time she had to quickly repack a carton of dynamite into smaller packages in order to pass it into the ghetto through a grate in a factory window. As Vladka secretly left the ghetto, she sometimes took extras – children. When she reached the Aryan side, she would find the child or children a hiding place with a non-Jewish family and dreamed that they survived the war.

[Photo: Vladka Meed – By Scott Chacon – […] Vladka Meed auf flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38058940%5D

Would I have become a Courier (if my hair was blond!)?

“Of course,” I tell myself. “I would have understood that the only hope was armed resistance.”

Well, would I?

A girl can dream, but I actually have no idea what I would have done. Life in the ghetto was so hard and food was so scarce that the main occupation of ghetto dwellers was finding the next meal and staving off disease.

As we sit here in 2019 with the knowledge of what happened to the Jews of Europe, we know with great certainty that the only hope was resistance and maybe hiding. But at the end of 1941, it was still perhaps reasonable for the Jews to believe that “this too shall pass” and they just had to get through it like so many persecutions that came before and “times will be better.”

Abba Kovner and the women couriers of hope and arms were exceptions and we now see them as visionaries, even prophets.   But like the prophets of old, so few listened, believed, and changed their behavior. And then, it was too late.

There were other forms of resistance to be sure – violent and non-violent. Survival itself was a form of resistance. Educating your children and maintaining Jewish traditions in the ghetto, in the Concentration and Death Camps were forms of resistance. Sam participated in the armed revolt at Treblinka on August 2, 1943 – that was resistance. But what Abba Kovner and these women did, starting in early 1942, is an example to me, of being out ahead – don’t close your eyes to what you see happening – even if the human mind wants to resist the truth.   Believe it and stand up to it. A message we can all heed.

I am grateful for having had the opportunity to learn about these exceptional women from Sheryl Ochayon, who is the project director of Echoes & Reflections at Yad Vashem. She spoke at the Powell-Heller Holocaust Conference at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma a week and a half ago. It was a privilege to attend the conference and to hear Ms. Ochayon and the other excellent speakers. Much of the information in this post is gleaned from Ms. Ochayon’s talk and the Echoes & Reflections website.

P.S. – I am in Philadelphia, at the start of a two-week book tour. First event is tonight at Har Zion Temple. I’ll keep you all apprised of how it is going.   See my website – event page – for info on where I am speaking.