 |
|
"Never Forget -
the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht"
in the Aspen Daily News and Aspen Post - November 11, 2008 - written
by Pomegranate Co-Chair Pamela Zuker |
On Sunday, at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of
Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), German Chancellor, Angela
Merkel, warned against complacency in the fight against antisemitism.
On the night of November 9th, 1938, Nazis savagely attacked,
raped, and murdered Jews, smashed the windows of their Synagogues,
businesses, homes and even orphanages, and then ransacked and torched
them. The next morning, during an orgy of unimaginable violence, tens of
thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps.
Nazis announced that the horrors were inflicted in honor of the
birthday of German Monk, Martin Luther, admired by Hitler for his
malignant hatred of Jews. Born November 10th, 1483, Luther advocated (as
did many others) practices that waxed and waned for hundreds of years
before and after his lifetime: eliminating Jewish liberties,
confiscating their property, destroying their homes, and burning their
synagogues.
Hitler had come to power only five years before Kristallnacht.
With a venomous contempt for Jews and what he called the “life-denying
Ten Commandments” they had introduced to the world, Hitler had already
prohibited intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, declared a national
boycott of Jewish stores, excluded Jews from working in respected
professions, expelled Jewish students from German schools, forced Jews
to wear yellow “Jude” stars on their clothing, and revoked the
German citizenship of all German Jews.
During these years, many Jews refused to flee, believing German
antisemitism would abate. In the immediate aftermath of
Kristallnacht, however, virtually every remaining Jew in Germany
attempted to emigrate. Sadly, even after the Nazi atrocities were known
to the world, few countries would provide Jews asylum.
• When asked how many Jews his country could accommodate, a high
government official in Canada replied, “None is too many.”
• The British, bent on thwarting Zionism (the desire to create a
sovereign Jewish State in Israel), imposed a prohibition on Jewish
emigration to the Land of Israel, and even refused safe passage to a
ship that arrived in British-controlled “Palestine” bursting with
Jewish Holocaust refugees. By escorting them back to Germany, the
British ensured that when Jews needed their ancestral home the most, it
would not be their safe haven.
• As soon as Jewish survivors from Kielce, a small Polish village,
returned to their homes, their non-Jewish neighbors murdered every one
of them.
That dismal chapter in Jewish history finally cemented in the
minds of the world’s Jewry the urgent necessity to return to a world
with a sovereign Jewish State.
Romans forcibly expelled the Jews from Eretz Yisroel (the Land of
Israel), then called Israel, Judea and Samaria, in 136 C.E., ending over
one thousand years of Jewish reign (with several intermittent periods of
external rule by conquest), compelling their global dispersion, and
inaugurating eighteen centuries of cruel oppression and genocidal
persecution. Remarkably, these Jewish “displaced persons”
assimilated into other cultures around the world yet still retained
their unique religion and identity as a people.
For the first one thousand years of exile, Jews were variously
subjected to forced conversions, confiscations of land, money, and
personal property, expulsions, slavery, the burning of sacred books, the
burning of Synagogues, and being burned alive. Next came prohibitions on
the practice of Judaism and frequent massacres, including the slaughter
of one-third of the Jews in Northern France and Germany (an
accomplishment repeated in Poland in the 1600s).
In the 8th century C.E., while Jews under Christian rule were not
faring well, Jews living under Muslim rule enjoyed a “Golden Age.”
Allowed to participate in professions such as commerce, mathematics, the
sciences, the arts, philosophy, and medicine, Jews were instrumental in
translating texts from and into Arabic, Greek and Latin. For hundreds of
years, Jews lived in peace by accepting second-class status as
“dimam” which prohibited intermarriage, praying audibly, working in
certain professions, and wearing certain clothing and colors. Jews were
also required to pay punitive taxes and wear distinctive clothing
including noisy bells and a yellow badge (the inspiration for the 13th
century “badge of shame” European Jews were forced to wear, and
culminating in Hitler’s yellow star badge.)
In the 13th century, European Jews were required to wear yellow,
cone-shaped dunce-hats called “Judenhuts” (a practice that
originated in the 6th century B.C.E. when Jews were forced into
Babylonian captivity). Later, horned hats called “pileum cornutum”
were substituted, fueling the Christian belief that Jews were children
of the devil and hid their horns under their horned hats.
In 1270, all Jews in England – men women and children – were
either imprisoned or hanged, and in Germany in the same year, an entire
community of Jews was locked in a Synagogue and burned alive on Shabbat.
Before the 13th century ended, public torture and hangings became
commonplace, building Synagogues was prohibited, and a Papal decree
forbade Jews from appearing in public on Good Friday. In the 14th
century, adding to the long litany of savagery, indignities and
injustices perpetrated against Jews, fanatical European monks organized
brutal pogroms during which Jews’ property was seized and they were
forced to convert or die.
The same year Christopher Columbus came to the New World, all Jews
were expelled from Spain, and the descendants of Jewish converts to
Christianity were prohibited from attending university, joining
religious orders, holding public office, or entering any of a long list
of professions.
The following five hundred years saw Jews repeatedly butchered and
expelled across Europe, punctuated by burnings at the stake and public
torture. During the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, Jews there
were massacred to complete elimination, and hundreds of thousands of
Jews were murdered in Russian pogroms in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The pogroms that accompanied the Revolution of 1917 alone orphaned more
than 300,000 Jewish children.
In the late 1800s, although persecution still existed in Europe,
emancipation spread throughout the continent thanks to newly created,
tolerant political regimes that offered equality under Napoleonic Law.
By 1871, every European country except Russia had emancipated its Jews.
(Russia - and later the USSR - continued its long history of
unrestrained violence against Jews long into the 20th century.)
Only a few decades later, however, the staggering Jewish genocide
during what Jews have come to call the “Shoah” (calamity) of World
War II, saw approximately six million Jews sadistically tortured and
murdered at the hands of Nazis and their collaborators. At the war’s
end, fully one-third of the world’s total Jewish population had been
annihilated.
Eighteen hundred twelve years after Rome exiled the Jews from
their homes in Eretz Yisroel, and changed the names of the Jewish lands
to Palaestinia, descendents of 2nd century Jewish refugees returned home
as 20th century Jewish refugees. In the first year of the existence of
the State of Israel, roughly 500,000 homeless European Jews emigrated,
largely thanks to the founding of the United Jewish Appeal by American
Jews as a response to Kristallnacht. Within ten years, the population of
Israel had grown to two million. The majority of the Jewish immigrants,
including 700,000 refugees from Arab countries, arrived with no
possessions.
American Jews are probably the most fortunate of all Jews in the
Diaspora. Jews have perhaps been welcomed here more authentically than
anywhere else in the world. But particularly in difficult economic
times, antisemitism rears its ugly head. Even - or perhaps more
accurately, especially - in the world’s most respected international
forum, the United Nations, antisemitism is rampant. As a particularly
poignant and ludicrous example, at the International Women’s Year
Conference in 1975, a resolution denounced Zionism as an enemy of all
women (despite women’s equal rights in Israel) but did not denounce
sexism because the call for women’s rights was seen as an attack on
the Arab-Muslim world.
On November 10th, 1975, the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht,
rather than issuing a statement in memory of the Jewish victims of Nazi
savagery, the United Nations passed Resolution 3379 branding Zionism,
the reestablishment of a Jewish State in Israel, “a form of racism.”
Although renounced by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Ambassador to the
U.N., as “obscene,” it was through this resolution that Jew-hatred
was sanitized, repackaged, and propagated globally as politically
correct “anti-Zionism.” It took the collapse of the Soviet Union,
which had voted in lockstep with Arab nations and other countries with
anti-Jewish interests, for the U.N. to officially revoke the resolution,
but the damage had been done.
Today, pockets of Jew-hatred persist around the world. While the
anti-Jewish, “anti-Zionist” vitriol of most Arab countries (and all
Islamic terrorists) is widely known, less well known is antisemitism in
places like Lithuania, where Nazis (and their exceptionally
accommodating local conspirators) murdered more than 96% of
Lithuania’s Jews. Lithuanian efforts still prevail in preventing
anti-Jewish war criminals from facing prosecution; and in an astonishing
distortion of history, until only months ago Lithuanian prosecutors
sought to indict octogenarian Jewish-Lithuanian anti-Nazi war heroes for
“war crimes.”
It is likely no coincidence that even today, Lithuanians annually
celebrate Uzgavenes, a Catholic festival infused with local bigotry, in
which they parade as devils, witches, goats, Roma (gypsies) and Jews,
wearing hideous masks with grotesquely exaggerated “Jewish” features
and “acting Jewish” by peddling, haggling, and mimicking Jewish
speech. Masquerading in any costume is referred to as “going as
Jews” and children knock on doors, singing, “We're the little
Lithuanian Jews/We want blintzes and coffee/If you don't have
blintzes/Give us some of your money.” (In Lithuanian, it apparently
rhymes.)
The few remaining Jews in Lithuania keep silent, citing their wish
to respect the traditions of others and their aversion to conflict.
Vilnius, called “Vilna” by the Jews who lived there, used to
be known as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania” for its centuries-long,
distinguished history of Jewish piety and Torah scholarship. Now
virtually ethnically-cleansed, it is the capital of Lithuania. In a feat
of perverse irony, the EU named Vilnius the “European Capital of
Culture for 2009.”
On Sunday, while commemorating the 70th anniversary of
Kristallnacht, German-born Pope Benedict XVI told crowds at the Vatican,
"Still today I feel pain over what happened in those tragic events,
whose memory must serve to ensure such horrors are never repeated and
that we strive, on every level, against all forms of antisemitism and
discrimination.”
While Jews in the United States have enjoyed decades of good
fortune, we must never forget our history and must never allow the world
to forget. As grateful as we are for our integration and acceptance into
American culture and society as equal members and committed citizens,
insidious antisemitism lingers. Just last month, students at an Illinois
middle school instituted “Hit a Jew Day” (after celebrating “Hug a
friend Day” and “High Five Day”). Unbelievably, educators told
reporters they did not believe it was done with “hate” or
“prejudice.”
After the incident, some argued that when history classes were
replaced with lessons in “diversity,” tolerance actually declined.
If children were taught about Kristallnacht, perhaps there would be no
“Hit a Jew Day.”
Jews today have an obligation to every Jew of every generation to
ensure that the State of Israel continues to exist.
The haunting mantra, “Never Forget” defines the Jewish
people’s role and responsibility to humanity to serve as a reminder of
the moral imperative to treat every human being justly and with decency,
dignity and compassion.
For more information about how you can help Jews worldwide,
contact the United Jewish Appeal at aspenvalleyuja@yahoo.com
 |
A beautiful Pomegranate
Pin has been created by Aspen
Jewelry Designer Ross Andrews specifically for Aspen Valley Pomegranates. |
Pomegranate Division
Information
Co-Chairs Pamela Zuker and Rachel Hahn explain that
approximately 20,000 women have made this promise. For more information
on joining this new group, please contact Pamela at Pamela@zuker.org
Rachel at rghahn@comcast.net
or call UJA at 970.704.1827
As Rabbi Shawn Zevit writes, "we live our values in the way we organize our lives." Your inclusion in this group is an affirmation of tikkun olum and a meaningful expression of your desire to heal the world.
A new and evolving group, the Pomegranates are working together to create our own philanthropic initiatives and encourage tzedkah among women in our Valley. Locally we will get together several times a year for special events, interesting speakers, and conversation, while sharing the promise to help ensure the well being of the Jewish people.
The Pomegranates are considering a variety
of projects, both local and international, to sponsor.
Pomegranate -
One of the Seven
Fruits in the Bible
Jewish tradition teaches that the
pomegranate is a symbol for righteousness, because it is said to have
613 seeds which correspond with the 613 mitzvot or commandments of the
Torah.
For this reason and others, many Jews eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah.
The pomegranate is one of the few images which appears on ancient coins
of Judea as a holy symbol, and today many Torah scrolls are stored while
not in use with a pair of decorative hollow silver
"pomegranates" (rimmonim)
slid down over the two upper scroll handles.
While the land of Israel is blessed with many fruits, the seven
described in the biblical verse below are special. They were the ones
brought to the Temple once a year as First Fruits, and on Tu Bishvat, it
was a custom to make a point of eating and saying blessings on these
fruits in particular.
"For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land ... of
wheat and barley and grapevines and honey (from dates)."
1. Wheat - chitah
2. Barley - se'orah
3. Grapes - gefen
4. Fig - t'einah
5. Pomegranate - rimon
6. Olive - zayit
7. Date - tamar (D'vash)
