Silver Spring, Md. (JTA) — Sixty-four years ago, my family and I were sent to the ghetto in Siauliai, Lithuania. Somehow, I lived through a concentration camp, four labor camps and a death march.
There is not a day that I don’t think about the family and friends I lost in the Holocaust.
But this year, as the world is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of the camps, my thoughts are not only about the horrors of Europe’s past, but also about Africa’s present.
Today, I am also thinking about the people of Darfur, Sudan — chased from their homes, their belongings stolen, separated from their families and facing brutality and death every day. From experience, I know what this is like.
As we know, most of the world turned its back on Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust.
But I survived the Nazis and their collaborators, thanks to the help of Jewish women who gave me a small bite of bread when I was starving, kept me warm when I was freezing and picked me up when I fell.
When I promised these women that I would never forget their courage, I promised myself to teach the world how hatred and indifference can cause terrible pain and suffering. I write this essay on behalf of those Jewish women who helped me and for all those dying in Darfur who need our help.
My heart goes out to these human beings who are being attacked because of who they are. It brings back awful memories of the attacks on the Jews during the Holocaust just because of who they were.
Virtually every day, soldiers of the government of Sudan and its allied militias rape, burn villages and kill people of so-called “African” ethnic groups because of their identity.
Families that have done nothing wrong bear the weight of the violence. As someone who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, and as a human being who believes we must never forget, I cannot remain silent.
Last year at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Amal Allagabo, of the Darfur community in exile, in a special observance bringing attention to the crisis in Darfur. Allagabo has lost touch with her family and fears that they could be scattered in refugee camps, lost in the desert or dead.
Time is of the essence. With each passing day more lives are lost.
One can matter
On March 17, college campuses across America observed a minute of silence for Darfur, hoping that their communities, the governments of the free world and the United Nations would hear their silence as a call to action.
Seven weeks later, innocent people continue to be killed. What must we do to keep reminding the world that genocide is never acceptable?
As a survivor of the Holocaust, I have a special responsibility to Allagabo and the people of Darfur. As United States citizens, as leaders in the world community and as human beings, we all have the obligation to speak out and end the genocide. We must inform our children, we must encourage action and we must lead the world in halting these crimes against humanity.
When I lived in the ghetto, before I lost my family, a young woman came to our home with papers that would help us avoid deportation, but she was one short — mine. My mother pleaded with her to get the appropriate paperwork so that I could remain with my family.
Eventually the young woman chose to provide one more document so I could stay in the ghetto longer. Her decision saved my life.
One person can make a difference. Every time I speak about my experiences during the Holocaust, I also speak about Darfur.
Last summer, I addressed a group in front of the Sudanese embassy rallying to end the genocide. In January, for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I told the assembled diplomats at the United Nations why we must do something for the innocent people of Darfur.
In February, I spoke to a group of 400 students from 90 universities across America who had traveled to Washington to learn how they can help stop the genocide. They prove that some young people understand that we must act, and now we must get others to act, urgently.
I will continue to speak out because I survived genocide. I will not — cannot — remain silent during another genocide.
Six decades ago, the world was horrified. The world claimed that it had not known about the Holocaust. It was not true then, nor is it true now about Darfur.
When are we going to learn the lessons of the Holocaust? When are we going to recognize our individual and national responsibility to end genocide? When will we stop merely saying “never again” and start acting on “not this time”?
Nesse Godin lives in Silver Spring, Md., and volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
More million man mischief
By James D. Besser
The most amazing thing about the Jewish commitment to civil rights is how it has endured despite the growing indifference of others to the civil rights of Jews.
That fact was brought home once again as African American leaders gathered this week in Washington to endorse a new drive for economic and racial justice put together by leaders widely considered hostile to Jews.
For all their talk about justice, the mainstream black leaders who endorsed the event seem curiously uninterested in justice for Jews.
That poses a continuing dilemma for Jewish groups that have a lot in common with the black community on domestic issues and for Jewish liberals in particular who continue to be among the most vigorous supporters of civil rights for blacks — but who keep getting kicked in the teeth by many black leaders.
At a Monday news conference, planners officially unveiled their “Millions More Movement” event in early October — a commemoration of the Million Man March that brought a huge crowd to the Capitol ten years ago to protest racism and economic injustice.
The goals of the march are ones most Jews can agree with, including an end to police brutality and racial profiling and a solution to the nation’s health care crisis.
A strong majority of Jews undoubtedly agree with the Rev. Jesse Jackson who, at the Monday news conference, warned about the widening economic, health and education gaps between whites and blacks.
The dilemma for the Jewish community is this: the Million More Movement, like the march it commemorates, is the brainchild of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam and, according to groups like the Anti-Defamation league, one of the nation’s foremost anti-Semites.
Another major sponsor is Malik Zulu Shabazz, the president of the New Black Panther Party, who, according to the ADL, blamed Jews for the Sept. 11 terror attacks and once led a Howard University audience in a twisted pep-rally cheer blaming Jews for killing Nat Turner and controlling the Federal Reserve Bank, the media and “our entertainers…and our athletes.”
The views of Farrakhan and Shabazz are hardly news. What is disturbing is that so many respected African American leaders can’t see that supporting an event planned by bigots, however laudable its other goals, just confers unwarranted legitimacy on the haters and enhances their ability to promote their virulent views.
The march has been endorsed by Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Rev. Floyd Flake and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-District of Columbia), among others— leaders who have long been in the forefront of the fight for civil rights. This week the Anti-Defamation League wrote to 30 endorsers, asking them to reconsider.
“When will someone in the African-American community stand up and say that the Million Man March had a positive message, but the pied piper is a racist and anti-Semite?” asked Abraham Foxman, the group’s director.
The question is a legitimate one. It’s hard to picture any Jewish leader endorsing an event organized by the racist David Duke, even if it was ostensibly for a good cause. But by endorsing Farrakhan’s event and appearing with him at a news conference, black leaders are being just as insensitive and just as destructive to intergroup relations.
With leadership like that, it’s hardly a surprise that the black community displays more anti-Semitic attitudes than any other major segment of American society, according to a recent ADL survey.
It’s not just the black leadership that seems wedded to a double standard when it comes to anti-Semitism. At its events, the anti-war left continues to consider blatant anti-Semitism a matter of free speech, while prohibiting anything smacking of bigotry against blacks, Hispanics, women, gays or a long list of others.
You can still go to antiwar rallies and find copies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Imagine the outrage if white supremacist screeds ever appeared on a literature table.
Some liberals complain that Jews unfairly label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. That charge is accurate in some cases — but it doesn’t begin to address the issue of why respectable liberal and black leaders tolerate the likes of Farrakhan.
The danger here isn’t of an epidemic of Jew-hating. Anti-Semitism is up in some segments of American society, but overall, the trend is down.
But the continuing tolerance of intolerance in some political circles and some minorities alienates Jews from their natural coalition partners; it disrupts the relationships that are an important element in Jewish security and in the drive for a more just society that always featured a strong Jewish component.
A strong majority of Jews continue to identify with liberal causes, as several surveys in the past year indicated. An overwhelming majority continue to mirror the partisan preferences of the African-American community.
Blacks and Jews continue to have a lot in common — and continue to be torn apart by African American leaders who don’t understand that the fight against bigotry has to be absolute, and not something that can be put aside in the interests of other concerns.
Former Madisonian James D. Besser has been Washington correspondent for the New York Jewish Week, the Cleveland Jewish News and other leading Anglo-Jewish newspapers for more than 15 years.
Loading ...